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The aim of this paper is to explore the meaning of the term “retail brand” to small‐ to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) owner managers and how this impacts upon brand management practice.

This research utilises a case study approach, which involved 12 SME retailers located in two regions of the UK, combining qualitative interview data with desktop research and documentary evidence.

The findings of this paper confirm that the owner manager is central to the brand management function in SME retail firms. Furthermore, it was found that the retail brand encompasses both symbolic and functional meaning to the owner manager.

This research contributes to the retail and SME literature by offering a conceptual framework, which presents the interpretation of the retail brand from abstractive, service and environmental perspectives.

It is recommended that SME owner managers set an overall direction for branding across all aspects of the retail business. In doing so, existing retail brand models may be utilised as a tool kit for SME brand managers.

The research begins to address a significant empirical lacuna in branding at the SME retail marketing interface. This paper also adds to wider marketing discourse, through the presentation of terminological adaptation within a small retailing situ.

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.

This study aims to examine an emerging product–place co-branding marketing practice in China’s rural areas. The role of this practice in inclusive development is analyzed from the perspectives of value proposition innovation, market legitimacy, media coverage and brand value. Both research and practice indicate value proposition innovation to exert an important influence on brand value enhancement, but little is known about the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relation.

A moderated mediation model is constructed to examine whether market legitimacy mediates the relationship between value proposition innovation and brand value. vWhether this mediating process is moderated by media coverage is also examined. The primary data are collected from semi-structured interviews and observations conducted with two common cases to develop proper scales for value proposition innovation and market legitimacy. The research includes 100 product–place co-brandings published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in 2019. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression and a Bootstrap model.

Value proposition innovation has a positive effect on brand value, and market legitimacy partially mediates this relationship. Media coverage positively moderates the relationship between value proposition innovation and market legitimacy, and positively moderates the mediating effect of market legitimacy; the higher the media coverage, the stronger the mediating effect of market legitimacy.

Based on data availability and accessibility, the study sample focused on indicators from 100 brands in 2019. If the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs discloses consecutive annual information for other years, future studies could explore panel data to further test the study’s conclusions from a longitudinal perspective.

First, this paper adds to the emerging literature on product–place co-branding business models by examining the relationship between value proposition innovation and brand value. Second, this paper enriches institutional theory by including market legitimacy as a mediator between value proposition innovation and brand value. Third, this paper identifies the moderating role of media coverage, thus broadening the theoretical implications of institutional theory with respect to improving market legitimacy.

This research paper aims to discuss the role of branding strategy in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs).

The literature on traditional brand management and strategic branding are first reviewed. Four critical constructs are identified, namely brand distinctiveness, brand orientation, brand‐marketing performance and brand barriers. The literature, in combination with (eight) case research interviews, has been synthesised to develop a new theory of SME branding.

The paper reveals that the theory identifies the ladder of SME brand orientation, moving from minimal brand orientation, to embryonic brand orientation to integrated brand orientation. Further, it is suggested that most SMEs will be on the lower steps of the ladder. A model of the brand strategy process has been formulated, specifying links between brand barriers, brand distinctiveness, brand orientation and brand‐marketing performance. The study puts forward some propositions about the pre‐conditions to move higher up the ladder, particularly to an integrated brand orientation.

The major limitation of this research is that it is based on eight case studies. It is suggested that a quantitative survey be carried out to enhance the generalisability of the model.

This paper makes original contributions in that it uses case studies to establish the relationship between the level of brand orientation and brand‐marketing performance; and conceptualises the four brand‐related constructs.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to questionnaires as a corporate touch point, and their relationship with corporate identity (CI).

Following observational research, the paper presents a review of published works, including journals, textbooks and industry papers that consider qualitative aspects of questionnaire design. Primary data was collected via existential phenomenological interviews to understand the experiences of employees who engage with questionnaires from external companies within the industrial business-to-business (B2B) industry.

A lack of practical advice around aesthetic appearance of questionnaires in both journal papers and research design textbooks is identified, suggesting limited awareness of visual aspects of questionnaire design, even for those with formal training. Through interviews, it is suggested that poor design is forgiven through the understanding of the practical nature of the document, the idea that CI is a performance that is unnecessary at particular points of the B2B relationship, and that a more powerful company need not spend time on CI if collecting data from a stakeholder that is perhaps perceived as less important than other stakeholders. The findings indicate that organisations should consider questionnaires as a vehicle to promote CI, and as stakeholders to consider the document in terms of their relationship with the issuing company.

This study proposes that qualitative inquiry is required to further determine how questionnaires are understood as a corporate touch point by stakeholders.

This paper considers the relationship between questionnaire appearance and stakeholder perceptions in the context of CI.

