Co-creating stakeholder and brand identities: Introduction to the special section

• Published in: Journal of business research Vol. 70; pp. 395 - 398
• Main Authors: von Wallpach, Sylvia, Voyer, Benjamin, Kastanakis, Minas, Mühlbacher, Hans
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Brand identity; Interactive identity development; Process oriented perspective; Reciprocal co-creation; Stakeholder identity; Process oriented perspective; Interactive identity development; Reciprocal co-creation; Stakeholder identity; Brand identity
• ISSN: 0148-2963; 1873-7978
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.08.028

This article introduces the special section on reciprocal co-creation of stakeholder and brand identities. Branding research and practice traditionally focus on the managerial creation and implementation of brand identity. Based on recent paradigmatic shifts from managerial to co-creative branding and from consumer to multi-stakeholder approaches in marketing, this special section develops a dynamic, process-oriented perspective on brand identity. Brand identity continuously emerges as a dynamic outcome of social processes of stakeholder interaction. Reciprocally, brand identity plays a potentially important role in ongoing interactive identity development processes of stakeholders. The special section contributes to deepening the understanding of this reciprocal co-creation of stakeholder and brand identities, through a series of conceptual and empirical articles. The Introduction reviews four articles as well as related commentaries and discusses their contributions towards establishing a new dynamic paradigm of co-created and reciprocal brand and stakeholder identities.