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While brand purpose has gained traction in academia and industry, it overlaps with other socially-oriented branding concepts, generating confusion and criticism around what brand purpose is and how it should be implemented. This study aims to clarify conceptualisations of brand purpose and related concepts, developing a managerial framework for effective implementation and contributing a future research agenda for scholars.

The paper presents the results of a systematic literature review on brand purpose, exploring the current knowledge. A total of 202 studies from 75 journals were drawn from a wide range of databases and met the identified criteria relevant to brand purpose, published up to and including 2023. Full papers were empirically analysed using qualitative iterative thematic analysis to identify common and emerging themes and synthesise this into a framework.

Beyond identifying the diverse applications of brand purpose, the BEING framework is proposed. This acronym captures five principles of brand purpose: beyond profit, enduring commitment, integrated values, nurturing stakeholders and genuine action.

The BEING framework provides clear managerial guidance for implementing brand purpose, urging brand leaders to enact meaningful brand purpose and champion purpose within organisations.

As more brands pursue a higher purpose, this research elucidates the meaning of brand purpose and offers an actionable framework for brands to contribute to a better world.

This work examines the related branding concepts, clarifying the brand purpose concept and offering the BEING framework to articulate essential components of effective brand purpose.

This study aims to operationalize consumer decision-making styles as higher-order constructs and investigates the influence of two distinct subdimensions of consumer vanity – namely, appearance vanity and achievement vanity – on consumer decision-making orientations (CDMO).

Using data from an online survey of 319 young adults, the authors construct a higher-order structural model capturing the following three orientations: social/conspicuous, utilitarian and undesirable. The partial least squares structural equation modeling approach was used to test the validity of the higher-order structural model and the hypothesized relationships.

Results, confirming the higher-order structure of consumer decision-making styles, highlight the distinctive impacts of the vanity dimensions on different CDMOs. Specifically, appearance vanity predominantly affects social and undesirable orientations, and achievement vanity influences utilitarian orientation.

While several theoretical classifications of consumer decision-making styles have been proposed in the past, none of the earlier studies leveraged those classifications as higher-order models. Addressing this literature gap, this study provides empirical evidence associating CDMOs with a specific consumer trait – vanity – thereby validating the higher-order nature of consumer decision-making styles.

Consumer perception of corporate brand equity has primarily focused on product brand dimensions, neglecting considerations at the firm analysis level. Assessing corporate brands requires different criteria relevant to the competitiveness of companies, such as their prominence, management and meeting society’s demands. In this sense, this study aims to develop and validate a scale of corporate brand equity founded on consumer perceptions, transcending industry boundaries and comparing its relationship with companies' market share.

The authors used an integrative approach to clarify the construct’s domain, building on previous measures. They took several steps to select appropriate items, refine the measure, validate it through reliability tests and convergent and discriminant analyses, test the validity of the second-order formative structure of corporate brand equity and assess associations between first-order factors, the second-order factor and market share.

The model identifies three first-order dimensions of corporate brands (presence, outstanding management and responsible) that shape the second-order factor (corporate brand equity). They are directly related, but not proportionally, to market share, contributing to the general and joint assessment of the company’s competitive performance considering the consumer.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to develop a comprehensive measurement model of corporate brand equity that considers the firm level of analysis, combines metrics from previous research on corporate brand evaluation criteria and includes consumer perceptions of the company’s competitiveness, unifying branding theory with the theory of the marketing firm.

Because of an increase in consumer awareness and the ease of information dissemination on the Internet, brands have increasingly become the target of online criticism. Several factors affect consumers’ reactions to public criticism against brands that they support. The present study investigated the interactive effects of psychological ownership, agency–communion orientation, and internal attribution on self-threat in the context of such criticism.

Three studies were conducted to test several research hypotheses. The psychological ownership, agency–communion orientation, and internal attribution of the participants in this study were manipulated using an experimental scenario. Subsequently, they completed a questionnaire with items used to assess purchase intention, self-threat, and demographic variables and for performing manipulation checks.

When a brand is criticized, (1) consumers with high psychological ownership of the brand are likely to buy more of that brand’s products, (2) communion-oriented consumers with high psychological ownership of the brand experience greater self-threat relative to those with low psychological ownership, and (3) agency-oriented consumers experience a consistent level of self-threat regardless of their level of psychological ownership.

Brands should endeavor to enhance consumers’ psychological ownership of the brand to increase their support in times of crisis.

This study investigated how psychological ownership of a brand among consumers affected their reactions when a brand was criticized. The effect of self-threat as a mediating mechanism was also considered. Furthermore, agency and communion orientation were proposed as crucial moderators that should be considered in research on consumer–brand relationships.

This study aims to argue that manufacturers with more exploration orientation (compared to exploitation orientation) have higher degrees of export marketing internalization (EMI) of branding and channels.

The authors use a multisource survey collecting data from 161 Taiwanese high-tech manufacturers in emerging markets.

The results show that manufacturers with more exploration orientation have higher degrees of EMI of both branding and channels. This work also reveals that relational ties with supply chain peers can strengthen this proposed positive effect on the EMI of channels while weakening the positive proposed effect on the EMI of branding.

Accordingly, this study enriches the resource-based view (RBV) literature by showing how firms’ unique resource portfolios affect their adopted EMI strategies in two ways: (1) firms design their EMI based on their value maximization of core competences (e.g. ambidexterity capability), and (2) firms face resource inconsistency when designing their EMI of different marketing activities.

This study aims to examine the effect of Muslim consumers’ religiosity on their brand verdict regarding clothing brands, through the mediating role of decision-making style, brand status and brand attitude.

