brand orientation a systematic literature review and research agenda

Brand orientation: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC

ISSN : 2444-9695

Article publication date: 31 January 2020

Issue publication date: 15 April 2020

Various studies dealing with brand orientation were analysed to discuss how the issues identified in this area have been relating over time. This paper aims to identify the key studies, the keywords used and the origin of the studies.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed within the Scopus database to select and summarize the studies that deal with brand orientation. Finally, 90 articles were subjected to bibliometric analysis.

Five major research areas were identified (brand orientation concept, hybrid strategies, internal branding management, brand performance and perceived brand orientation) and discussed.

Research limitations/implications

As the main theoretical contribution, the results showed a focus on research in five areas: the development of the brand orientation concept and proposed extensions; hybrid strategies; the relations between brand orientation, internal branding and brand management; the relation between brand orientation and financial performance; and the perceived brand orientation, mostly applied to higher education sector.

Originality/value

The study offers a general overview of brand orientation, identifying relations on topics of interest, main keywords and sub-themes in this field. The results contribute to fulfilling the research gap about the relationship between all these aspects. Finally, an agenda for future research is proposed.

Se analizaron diversos estudios sobre la orientación de la marca con el fin de discutir cómo se han ido relacionando a lo largo del tiempo los problemas identificados en esta área. Esta investigación identifica los estudios clave, las palabras clave utilizadas y el origen de los estudios.

Metodología

Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura (SLR) con la base de datos de Scopus para seleccionar y resumir los estudios que tratan de la orientación de la marca. Finalmente, 90 artículos fueron sometidos al análisis bibliométrico.

Se identificaron cinco grandes áreas de investigación (concepto de orientación de marca, Estrategias híbridas, Gestión interna de marca, Rendimiento de marca, Orientación de marca percibida) y se discutieron.

Implicaciones de la investigación

Los resultados mostraron un enfoque en la investigación en cinco áreas: el desarrollo del concepto de orientación de marca y las extensiones propuestas; las estrategias híbridas; las relaciones entre la orientación de marca, el branding interno y la gestión de marca; la relación entre la orientación de marca y el rendimiento financiero; y la orientación de marca percibida, aplicada principalmente al sector de la educación superior.

Originalidad/valor

El estudio ofrece una visión general de la orientación de la marca, identificando las relaciones sobre temas de interés, las principales palabras clave y los subtemas en este campo. Los resultados contribuyen a llenar el vacío de investigación sobre la relación entre todos estos aspectos. Finalmente, se propone una agenda futura de investigación.

Palabras clave

Orientación de marca, Marca, Análisis bibliométrico, Revisión sistemática de la literatura

Tipo de artículo

Revisión general

• Bibliometric analysis
• Brand orientation
• Systematic literature review

Sepulcri, L.M.C.B. , Mainardes, E.W. and Marchiori, D.M. (2020), "Brand orientation: a systematic literature review and research agenda", Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC , Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 97-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-06-2019-0035

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Lara Mendes Christ Bonella Sepulcri, Emerson Wagner Mainardes and Danilo Magno Marchiori.

Published in Spanish Journal of Marketing – ESIC . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The representativeness of a brand and its relevance can be, along with other aspects, translated into consumer loyalty and consumer willingness to pay a premium price, so that the strengthening of the brand can revert to financial performance gains ( Fischer et al. , 2010 ; Simon and Sullivan, 1993 ). Thus, in the twentieth century, a new organizational strategy of brand orientation was theorized, taking the focus of the company from just meeting the needs of customers to creating a strategic meaning for the brand ( Urde, 1999 ). Since then, studies in this area have evolved from the discussion about brand orientation to the analysis of its importance in companies ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ).

For Urde (1994 , 1999 ), a brand-oriented company focuses on creating, developing and protecting brand identity, represented as the essence of the firm’s strategy. Since the inception of this concept, different studies have analysed the same concept in diverse contexts ( Cant et al. , 2013 ; Gromark and Melin, 2013 ; Jain et al. , 2018 ; King et al. , 2013 ; Napoli, 2006 ). In addition to empirical implications, several models were proposed to measure brand orientation, and its barriers, antecedents and outcomes ( Apaydin, 2011 ; Boso et al. , 2016 ; Harrison-Walker, 2014b ; Huang and Tsai, 2013 ).

identify the origin of the research (i.e. which institutions and which countries explore more the studies in this area);

identify the key studies and keywords used; and

discuss how the identified issues addressed in this area have been relating over time.