This paper aims to draw on the organizational ecology theory to examine variations in branding efforts and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across enterprises sizes and business operating sectors.

A four-stage analysis involving principal component analysis, Pearson correlation, ANOVA and logistic regressions was used on a sample of 430 SMEs within an emerging market.

Principal component analysis identified four brand marketing efforts relevant to the SMEs. These efforts were used in fluctuating extents among small-sized versus medium-sized enterprises, as well as manufacturing versus services SMEs. Additionally, proportionate levels of performance corollaries were found to be accruable across the enterprise sizes and operating sectors.

The paper first identifies four brand-building efforts germane to SMEs within an emerging market and examines their precise contributions to firm performance within enterprise sizes and business operating sectors. It further reinforces the relevance of brand marketing programs to the growth of SMEs by establishing the likelihood and extent to which brand-building efforts impact on SME performance across enterprise sizes, as well as operating sectors. The study also presents issues of potential research and managerial interest from an emerging market, offering insightful implications to researchers and SME managers.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how family firms execute open innovation strategies by managing internal and external knowledge flows (KF) to provide a deeper understanding of family firms’ ability to innovate through traditions and create value across generations.

Empirical evidence was collected using an online survey of a sample of 208 Apulian entrepreneurs, who were members of the association of young entrepreneurs of Confindustria in the Apulia region (southern Italy).

The study derives a model that explains the most relevant factors behind the innovation processes developed by young entrepreneurs in family firms: network membership benefits; KF; track record of innovation; and the entrepreneurial attitude of employees.

By integrating insights from different research streams, namely, innovation management, open innovation and family firms, the study provides a novel contribution to the open innovation process in family firms.

The study offers interpretative lenses for entrepreneurs and managers to understand the most suitable knowledge transfer process for encouraging open innovation in family firms, taking into consideration young entrepreneurs’ traditions and interpersonal skills, the KF in local ecosystems and network benefits as the main variables supporting the innovation process.

This study creates a link between open innovation and family firm research by providing an empirically grounded model illustrating how the innovation process is realized in family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how branding can facilitate small business development of new ventures.

A conceptual approach was used for understanding branding in new ventures. A model with eight propositions has been developed and then validated using ten existing case studies of exceptional entrepreneurs.

The key mechanisms proposed for branding to assist small business create new ventures include opportunity recognition, innovation, business model development, capital acquisition, supplier acquisition, customer acquisition, and success harvesting.

The paper helps redress a relatively lack of research into small business branding. Previous research has mainly focused on small business brand management of existing ventures. The findings are readily translatable to small businesses launching new ventures. The paper extends the existing small business branding literature into a new domain, having a strong entrepreneurial character.

Drawing from industrial upgrading theories, this study aims to explore the issues of industrial upgrading and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) development in an emerging market – China.

A contextual stepwise approach is undertaken by applying netnography and interviews to investigate manufacturing SMEs' perceptions on upgrading.

The study outlines three economic actors – government, industry and manufacturer; two upgrading factors – internal and external; a vicious circle that consists of thin profit, quality and imitation issues; and a benign circle that incorporates a list of upgrading capabilities – research and development (R&D), creativity, design and branding – in the context of upgrading to the value-added supply chain.

By integrating the findings with relevant literature, the authors propose a framework to best illustrate manufacturing SME upgrading. The findings reveal that Chinese manufacturing SMEs acquire upgrading capabilities through organizational learning during the upgrading process, which is affected by both external and internal factors in the constraints imposed by the interplay of relevant actors.

Through the innovative methodological approach, this study affords great insights into industrial upgrading from the perspective of manufacturing SMEs in an emerging economy – China.

The aim of this paper is to explore how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan employ technology to participate in global supply chains so as to respond to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This study chose four small to medium textile SMEs using qualitative exploratory multiple case studies to examine their participation in the global value chain (GVC) and under the context of Industry 4.0.

This study proffered a strategic model for the innovative integration of textile manufacturing companies and cultural content industry into the global market. The results identified four types of cross-disciplinary value creation strategies by Industry 4.0-driven technology and cultural content infusion: enhancing digital product display capabilities, integrating cultural content design and online marketing, creative brand marketing with cyber-physical channel integration and emotional marketing incorporated with smart services.

The author proposed the following cross-disciplinary value creation strategies for clothing SMEs in Taiwan: (1) enhancing digital product display capabilities, (2) integrating cultural content design and online marketing, (3) creative brand marketing with cyber-physical integration and (4) emotional marketing incorporated with smart services. Using these strategies, SMEs can incorporate cultural and lifestyle aspects into products and services and embed themselves in the global marketing links of GVCs.