Multi-stakeholder brand identity co-creation

In today`s business environment, brand management is no longer in the position to unilaterally define a brand`s identity (i.e., intended brand meanings) while perceiving consumers as passive recipients of brand messages. Empowered by new social media, consumers actively contribute to brands that affect their personal lives. By disseminating their brand knowledge, expectations, and evaluations, consumers create their own brand meanings (Mumby and Clair, 1997) - adding to a brand`s identity. Most recently, branding literature stresses that not only consumers but many other stakeholders interested in a brand (e.g., employees, investors) can play a similarly active role. This stream of literature perceives brands as social processes resulting from interactions in stakeholder networks (e.g., Merz et al., 2009). During these interactions, multiple stakeholders negotiate what the brand means for them and co-create brand identity. Accordingly, brand identities can no longer be reduced to a managerially defined stable essence (cf. Kapferer, 1986) but are dynamic meanings co-created by multiple actors during social interactions (Csaba and Bengtsson, 2006). While increasingly acknowledging multiple stakeholders` active role, branding research lacks further theoretical and empirical insights into why and how brand identity co-creation processes actually unfold (cf. Merz et al., 2009). The social dynamics characterizing multi-stakeholder co-creation might differ from consumer co-creation dynamics, since various stakeholders perform different roles and belong to different groups in society. Diverse individual and social identity needs influence stakeholders` brand-related interests and may drive stakeholders to create multiple brand identities. Handling this increased complexity requires an in-depth understanding of the social dynamics characterizing these processes. Building on individual and social identity theory (Stets and Burke, 2000), this research aims to provide insights into this social phenomenon by (a) theoretically conceptualizing multi- stakeholder brand identity co-creation processes and (b) empirically investigating what motivates stakeholders to actually engage in brand-related interaction and which social dynamics characterize this process. This project comprises two empirical studies. Both studies rely on a case study executed with the Danish corporate brand LEGO - particularly renowned for its proactive multi-stakeholder brand management approach. In order to gain insights into stakeholder motivations and actual brand-related interactions, we apply a combination of qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews, netnography, and direct participant observation. Our data analysis follows principles of hermeneutic analysis. With our results we aim to provide both branding researchers and practitioners with valuable insights into the malleable phenomenon of brand identity and to derive implications for managers confronted with multi-stakeholder brand co-creation dynamics.