Despite the existence of a systematic literature review on the theme ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ), we noticed that this study did not use bibliometric analyses, to deepen the understanding of the themes analysed. The use of statistical and mathematical techniques allows researchers to expand their vision about the object of study due to the identification of bibliometric relations on the topics of interest: main keywords and their relations; the relationship between sub-themes; and the main authors in the area ( Börner et al. , 2003 ; Waltman et al. , 2010 ). Thus, the use of statistical techniques, through a bibliometric analysis, enabled us to see some relationships that cannot be seen from a simple content analysis, filling the research gap about the relationship between brand orientation, its extensions proposed by Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2016) , the sectors and the contexts explored by the studies.

To respond to the objective of the study, we performed a systematic literature review to generate a database to analyse bibliometricaly and better interpret the results. Thus, the bibliographic analysis techniques were applied to a final sample of 90 articles published between 1994 and 2018 in the Scopus database. According to this analysis, the studies concentrate on themes and countries, generating good research opportunities by expanding the areas studied and the issues involved.

2. Brand orientation

Brand orientation can be regarded as a strategic approach, in which the brand becomes the centre around which the organization’s processes are created through interactions of stakeholders. This closely ties it to business development and financial performance ( Gromark and Melin, 2011 ), as highlighted in the studies by Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2018) and Wong and Merrilees (2008) . The theoretical development of this concept has been increasing since the year 2000, expanding to different extension, as suggested by Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2016) .

Ewing and Napoli (2005) developed a scale to verify the application of nonprofit brand orientation, whereas Apaydin (2011) suggested a theoretical model of antecedents and consequents to the orientations of brands in that area. Besides that, Liu et al. (2017) found a positive relationship between brand orientation and internal brand mechanisms, which corroborates with the idea that a brand orientation approach contributes to employees who have a better understanding of their role within a nonprofit company.

Furthermore, in the third sector, Mulyanegara (2011a) examined the brand orientation from the consumer perspective ( Casidy, 2013 ), coining the concept “perceived brand orientation” (PBO) ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ). In his study, Mulyanegara (2011a) concludes that active participation in churches is influenced by the positive evaluation of brand orientation as well as by the spiritual and social benefits derived from church programmes. Casidy (2013) analyses the PBO relationship with satisfaction, loyalty and post-enrollment behaviour in the higher education sector, indicating a significant relation with all the dependent variables. In the same way, Shahijan et al. (2016) also finds a positive relationship between perceived brand orientation and course satisfaction among international students in Malaysia.

In the political field, the political brand orientation consists of how party brand values and party practices are in conformity. That is, how much they are oriented towards developing brand potentials ( O’Cass and Voola, 2011 ). Downer (2016) works this concept to show how the actions of the party and its leaders can add or remove brand value, altering the value perceived by the voter.

In the same way, it is possible to develop the brand of a tourist destination and study it from this perspective. However, the tourist destination brand is an association of deliveries of products and services generated by distinct and often independent organizations ( Hankinson, 2012 ). Therefore, destination brand orientation (DBO) proved to have a strongly positive relationship with brand performance ( García et al. , 2018 ; Hankinson, 2012 ).

Particularly in the service sector, employees play a key role in the quality of service delivered ( King et al. , 2013 ; Terglav et al. , 2016 ). Thus, more specifically in the hotel industry, Terglav et al. (2016) indicate that the commitment employees have with the brand is related to the perception of the alignment between the behaviour of the brand managers. In the same line, King et al. (2013) highlight that there is a positive relationship between service brand orientation (SBO), employee orientation to the client and brand oriented behaviour.

When it comes to retail, the retail brand orientation (RBO) is described by Brïdson et al. (2013) as a strategy in which the organization prioritizes and manages the brand's distinctive, functional, augmented and symbolic attributes. Retailers who aim for a vantage point relative to competitors should invest in building a strong RBO. However, due to retail diversity, Schmidt et al. (2017) highlight that metrics may vary when analysed RBO in different retail sectors. Also, Balmer (2013) presented a concept of corporate brand orientation, where the corporate brand becomes the central pillar of the organization, reflecting the corporation’s values, culture and identity. Thus, employees, customers and other stakeholders are protagonists to build the corporate brand, which may create an emotional engagement with it ( Balmer, 2013 ).

In addition to the proposed extensions, brand orientation may also be linked to other strategies, generating the so-called hybrid strategies such as brand-market orientation and market-brand orientation, suggested by Urde et al. (2013) . Thus, Laukkanen et al. (2016) point out that the market orientation strategy has a positive impact on the financial performance of small companies if it is implemented through the brand orientation, which also proved to be a mediating factor between entrepreneurial orientation and business growth for small business-to-business (B2B) operating in emerging markets ( Reijonen et al. , 2015 ). This symbiosis is also present in political marketing, in which the parties that have the competencies to understand voters (political market orientation) and connect them with its offers (political brand orientation) would provide a unique value proposition, generating a clear differentiation from its rivals ( O’Cass and Voola, 2011 ).

