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The paper aims to explore how companies communicate their heritage by drawing on heritage marketing and corporate communications literature and mapping the corporate heritage communication strategies of iconic Italian brands.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach, analysing the communication of corporate heritage by nine iconic Italian brands (Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, Barovier & Toso, Pasta Farina, Ducati, Amaro Montenegro, Fiat, Bonomelli, Olivetti and Illy).

In communicating corporate heritage, companies adopt different strategies that vary along two main dimensions – the subject of the story and the tone of voice of the content. The strategies are: (1) heritage for authenticity; (2) heritage for market leadership; and (3) heritage for continuity.

From a theoretical point of view, the study highlights that heritage marketing strategies vary according to underlying strategic themes and narrative approaches. From a managerial point of view, it offers a preliminary guide for the development of corporate heritage communications, also providing indications for their implementation.

This study is amongst the firsts to investigate the strategic antecedents that can shape corporate heritage communication strategies. It represents an integration of the existing literature, which is limited to the descriptive presentation of heritage marketing principles and tools.

Studies have shown that negative publicity adversely affects brand trust, but exactly how brand trust can be damaged remains poorly understood. This study aims to explore how negative publicity influences image congruity and, subsequently, brand trust. In addition, the study also examined the effectiveness of two corporate strategies to repair both congruity and trust.

Based on a valid sample of 522 Chinese consumers between the ages 20 and 50, this study adopted a quasi-experimental design involving two types of negative publicity (performance- and value-related) and two initial corporate repair strategies (compensation and public apology) intended to repair brand trust.

Negative publicity shaped brand trust through both functional congruity and self-congruity. Moreover, the type of negative publicity affected the role of image congruity in brand trust. The effectiveness of repair strategies further depended on the type of negative publicity.

Mobile phones were an appropriate focal product for this research, but examining only one product category may limit findings’ generalizability. Negative emotions such as frustration or anger and their relationships with congruity can also be addressed in future work. Subsequent research can additionally consider more conditions to explore alternative routes of processing related to brand trust.

Brand trust is a vulnerable brand asset on which negative publicity can have seriously negative consequences. Marketers and brand managers should assess the extent to which negative publicity can damage image congruity and brand trust and come up with different repair strategies subsequently.

This study contributes to the limited and fragmented literature on consumers’ evaluations of negative information. Findings offer fresh insight into the impacts of negative publicity on image congruity and brand trust. The implications extend beyond negative publicity to other forms of negative information, such as rumors, fake news and negative word of mouth. Results also highlight the importance of adopting appropriate repair strategies to restore consumers’ trust in the event of negative publicity.

This research finds out to what extent companies’ names are influenced by the place’s attributes versus the official branding policies of a place and, consequently, whether and how local companies “buy into” the place’s strategies put forth by official bodies.

This paper is both conceptual and empirical, as a mixed quantitative and interpretive approach is used. The companies’ names of a tourist industry (the tour and guiding companies) in three destinations are compared and pitched against the branding of these cities. The companies' names are classified into categories to ascertain whether they reflect (or diverge from) the official strategies. Finally, a conceptual model is developed to explain the findings: the strategic naming model (SNM).

Our main finding is that the overall business features of a place being stronger determinants to the naming strategies than tourist destination branding initiatives. The intrinsic features of a place seem thus to be “above” destination branding policies. The researched features account for different naming strategies, such as highly original names, flat names or non-strategic names.

As the work is based on a convenience sample, it cannot claim strong representativity. The fact that each of the three data sets was processed by a different researcher might bring up personal biases.

This work is a call for a more intensive use of naming strategies to the companies’ advantages, as naming is found out to be strategy used to a very low degree. Thanks to this research, companies will understand the different naming possibilities and be able to apply them to their strategies by choosing names which express “uniqueness” or “belonging”. Practitioners will also be aware of whether they are communicating towards the industry or towards the market.

No works were found that empirically pursue our research goals. Therefore, this research might be considered as a novelty. The proposed SNM model explains and relates the most usual company naming techniques, which were unrelated up to date.

