Special Session Summary Beyond Brand Image: Analyzing the Culture of Brands

In the conventional brand management literature, culture primarily enters into the theoretical equation through the construct of brand image. From this perspective, a brand is a central node of an associative network constituted by consumers’ learned connections between the brand and a variety of cues, benefits, user types, and symbolic meanings (van Osselaer and Alba 2000). A related normative assumption is that managers can exert a fairly high degree of control over brand image through careful strategic choices and by avoiding a laundry list of commonplace pitfalls (Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000; Keller 1998). This managerial-psychological view reduces culture to an array of information that individuals more or less incorporate into a cognitive schema, which then influences future information acquisition, attitudes toward the brand, and choice strategies (van Osselaer and Janiszewski 2001).

Citation:

Craig J. Thompson (2004) ,"Special Session Summary Beyond Brand Image: Analyzing the Culture of Brands", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 31, eds. Barbara E. Kahn and Mary Frances Luce, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 98-99.