In spite of the various studies of brand orientation, both empirical and theoretical, it was noticed that a bibliometric analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the relations between studies about the subject. This type of analysis has, as one of the purposes, to use statistical and mathematical techniques to structure the information, generating clusters and maps, so that the relationships between the data can be enhanced and visualized in a way that facilitates interpretation ( Börner et al. , 2003 ; Pritchard, 1969 ; Waltman et al. , 2010 ).

In the present study, we used two methodological approaches. Firstly, we conducted a systematic literature review based on Scopus, one of the largest peer-review scientific literature of large databases of scientific journals, also considered a consistent database to perform bibliometric analysis ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ; Wang and Waltman, 2016 ). Moreover, Scopus uses rigorous criteria to index a journal, and all indexed journals are submitted to periodic evaluations to certify the maintenance of quality ( Elsevier, 2019 ). This review was carried out to generate the database for conducting a bibliometric analysis in which we used the techniques of bibliographic coupling ( Kessler, 1963 ) and analysis of co-occurrence of keywords ( Callon et al. , 1983 ).

3.1 Systematic literature review

The articles analysed in this study were identified through consultation with the scientific journals indexed to Scopus and Web of Science, with no category or date filters having been made, but rather language filters (only in English) and type of work (Articles and Reviews) instead. The terms used in the search engine were “brand orientation”, “brand-orientation”, “brand oriented” and “brand-oriented”, combined with the Boolean operator OR. The search was applied in the article title fields, abstracts, and keywords. We conducted it in June 2018.

did not have any technical information like author, year or abstract;

were not related to the areas of business, marketing, psychology or behaviour;

used the customer’s brand orientation as variable instead of brand orientation as strategy; and

did not use brand orientation as a model variable, that is, they used brand orientation only as a theory to support the article, but did not evaluate it to meet the search goal.

This analysis was carried out by reading the titles, abstracts and introductions of the studies. Those that fit into at least one of the exclusion criteria were removed from the sample. In cases where there were still doubts whether to keep or exclude, we read the full article. Thus, the final sample consisted of 96 papers. In total, 45 were in both databases, 45 only in Scopus and 6 only in Web of Science. Finally, we synthesized the articles and, as Scopus presented a large number of articles, we chose this database to perform the bibliometric analysis.

3.2 Bibliometrics

To perform the bibliometric analysis, we used the VOSViewer software, version 1.6.10 ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ; Waltman et al. , 2010 ). From this tool, we applied technique of bibliographic coupling ( Kessler, 1963 ) and keyword co-occurrence analysis ( Callon et al. , 1983 ). In bibliographic coupling, the more references the articles share, the greater the similarity between them ( Egghe and Rousseau, 2002 ; Kessler, 1963 ). Therefore, we suggest that each cluster formed by bibliographic coupling forms the basis of a determined research front, as that cluster has articles with common references ( Jarneving, 2005 ).

As for the co-occurrence of keywords, the terms are grouped according to their degree of association in the literature, to identify which subjects were treated during the time. Thus, to examine the co-occurrence of keywords, it is analysed the frequency with which they appeared in the sample and how often two distinct keywords appear together in different jobs ( Cobo et al. , 2011 ; Losiewicz et al. , 2000 ).

The interactions formed from the application of these techniques were exposed in network maps ( Li et al. , 2016 ; Marchiori and Mendes, 2018 ), being that, each map is calculated by measuring the force of interaction between terms, which takes into account the number of links between the terms ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ; Waltman et al. , 2010 ). Graphically, the terms (which, in this case, are articles or keywords) are represented by nodes and colour clusters, so that larger nodes represent more relevant terms than smaller nodes. The lines indicate the links between the nodes, as well as the distance, so that the closer one node is to the other, the more related they are Cobo et al. (2011) , Sinkovics (2016) and Van Eck and Waltman (2019) .

4. Results of bibliometric analysis

4.1 main studies and institutions.

When analysing the most relevant studies in the area, we noted that the study by Wirtz et al. (2013) is the most cited among the articles in the sample, even though it is relatively recent, while Urde (1994) , which starts the concept of brand orientation, appears as the fourth most cited. Table I shows the ten papers with the highest number of citations, the journals in which they were published, the number of citations, the total citations (TC) per year and their respective countries.

Among the institutions that have two or more publications in this area, most of them are from Australia and Europe. This happens not only in the production but also in the places where the research samples were collected, as shown by Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2016) .

4.2 Co-occurrence keywords

When applying the co-occurrence technique with all keywords and with fractional counting ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2014 ), we found 236 different words. Of those, only those that had at least two occurrences were selected, generating 46 items. The keyword “brand orientation” was excluded from the analysis, as it was by this keyword that the articles were initially selected in the search engine. We also did an adjustment for keywords considered synonymous like “b2b” and “business-to-business”. Five groups were found.