In brand activism, a brand promotes contested sociopolitical causes to highlight its values. Brand activism also alienates those consumers who disagree with the cause, who might, consequently, target the brand with critical, negative or even aggressive actions. This paper aims to study the triggers and strategies of consumers’ antibrand actions given in response to brand activism.

Qualitative content analysis and multiple correspondence analysis were used to study consumer responses directed at a chocolate brand’s campaign that advocated civilized online conversions and opposed hate speech, a politically heated topic. In total, 1,615 messages were collected from social media platforms.

Field infringement, political accusations and questioned impact of the campaign triggered consumers to turn against the campaign. Strategies to undermine it included boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. Trapping – creatively using technological affordances to create harm to the brand – was typically triggered by political associations.

Findings relate to the critical responses regarding one campaign only.

By understanding the political discussion around the chosen cause, including the opponents’ typical triggers and strategies, brand activism can more credibly advocate for contested social causes and communicate brand values.

Political antibrand actions are distinct from the previously identified functional and ethical antibrand actions, and they are noninstrumental by nature. Practices that are native to social media are central to political antibrand actions, and social media platforms contribute to how such disappointment is articulated and acted upon.

City branding has gained popularity as governance strategy. However, the academic underpinning is still poor, and city branding needs a more critical conceptualization, as well as more complex management systems. This paper challenges the use of a “one size fits all” city brand, which is still common practice in many places. The paper proposes that city branding involves much more complexity than is commonly thought and outlines a strategy that enables urban policy-makers, marketing researchers and (place) marketers alike to better deal with city branding.

The authors integrate insights from literature on place branding, brand architecture and customer-focused marketing.

The article argues that place brands (in general and communicated place brands in particular) are by definition very complex, due to their different target groups, diverse place offerings and various associations place customers could have. Thus, an advanced brand management including target group-specific sub-brands is needed.

The model will be helpful for place brand managers dealing with a diverse target audience, and is likely to improve the target group-specific communication.

The paper provides an insight into the complexity of city brands and acknowledges that the perception of city brands can differ considerably among different target groups. Additionally, it offers a more comprehensive definition of place brands. This will be helpful for city brand managers and researchers alike in dealing with city brand complexity.

Although brand risk management (BRM) is widely acknowledged as critical concern of business leaders, there exists little empirical evidence regarding what activities firms could do to make their brand secured in the increasingly competitive market. Moreover, previous studies find out the important role of innovation stimulus in firm performance, but little attention is paid on how firm's innovation stimulates the firm's brand security. This study aims at exploring the impacts of BRM activities on brand security with the innovation stimulus as a moderator.

Mixed method is applied in conducting this research. In the qualitative research, an interview with managers of 20 large-size foodstuff companies in Vietnam is conducted to obtain insights into their understanding BRM activities and brand security as well as the role of innovation stimulus in managing brand risk and developing measurements for new constructs. In the quantitative research, a sample of 258 respondents is collected for the tests of reliability and validity as well as all hypotheses using SPSS software.

The authors’ findings show that the level of implementation of BRM activities influences the brand security with the moderating effect of innovation stimulus. Specifically, four dimensions of BRM activities including: strategy, personnel, processes and investment have direct, positive and significant impact on brand security. Innovation stimulus including innovation in leadership and innovation in knowledge management could serve as a moderating variable.

The findings of the current study have contributed to BRM literature by highlighting the importance of the implementation of BRM activities and the key role of innovation stimulus in ensuring the brand security, on which previous studies have paid little attention. The study suggests some guidance for firms about how to improve the innovation stimulus in enhancing the effectiveness of BRM activities and, as a result, increasing the brand security of the firm.

Ideas related to “the Nordic” are important in the reconstruction of national identities in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and these countries’ modern national narratives are structurally highly similar. At the same time, there are clear differences between the Nordic countries regarding their national images. The purpose of this study is to a examine the relationship between ideas of the Nordic and national images through a qualitative study of brand manifestations on Nordic web portals for foreign visitors.

