Consuming Brands

Traditional definitions of branding often underestimate the value a brand has for infusing a choice situation with meaning. This chapter explores how people consume brands and presents three perspectives on the meaning of brands that have diverse theoretical roots in cognitive psychology, social psychology, and cultural sociology. Brands are important building blocks of the self and serve as relational partners, enabling people to build and enact meaningful lives. People consume brands to access the meaning contained within them and co-create that meaning through their consumption of and relationships with brands. Brands, thus, are meaning-based assets, so brand management, at its core, is a process of meaning management. Managerial questions related to how to build and extend brand meaning and how to change an existing brand's meaning over time are informed by the illumination of individual consumer and collective community meaning-making processes. The chapter concludes with thoughts about the challenges of studying brands and the importance of interdisciplinary multi-method branding research that aims to understand brands in social, cultural, and competitive context.Traditional definitions of branding often underestimate the value a brand has for infusing a choice situation with meaning. This chapter explores how people consume brands and presents three perspectives on the meaning of brands that have diverse theoretical roots in cognitive psychology, social psychology, and cultural sociology. Brands are important building blocks of the self and serve as relational partners, enabling people to build and enact meaningful lives. People consume brands to access the meaning contained within them and co-create that meaning through their consumption of and relationships with brands. Brands, thus, are meaning-based assets, so brand management, at its core, is a process of meaning management. Managerial questions related to how to build and extend brand meaning and how to change an existing brand's meaning over time are informed by the illumination of individual consumer and collective community meaning-making processes. The chapter concludes with thoughts about the challenges of studying brands and the importance of interdisciplinary multi-method branding research that aims to understand brands in social, cultural, and competitive context.