Group 1 comprised terms such as brand commitment, internal brand management and employees, possibly relating the effects of the work of internal brand on employee commitment to the brand, with the hospitality sector standing out in this group, as the examples of studies by King and So (2015) and King et al. (2013) . Group 2 suggests papers that have explored small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) with the type of business-to-business consumer, directing the studies to the impacts of the brand orientation, as well as the adoption of hybrid strategies, financial performance and business growth. We noticed that, although market orientation does not belong to the same group, the term is very close to Group 2, mainly to b2b branding and strategic hybrid orientation, which indicates a strong relationship.

Group 3 is directed to the internal branding and market orientation, given that these two are the ones of greater relevance in the group. Similarly, both terms appear to be related to the nonprofit sector, internal marketing and perceived benefits generated, for example, by the association of the brand orientation with market orientation ( Mulyanegara, 2011a ). Also, Group 3 gathers keywords such as brand strategy, internal branding and brand equity that can be related to the positive impacts of brand orientation on internal branding and brand equity, as argued by Baumgarth and Schmidt (2010) .

Group 4 indicates articles that seem to relate aspects of the brand such as management and identity and shows how these aspects relate to strategic orientation, given that the terms brand management, brand identity and strategic orientation are in this group. It is important to note that, besides the keywords “financial performance” and “brand performance” which do not belong to Group 4, the proximity shows a relationship between those subjects. Finally, Group 5 includes keywords like innovation, customer loyalty and customer satisfaction suggesting that these aspects may be related to brand orientation ( Wong and Merrilees, 2008 ) with emphasis on the higher education sector ( Casidy , 2014a, 2014b ).

We observed that despite the concept of corporate brand orientation is one of the extensions of brand orientation ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ; Balmer, 2013 ) this keyword (corporate brand orientation) is not widely used in the articles. On the other hand, corporate brand and corporate branding are the terms most frequently used ( Powell, 2016 ) and appear in this study’s sample.

4.3 Bibliographic coupling

To identify the interactions among the articles from the similarities between the references, we applied, in the sample, the technique of bibliographic coupling by documents, with fractional counting, which gives the same weight to each publication ( Perianes-Rodriguez et al. , 2016 ; Van Eck and Waltman, 2014 ). Thus, the map is shown in Figure 1 , where each of the five clusters found was circled to facilitate visualization.

Therefore, when analysing the most cited studies within each cluster, the first cluster seems to gather studies that deal with conceptual discussions of brand orientation, bringing more theoretical studies, including the study by Urde (1994) , who was one of the pioneers in the brand orientation theory. The most cited study of Cluster 2 empirically measures the effects of the adoption of hybrid strategies, like brand orientation with entrepreneurial orientation or brand orientation with market orientation, mainly in relation to growth and business performance. On the other hand, Cluster 3 presents, in its most cited studies, qualitative and quantitative articles, which relate to the development of the brand internally to the company or locally in a determined microregion. From another perspective, Cluster 4, despite its most cited articles, takes into account the impacts of a company to be brand oriented, usually in financial performance, and explores the concept of brand performance. Finally, the papers in Cluster 5 aim at the area of higher education, containing all the articles of the sample that cover this sector, and analysed the concept of perceived brand orientation. To summarize, Table II shows the four most cited studies, according to the Scopus, within each cluster and its main theme ( Waltman et al. , 2010 ).

5. Cluster analysis and discussion of results

In the bibliographic coupling, we can perceive the formation of five clusters: brand orientation concept hybrid strategies, internal branding management, brand performance and perceived brand orientation. When analysing each one of them it is possible to notice relations between some clusters and the keywords groups.

Cluster 1, titled brand orientation concept, set the base of brand orientation and strategic positioning theories, and it is formed by several qualitative studies. After Urde (1994) defines brand orientation, several studies developed scales to measure this concept, its antecedents, barriers and outcomes ( Brïdson and Evans, 2004 ; Gromark and Melin, 2011 ; Rentschler et al. , 2011 ; Harrison-Walker , 2014a, 2014b ). Besides, some researchers adapted the original concept to different areas such as nonprofits ( Ewing and Napoli, 2005 ; Apaydin, 2011 ), retail ( Brïdson et al. , 2013 ) and politics ( O’Cass and Voola, 2011 ; Downer, 2016 ) and also to different perspectives as perceived brand orientation ( Mulyanegara , 2011a, 2011b ). Furthermore, papers that discuss hybrid strategies ( Urde and Koch, 2014 ) and main positioning strategies ( Urde et al. , 2013 ) from a theoretical point also form this cluster. Thus, as this cluster is considered the base of brand orientation theory and their extensions, the keywords from the studies are spread in the different keywords’ groups, which are analysed below. Also, as declared, the keyword brand orientation and its synonyms have been deleted from the keyword group analysis.

