engleski

Brand Meaning and its Creation in a Cross-cultural Context

For decades brand management has been given a substantial attention by managers, business researchers and consultants in a quest to identify what brands represent to consumers, why consumers like them and what benefits they provide them. As a result many in detail concepts were created and investigated. However, a big picture kind of question on what brands actually mean to consumers still remains unanswered. Another for this study important line of research reveals that despite tremendous globalisation cultures are not (yet) homogeneous. Consumers across cultures still differ, and in that light it is interesting to investigate whether a globally unique perception of brands is possible at all In light of these two lines of research, this thesis aims to firstly, discover what brands actually mean to consumers and consequently identify the brand meaning concept ; and secondly, to investigate whether brand meaning is consistent across cultures or affected by culturally determined values, needs and underlying assumptions. A series of in-depth interviews with a panel of international consumers provided data to conceptualise brand meaning as a set of cognitive and affective experience based brand associations. A survey distributed to a cross-cultural sample of consumers provided support for the hypothesis that brand meanings differ across cultures, and in addition gave substantial evidence that differences can be predicted by cultural dimensions of the given country. The findings of the research have several scientific and managerial implications that should serve to boost and direct future research as well as to improve managerial practices in terms of cross cultural branding.

Brand Meaning; Brand; Cross-cultural; culture; Austria; India; Finland; US;

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