The two guiding research questions are: How do Nordic branding strategies and national stereotypes impact on nation-branding content toward visitors in the Nordic region? What traces of the Nordic as a supranational concept can be found when the Nordic is translated into concrete national brand manifestations? The analysis focuses on brand manifestations such as brand visions, codes of expression, differentiation, narrative identity and ideologies.

The analysis shows that clichés about the nations prevail in contemporary brand material and that Nordic branding strategies impact on the portals in diffuse and implicit ways. There are, however, some important common denominators, pointing toward a new Nordic brand related to exotic, untouched yet easily accessible nature, with a focus on pure, fresh and clean food with new tastes, in combination with happy and welcoming people.

The results from the study contribute with insight in how ideas of the Nordic on a supranational level transform when used in concrete and practical branding material. Further, this paper proposes a new Nordic branding focus, which contests traditional Nordic ideas.

This paper aims to distil the management challenge pertaining to B2B SME branding strategy, communication and constraint in the emerging market context of Chinese manufacturing.

Complemented by 19 interviews, this paper adopted a novel methodological approach – netnographic analysis – to investigate a selection of Chinese manufacturing SMEs.

Findings revealed three managerial approaches to B2B brand management: conservative, flexible and integrated-exploratory.

Understanding the three approaches offers managerial implications for Chinese manufacturer SMEs to redesign their branding practice. Informed with a better understanding of the available option, they will be able to achieve high value-added production through branding to gain competitiveness. This study sheds light on B2B SME branding from an emerging market perspective, an area that has been largely neglected in the existing literature.

Findings make a novel contribution to B2B SME brand management literature by clarifying practical management issues pertinent to Chinese emerging market manufacturers in particular, and offering widely generalizable lessons for B2B brand management research.

Various studies dealing with brand orientation were analysed to discuss how the issues identified in this area have been relating over time. This paper aims to identify the key studies, the keywords used and the origin of the studies.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed within the Scopus database to select and summarize the studies that deal with brand orientation. Finally, 90 articles were subjected to bibliometric analysis.

Five major research areas were identified (brand orientation concept, hybrid strategies, internal branding management, brand performance and perceived brand orientation) and discussed.

As the main theoretical contribution, the results showed a focus on research in five areas: the development of the brand orientation concept and proposed extensions; hybrid strategies; the relations between brand orientation, internal branding and brand management; the relation between brand orientation and financial performance; and the perceived brand orientation, mostly applied to higher education sector.

The study offers a general overview of brand orientation, identifying relations on topics of interest, main keywords and sub-themes in this field. The results contribute to fulfilling the research gap about the relationship between all these aspects. Finally, an agenda for future research is proposed.

Se analizaron diversos estudios sobre la orientación de la marca con el fin de discutir cómo se han ido relacionando a lo largo del tiempo los problemas identificados en esta área. Esta investigación identifica los estudios clave, las palabras clave utilizadas y el origen de los estudios.

Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura (SLR) con la base de datos de Scopus para seleccionar y resumir los estudios que tratan de la orientación de la marca. Finalmente, 90 artículos fueron sometidos al análisis bibliométrico.

Se identificaron cinco grandes áreas de investigación (concepto de orientación de marca, Estrategias híbridas, Gestión interna de marca, Rendimiento de marca, Orientación de marca percibida) y se discutieron.

Los resultados mostraron un enfoque en la investigación en cinco áreas: el desarrollo del concepto de orientación de marca y las extensiones propuestas; las estrategias híbridas; las relaciones entre la orientación de marca, el branding interno y la gestión de marca; la relación entre la orientación de marca y el rendimiento financiero; y la orientación de marca percibida, aplicada principalmente al sector de la educación superior.

El estudio ofrece una visión general de la orientación de la marca, identificando las relaciones sobre temas de interés, las principales palabras clave y los subtemas en este campo. Los resultados contribuyen a llenar el vacío de investigación sobre la relación entre todos estos aspectos. Finalmente, se propone una agenda futura de investigación.

Orientación de marca, Marca, Análisis bibliométrico, Revisión sistemática de la literatura

Revisión general