The hybrid strategies (Cluster 2) is formed by articles that are mostly empirical, using methodologies such as factor analysis, structural equation modelling, cluster analysis and regressions. Laukkanen et al. (2013) and Reijonen et al. (2015) suggest that different strategic orientations, in addition to brand orientation, may impact the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance, encouraging the study of hybrid strategies. The adoption of another orientation strategy, also called a hybrid strategy, was still proposed by studies such as those by Anees-ur-Rehman et al. (2017) , Lee et al. (2017) and Reijonen et al. (2012 , 2014 ). There are also, in Cluster 2, several articles related to small and medium enterprises ( Ciunova-Shuleska et al. , 2016 , 2017 ; Hirvonen and Laukkanen, 2014 ; Hirvonen et al. , 2013 , 2016 ) and the effects of adopting this positioning strategies in companies of this size ( Chovancová et al. , 2015 ; Laukkanen et al. , 2013 , 2016 ; Lee et al. , 2016 ). Reijonen et al. (2012) suggest that small and medium growing companies are more brand and market oriented than other companies (stable or declining). This relation between hybrid strategies and small and medium companies can be seen in keyword groups, as the keywords “smes” and “entrepreneurial orientation” ( Chovancová et al. , 2015 ; Reijonen et al. , 2015 ) belong to keyword Group 2. Also, although the keyword “market orientation” does not belong to Group 2, the proximity suggests a relation to the keyword Group 2.

Cluster 3 has, as its main theme, the internal branding management. Thus, the application of brand orientation strategy to the internal development of the brand is composed of articles that mostly use the factor analysis, structural equation modelling and multiple regressions. Research, such as Baumgarth and Schmidt (2010) and Zhang et al. (2016) , explores the relationship between internal branding and brand equity. According to them, brand orientation has a positive impact on brand equity through internal branding. From another perspective, Wirtz et al. (2013) , which was the most cited article in the cluster, propose a model that relates brand orientation and consumer engagement in online brand communities (OBCs), suggesting that the consumer engagement in OBC’s can improve the brand equity. The relation between these themes can be seen through the keywords “internal branding”, “brand strategy” and “brand equity” that appeared together in Group 3.

Also, some studies in Cluster 3 explore the relation between brand orientation and internal brand under an employee’s commitment and behaviour, in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations ( Dechawatanapaisal, 2018 ; King et al. , 2013 ; Liu et al. , 2015 , 2017 ). In addition, strong internal brand development helps the employee to deliver services aligned with companies’ promises ( King and So, 2015 ). Thus, the relationship between the keywords on this theme, such as “brand commitment”, “internal brand management and employees”, is showed by Group 1.

The fourth cluster, titled brand performance, consists of both theoretical and empirical articles. Wong and Merrilees (2015) study the antecedents and consequents of brand engagement, showing that the brand orientation precedes this relationship and has positive consequences on brand performance and financial performance. Wong and Merrilees (2007a , 2008 ) have also studied the relationship between brand orientation and brand performance and the gap between brand performance and marketing strategy that, according to the authors, is partially filled by brand orientation. All articles were based in samples from Australia. Also, Varadarajan and Malone (2018) presented, through a case of study in a private international school in India, how branding improves the number of school enrollment. Gisip and Harun (2013) proposed a theoretical model where brand orientation is seen as a part of brand management strategy and has a positive relationship with brand performance.

Thus, the keywords in Group 4 gather together keywords such as “brand management, brand identity”, “business performance” and “Australia”, showing the association between the themes. Also, despite the keywords “financial performance” and “brand performance” (Group 2) belonging to a different keyword group, the proximity between these keywords suggests that these themes are related ( Baxter et al. , 2013 ; Wong and Merrilees, 2008 ).

Finally, the fifth cluster, titled perceived brand orientation, makes use of factor analysis and structural equation modeling and explores, for example, the positive relationships between brand orientation with student loyalty, satisfaction and intention to continue the course ( Casidy , 2013, 2014a ; Shahijan et al. , 2016 ). As perceived brand orientation considers the customer's point of view, those studies using keywords as “customer satisfaction”, “customer loyalty” or “student satisfaction” and “student loyalty” as those words are related with higher education. Keyword Group 5 shows these relationships.

In summary, articles show several relations between them. The internal aspects of the brand, and the adoption of hybrid strategies, mainly with market orientation, has been shown as a line of research that has aroused interest within the academic community, as well as the impacts of using these strategies on company performance. Still, perceived brand orientation seems to be a concept just being explored in a higher education and church context ( Casidy , 2014a, 2014b ; Mulyanegara , 2011a, 2011b ), which reveals the opportunity to explore it in other sectors like in services, given the importance of consumer perception ( Chovancová et al. , 2015 ). Each cluster also show practical implications of adopting brand orientation such as gains in performance, the impact in growth associated with market orientation (Cluster 2), impacts on employees’ commitment, employees behaviour and brand equity (Cluster 3), impacts on performance (Cluster 4) and impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty (Cluster 5).

