The best papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the Journal of Product & Brand Management Special Issue “Brand Purpose: Towards a deeper understanding of the construct, its antecedents, co-creation process, and outcomes”.
Professor Francisco Guzmán (University of North Texas
Professor Joana César Machado (Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal)
Professor Nicholas Ind (Kristiania University College, Norway)
Professor Stefan Markovic (NEOMA Business School, France)
Professor Oriol Iglesias (ESADE Business School, Spain))
The term ‘brand purpose’ is widely used by managers and consultancies. In fact, many brands have defined a brand purpose during the last decade, partially because increasing customer activism (Schmidt et al., 2022). However, surprisingly, academic research lags behind (Veloutsou and Guzman, 2017; Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021) and there are only a few articles in leading journals which include the term ‘brand purpose’ in their title or keywords (e.g., Iglesias and Ind, 2020; Hajdas and Kłeczek, 2021; Mirzaei et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2021; Rudeloff and Michalski, 2023; Iglesias et al., 2023; Fernandes et al.; 2024; France et al., 2024; Kjeldsen and Schmeltz, 2024). This implies that there is still a lack of construct clarity (Swaminathan et al., 2020). Additionally, even if many brands have defined a purpose and a few research articles have tried to conceptualize the construct, most brands are struggling with how to embed the brand purpose across their organization and their value proposition (Iglesias and Ind, 2020). In the same vein, there is a lack of academic research studying how to best activate brand purpose (Markovic et al., 2023). Moreover, most of the articles approach brand purpose from a corporate perspective and draw on the business strategy literature (Rudeloff and Michalski, 2023), failing to recognize that brand purpose can also be developed at the product brand level and that very significant differences might exist between these two types of brand purpose. Overall, brand purpose represents an emerging area of research, relevant to business and society, that requires more conceptual and empirical studies which can help the field to further develop (France et al.; 2024).
Brand purpose can be seen as the fundamental reason for a brand’s existence (Williams et al., 2021; Iglesias et al., 2023). It requires brands to look inwards to their history, competences, and ambitions (Iglesias and Ind, 2020) and outwards to the delivery of value to all stakeholders (Kujala et al., 2022). Brand purpose can help managers make coherent strategic choices (Iglesias et al., 2023), provide additional motivations for consumers to purchase (Williams et al., 2021), and energise employees (Schmidt et al.; 2021) and business partners (Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021). A core characteristic of brand purpose is its ambition to positively transform society and the environment (Mirzaei et al., 2021). This has led Iglesias et al. (2023, p. 8) to define brand purpose in terms of a moral compass that guides an intended transformational impact. Yet, for many brands, the challenge is to translate the strategic intentions incapsulated into their moral purpose (Mitnick et al., 2023) into consistent action. This implies not only willing to be good and look good, but actually be good (Chun et al., 2013). France et al. (2024) propose a framework that identifies the five essential principles that inform the implementation of brand purpose.
Despite the increasing managerial and academic interest in the topic of brand purpose, the study of brand purpose is still very much under-developed. Therefore, this special issue welcomes submissions that focus on enhancing the
existing body of literature on brand purpose. Contributions can be conceptual
and/or empirical (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods). Possible research
questions include, but are not limited to the following:
- How can we conceptualize brand purpose?
- What are the characteristics of a good brand purpose?
- What are the drivers of brand purpose?
- Which processes are used to construct brand purpose?
- What are the outcomes of brand purpose for different internal and external stakeholders?
- What is the role of brand purpose in driving brand equity?
- What are the tensions in enacting a brand purpose and how are they managed?
- What is the role of co-creation in defining and implementing brand purpose?
- What are the roles of the different stakeholders in defining and activating brand purpose?
- How can organizations best embed a brand purpose?
- What is the relationship between corporate and brand purpose?
- What is the relationship between a brand purpose and the personal purpose of employees?
- How can brand purpose best be measured and evaluated?
The Special Issue submission option will open in the online submission system on 30th June 2025. The closing date for submissions is 30th October 2025.
For all editorial questions regarding the Special Issue please contact the Journal Guest Editors by email: francisco.guzman@unt.edu
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