Consuming Brands

Jill  Avery; Anat   Keinan

Chapter | The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology | 2015

Consuming Brands

by Jill Avery and Anat Keinan

Abstract

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.

Keywords: marketing; brand building; brands and branding; brand management; Marketing; Brands and Branding;

Format: Print

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Avery, Jill, and Anat Keinan. "Consuming Brands." Chap. 8 in The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology, edited by Michael I. Norton, Derek D. Rucker, and Cait Lamberton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Shiseido was in the midst of a six year corporate turnaround, trying to reverse the effects of decades of under-investment in R&D and marketing which had led to a cycle of declining customer support and brand value. Would the CEO’s VISION 2020 plan, centered on four strategies: 1.) increasing R&D spending from 1.8% to 3% of sales, 2.) investing an incremental ¥120 billion in brand-building marketing, 3.) moving to a “think global-act local” matrixed brand management structure, and 4.) rethinking brand portfolio strategy, be enough to achieve aggressive 8% per year sales goals while simultaneously increasing the company’s operating margin from 8% to 10% in the highly competitive and slow growing beauty industry?

On Friday, February 22, 2019, following an unexpected and disappointing earnings report, The Kraft Heinz Company’s stock price fell 27%, wiping out $16 billion in market value. CEO Bernardo Hees had announced that the company had taken a $15.4 billion asset write-down, that the company would be cutting its annual dividend from $2.50 to $1.60 and that it was under SEC investigation for accounting irregularities related to its procurement process. $8.3 billion of the asset write-down was related to a loss in value of the firm’s intangible assets, specifically its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands. As Kraft Heinz looked ahead to the future, it was time to recalibrate its brand management strategies. With $50 billion in brand assets remaining on its balance sheet, effectively managing its brands going forward was critical to avoiding another brand asset write-down and to regaining the $8 billion brand value the company had just lost. Was Kraft Heinz's brand asset write-down the beginning of the end of the market dominance of "Big Food" brands across the board or was it idiosyncratic and a result of the firm's brand management resources, capabilities, and strategies?

Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2019 (Revised June 2019)

Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community

Jill Avery

Glossier’s proclaimed strategy was “born from content; fueled by community.” The digital-first, direct-to-consumer beauty brand had experienced rapid growth, with sales up 600% in 2017 and a customer portfolio that grew by threefold. But, its founder, Emily Weiss, was not complacent. Instead, she dreamed of creating the world’s first socially driven brand that inserted its community into the buying experience so that the company was merchandising people, their opinions, and their content, just as much as they were merchandising products. As her team debates marketing strategies for 2018, they recognize the opportunities and challenges associated with managing Glossier’s rapidly scaling brand community. While the community’s support had emerged organically in the past, the team was now debating whether the company’s next phase of growth would need to be fueled by a greater emphasis on paid peer-to-peer sales representatives, professional influencer marketing, paid media, and a physical market presence.

Keywords: Brands; brand management; brand communication; retailing; e-commerce; DTC; influencer; digital marketing; social media; Startup; internet marketing; big data; crowdsourcing; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Consumer Behavior; Distribution; Growth and Development Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Retail Industry; United States; North America;

Citation:

Avery, Jill. "Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community." Harvard Business School Case 519-022, January 2019. (Revised June 2019.) View Details

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