6. Research agenda

The results show a latent need for diversification of research in different countries, mainly by comparing the causes and effects of the actions of brand orientation strategy in developed and developing economies ( Laukkanen et al. , 2013 ). In addition, some studies ( Brïdson and Evans, 2004 ; Huang and Tsai, 2013 ; Osakwe et al. , 2016 ) demonstrate that good brand orientation work is related to issues such as differentiation and engagement, characteristics that seem to be even more necessary in sectors such as nonprofit, services and online commerce. In this way, future research can explore the brand orientation in these sectors, considering, for example, if nonprofit companies that are more brand-oriented are more trustworthy, and are thus able to raise more donations or attract more volunteers.

In the field of online commerce, we can verify if the brand orientation impacts on the reliability of this type of retail, thus positively affecting the consumer’s purchase intention. In the service sector, brand orientation can strengthen standardization, especially in companies that operate in different locations, with headquarters and subsidiaries, guaranteeing the same exclusive experience of the brand by the consumer, wherever they use the service ( Boso et al. , 2016 ). Wallace et al. (2013) suggest exploring brand orientation in hierarchical matrixes and branch structures, looking at the role of the local manager in the development of brand identity, and the influence of the local leader and his/her team.

Regarding the metrics used, the financial performance seems to be a very relevant metric and studied as a consequence of brand orientation ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2016 ). However, other aspects seem to be little explored, such as brand sustainability, innovation, productivity, loyalty and personality ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2017 ; Biedenbach and Manzhynski, 2016 ; Brïdson and Evans, 2004 ; Gisip and Harun, 2013 ). The public sector is also little explored, with few studies in this context, even though Gromark and Melin (2013) point out brand orientation as an interesting alternative to market orientation in this sector.

Although some studies have explored the use of hybrid strategies in areas such as SMEs and B2B, a few studies advance to the use of other strategies beyond marketing orientation, such as orientation for the technology, for the consumer, for innovation and entrepreneurship ( Anees-ur-Rehman et al. , 2018 ; Ciunova-Shuleska et al. , 2017 ; M’zungu et al. , 2017 ). It is also worth investigating when, how and what market positioning leads to the adoption of a certain strategy ( Urde and Koch, 2014 ). And, the use of hybrid strategies in different contexts might be explored as a U-shape relationship instead of a linear relationship ( Lee et al. , 2016 ). Moreover, within the mix of characteristics that a certain segment can present, putting together, for example, small and medium-sized B2B and B2C companies from different countries with different strategies, the multi-group analysis can be a powerful tool to analyse these distinctions, as in the study by Reijonen et al. (2015) . In addition, Boso et al. (2016) suggest research in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) and MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) and studies that compare the results for both developed and developing economies ( Powell, 2016 ).

Relating to internal branding, both external factors (such as market fluctuations, intensity of competition and technological changes) and internal factors (such as sustainability and innovation culture) can influence the development of the internal brand through brand orientation ( Dechawatanapaisal, 2018 ; Huang and Tsai, 2013 ; Iyer et al. , 2018 ). From another perspective, Wirtz et al. (2013) proposed a model that relates brand orientation and consumer engagement in OBCs. They suggested that future research could empirically test the differences between BCs (brand communities) online and offline, exploring when the firm should choose one or the other, as well as the antecedent and consequent model. The authors also suggest developing a scale to measure engagement in OBCs and test that engagement in brand performance. In addition, the authors suggest exploring the criteria to determine in which situations it is most beneficial the company to manage the OBC or the consumers. Otherwise, Ahn et al. (2016) and Hankinson (2012) explore the relationship between the brand of certain locations (country, region) and brand orientation. Thus, some indications for future research are the study of other destinations, and taking into account the size of destinations (whether they are, for example, large or small cities in relation to population size or local development), the levels of brand resources and brand architecture.

Innovation seems to play a crucial role in performance, be it financial performance, brand performance or customer performance ( Agostini and Nosella, 2016 ; Gisip and Harun, 2013 ; Lee et al. , 2016 ; Wong and Merrilees, 2008 ). Lee et al. (2016) argue that an excessive focus on a single strategy (brand orientation or innovation orientation) may decrease returns of brand performance. The authors suggest to future researchers that this relation in the turbulent market, wherein the innovation orientation can be more important than brand orientation because of environmental characteristics. Another suggestion is to analyse performance from the customer’s point of view ( Lee et al. , 2016 ).

Thus, another line for research is to explore the brand orientation of the internal and external perspectives. That is, from the points of view of managers and employees (internal perspective) and also taking into account the perceptions of consumers (external point of view), bringing a holistic view of the effects of brand orientation and possibly linking it with perceived brand orientation. Relating to higher education, perceived brand orientation is still little explored in distance learning ( Casidy, 2014a ; Shahijan et al. , 2016 ).