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data collected from 200 clothing buyers in Mashhad, one of Iran’s religious cities.

The results indicate that intrapersonal religiosity, compared to interpersonal religiosity, has a more significant effect on Muslim consumers’ decision-making styles, and different decision-making styles of Muslim consumers affect their brand verdict through brand status and brand attitude.

The research sample consists solely of respondents from the Islamic religion. Therefore, the impact of religiosity might differ among individuals from other religions, such as Christianity and Judaism.

This study’s findings are crucial for clothing brands, both national and international, that cater to the Muslim customers’ market. They need to consider the degree of religiosity when segmenting and targeting their market. This study shows that clothing brand marketers can best influence the brand verdict of Muslim consumers by targeting those with a brand-loyal decision-making style, focusing on their religious beliefs.

To achieve success in Iran’s Muslim market, marketers must consider their consumers’ religious beliefs and tailor their marketing plans accordingly. This study aims to investigate the impact of religiosity on consumer behavior toward brands in Iran’s Muslim market.

The main fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail formats that customers engage with in India are Kirana stores, neighborhood convenience stores (NCS), supermarkets and online retailers. However, there has been less research done on the variables or antecedents that could favorably affect consumers' engagement with these FMCG retail formats. To improve retail practices, this study looks at how female consumers perceive the performance of FMCG retail formats on different antecedents of consumer engagement. The status of consumer engagement with FMCG retail formats was also analyzed.

The present study used exploratory as well as descriptive research design. Previous studies were analyzed to identify the antecedents of consumer engagement. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the primary data from 400 female respondents of two major urban cities in north-western India. The descriptive analysis and one-way ANOVA test were performed to analyze the data.

Kirana stores’ performance on most of the antecedents was not satisfactory. Supermarkets and online retailers performed better on all antecedents. Customer marketing orientation and experiential marketing were the antecedents that required more attention from Kirana stores, NCS and supermarkets. Consumer engagement with online retailers was highest, whereas consumer engagement with Kirana stores was least.

This study offers a comprehensive examination of the antecedents of consumer engagement and consumer engagement with FMCG retail, which no prior research has studied in the context of FMCG retail businesses.

This study aims to develop a robust theoretical framework to explain the impact of hotels’ green brand authenticity on guests’ perceptions of well-being, customer engagement and approach behaviors toward green brands.

In this study, the authors examined the effect of green brand authenticity on perceptions of well-being, customer engagement and approach behaviors toward green brands. For the quantitative empirical analysis, 352 samples were used. Green brand authenticity integrates quality commitment, heritage, uniqueness and symbolism as high-dimensional factors.

The study conceptualizes green brand authenticity as a multi-dimensional phenomenon with four dimensions: quality commitment, heritage, uniqueness and symbolism. The results showed that green brand authenticity has a positive effect on hotel guests’ perceived well-being and behavioral intentions. Interestingly, environmental values did not have a statistically significant regulatory role, while green behavior in everyday life had a partial regulatory role.

This study aims to develop and empirically test a conceptual model that depicts the function of green authenticity in explaining customer responses to green brands. The results and the theoretical framework proposed in this study provide significant insights for researchers and practitioners in the hotel industry.

Further than evaluating brand authenticity generally, this study evaluates the authenticity of a brand's environmental protection efforts. As a result of the empirical analysis conducted in this study, the green brand authenticity of a hotel had a positive effect on customers’ emotional and behavioral aspects. This finding provided valuable and meaningful insights for green hotels and hotel brand-related research.

The purpose of this paper is to assess green marketing as an influential factor in the purchase of real estate. In this study, the consumer citizenship behaviour of young individuals will be studied with an assessment of real estate purchase intention, strategic green marketing orientation (GMO) and tactical GMO.

The sample frame consists of young consumers from India’s metropolitan cities. The respondents were in the range of 18 to 35 years of age. These cities provide a high standard of living, more career options and better educational opportunities. Five separate sections of a standardised questionnaire were used, and a structural equation model was used to assess a total of 393 valid replies.

Green marketing impacts the behaviour that influences the desire of young customer to buy green real estate.

As the focus of this study is primarily on major cities, future research may study similar behaviour in non-metropolitan cities. The study can also be conducted among consumers of other age groups.

The originality, to the best of the author’s knowledge, exists in examining how young consumers’ opinions about green marketing impact their intentions to purchase green houses and real estate in India. This study will be accessible to all parties involved in the housing and real estate industries.

Oppositional brand loyalty poses a challenge to the management of virtual communities. This study aims to categorize these loyalty behaviors into positive (willingness to pay a price premium and brand evangelism) and negative (schadenfreude and anti-brand actions) dimensions. It then explores how customer engagement and moral identity influence these dimensions in the context of brand competition.

Structural equation modeling was conducted to analyze the main and moderating effects, using survey data obtained from 498 valid responses out of a total of 636 responses from Xiaomi's virtual communities.

The results indicate that customer engagement significantly influences all four dimensions of oppositional brand loyalty. The relationship between customer engagement and brand evangelism is notably stronger among customers with a strong moral identity. Conversely, the effects of customer engagement on schadenfreude and anti-brand actions are attenuated for these customers.

Anchored in theories of brand tribalism, social identity and brand polarization, this study bifurcates oppositional brand loyalty into directions of preference and antagonism, empirically showcasing moral identity's moderating effect. It contributes to the literature on antagonistic loyalty and moral identity, offering strategic insights for companies to navigate schadenfreude and anti-brand actions in online communities.