7. Conclusions

In conclusion, this paper highlighted the relationships between the issues of brand orientation and discussed how the extensions of this concept have been applied. As the main theoretical contribution, the results of the cluster and the keyword groups showed the focus on the research in five areas: the development of the brand orientation concept and proposed extensions; hybrid strategies, mostly applied in SMEs and focusing in brand-market orientation; the relations between brand orientation, internal branding and brand management; the relation between brand orientation and brand or financial performance; the perceived brand orientation as mostly applied to higher education sector. In addition, despite the continued development of the brand orientation theme, many industries and segments still require investigation.

Also, although recent research is diversifying the countries studied ( Ahn et al. , 2016 ; Schmidt et al. , 2017 ; Shahijan et al. , 2016 ; Varadarajan and Malone, 2018 ; Zhang et al. , 2016 ), taking into account the diversification between countries at different economic stages is necessary in an attempt to generalize the proposed models. In addition, given the complexity of adopting this type of strategy, more research can be done to clarify the background, consequents and barriers of brand orientation, their extensions and hybrid strategies, which are mainly useful managerial practices. Also, it would be interesting to perform a meta-analysis to further explore the details about the research questions related to brand orientation.

BC documents

Most cited articles

Source: Research data

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Further reading

Veljković , S. and Kaličanin , D. ( 2016 ), “ Improving business performance through brand management practice ”, Economic Annals , Vol. 61 No. 208 , pp. 137 - 167 .

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq/Brazil), project 304209/2018-0, by Foundation for Research Support of Espírito Santo (FAPES/Brazil), projects 81870973 (50/2018), 84513772 (599/2018) and 85395650 (228/2019), by Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT/Portugal) through NECE (Núcleo de Estudos em Ciências Empresariais), project UID/GES/04630/2019, and by IFTS (Instituto Fucape de Tecnologias Sociais), project 2018-2021.

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Brand passion: a systematic review and future research agenda

• Original Article
• Published: 22 April 2023
• Volume 30 , pages 490–515, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Faheem Gul Gilal 1 ,
• Justin Paul 2 ,
• Asha Thomas 3 ,
• Lia Zarantonello   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0393-2909 4 &
• Rukhsana Gul Gilal 1  

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Consumers living in today's almost demystified world of consumption are constantly searching for new ways to add value to their lives. Consumption of material goods or owning favorite brands are common ways for consumers to satisfy this deep-seated desire. In this context, a bond between consumers and brands can be formed. This close bond between a consumer and a brand fuels passion. Despite a long history of interest in studying consumers' brand passions and a plethora of passion studies, an attempt has yet to be made to synthesize marketing literature on brand passions, which merits further attention. Therefore, this paper aims to review passion literature and propose agendas for future research from a marketing perspective. Specifically, the goal is to inspire more brand passion research by identifying significant research gaps based on how the brand passion construct has been used in marketing research, what study themes and contexts have been looked at, and what methodological approaches have been employed. With this purpose in mind, the present study looked at three decades of brand passion research ( n  = 84) from 1995 to 2021, identified emergent marketing problems, and offered research agendas in the form of testable propositions.

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Gilal, F.G., Paul, J., Thomas, A. et al. Brand passion: a systematic review and future research agenda. J Brand Manag 30 , 490–515 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-023-00324-x

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Brand orientation: a systematic literature review and research agenda

2020, Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC

PurposeVarious studies dealing with brand orientation were analysed to discuss how the issues identified in this area have been relating over time. This paper aims to identify the key studies, the keywords used and the origin of the studies.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review (SLR) was performed within the Scopus database to select and summarize the studies that deal with brand orientation. Finally, 90 articles were subjected to bibliometric analysis.FindingsFive major research areas were identified (brand orientation concept, hybrid strategies, internal branding management, brand performance and perceived brand orientation) and discussed.Research limitations/implicationsAs the main theoretical contribution, the results showed a focus on research in five areas: the development of the brand orientation concept and proposed extensions; hybrid strategies; the relations between brand orientation, internal branding and brand management; the relation between brand or...

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Home > Books > Brand Management

Perspective Chapter: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda on Standardization versus Adaptation of Brand Elements in International Markets

Submitted: 08 February 2022 Reviewed: 22 February 2022 Published: 05 May 2022

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.103866

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This paper aims to systematically review and critically examine marketing research on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements and explain its importance, given its increasing influence internationally. 46 journal articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science databases examine with focus on research theme with broad scope approach, one of the types of literature review. The findings show that there is a live stream about the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in the marketing discipline, and contextual, methodological, and thematic diversity. Moreover, the findings of the review also highlight various literature trends and gaps. Results of the current review offer deep insights and create an ambitious research agenda that raises exciting new research questions for researchers. Besides results help to encourage the development of future theories on international branding.

• brand elements
• standardization
• systematic review

Author Information

Tamer baran *.

• Pamukkale University, Denizli, Turkey

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

In the last few decades, a significant and major change in terms of globalization has taken place as a result of the liberalization of countries’ trade policies, the realization of regional economic integrations, faster flow of goods compared to previous periods, and rapid development in logistics and information and communication technologies [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Companies with different national origins from almost every sector have caused an increase in the intensity of competition in the globalizing world [ 4 ]. Consequently, the problems related to the design of robust branding strategies to compete effectively and efficiently in the international market have been the focus of relevant research. Perhaps the most important reason for this is that the brand is the most valuable asset of a company [ 5 ]. For example, BrandZ’s report states Amazon’s brand value is over $415 billion, Apple’s brand value is over $350 billion, and Microsoft and Google’s brand value are over $320 billion. Moreover, many brands on the list increase their brand values year by year.

The value of a brand is closely linked to the effective use of brand elements. This is because, through brand elements, companies can create a quality perception, associate their brands with some positive features, and reach a high level of brand recognition [ 5 ]. In addition, the brand can have a respectable identity, personality, and a high level of awareness and recognition in the consumers’ perspectives [ 6 ]. These features will, undoubtedly, give the brand a competitive advantage in the market.

At this point, one of the important issues about branding that international companies need to address is the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in the target market [ 7 ]. In international branding, the decision regarding the aforementioned strategies is directly related to the target consumer audience, legal environment, the transferability of the company’s marketing skills, and the characteristics of the product [ 6 ]. Therefore, international branding is more complicated than local branding [ 8 ], and, for this reason, it is not possible to state that standardization/adaptation strategies should be preferred over the other.

Due to the importance of the topic, it has become inevitable for both academics and decision-makers to seek an answer to the question of how to manage brand elements successfully in international markets [ 7 ]. In the literature reviews on the topic, some authors [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] discussed the topic within the framework of international marketing. On the other hand, in the limited number of systematic literature reviews on branding, some authors [ 12 , 13 ] studied brand orientation, while others [ 14 , 15 ] focused on brand loyalty. However, studies failed to attach enough importance to the standardization/adaptation of brand elements. Therefore, the lack of studies on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements draws attention in the literature.

In this context, the present review aimed to consolidate extant research, establish links with different literature studies, identify gaps between and within research streams, and bring together all the components as much as possible. To this end, I conducted a systematic review of research on brand elements to make suggestions for further research. At this point, I specifically aimed to highlight, clarify, rationalize, and interpret the similarities and differences among studies in terms of content and methodology and draw conclusions about future research directions. Since only a limited number of systematic reviews have been conducted on the topic, the current review is expected to make a meaningful and profound contribution to the field.

The paper is organized as follows: the following section provides an overview of the employed review protocols and the rationale behind them. Next, the results of the systematic review are presented. Then, both a descriptive and thematic analysis of the extant literature and show the breadth and depth of the available knowledge are provided. The review is ended with a discussion of the main gaps in the literature that were detected and suggestions for future research directions.

2. Methodology

Despite numerous studies on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in international marketing literature conducted over the last few decades, no effort has been made to systematically review these studies findings. The present review aimed to examine the studies on the topic comprehensively and systematically reveal the research evidence. In their comprehensive study, [ 16 ] categorized review types according to their characteristics and obtained 14 review types, including the systematic literature review (SLR). Accordingly, a SLR is the process of systematically searching for, evaluating, and synthesizing research evidence, often adhering to guidelines on the conduct of a review. In this type of review, the subject is handled carefully and clearly [ 17 , 18 ].

SLRs have some important advantages over other review types. An SLR improves the quality of the review process and outputs [ 19 ], reduces the level of error in the research and the bias of the researcher [ 20 , 21 ], increases the validity of the process since the review process is carried out without leaving any details open to interpretation [ 22 ], allows the researcher to focus on a specific research area [ 23 ], and finally, provides information to the stakeholders in a comprehensive framework [ 20 , 24 ]. Due to these superior characteristics, studies employing the SLR method in various research areas such as blockchain technology [ 25 ], preventive medicine [ 26 ], and sustainability [ 27 ] have been published in a fairly high number of prestigious journals. For these reasons, the current review, aiming at a comprehensive, valuable, and advanced review of the standardization/adaptation of brand elements, employed the SLR method.

Several approaches have been put forward regarding the stages of a SLR. Tranfield et al. [ 21 ] suggested that the SLR process basically consists of three stages: planning the review, conducting a review, and reporting and dissemination. The authors also proposed a total of 10 steps under these three main stages. On the other hand, Khan et al. [ 28 ] discussed the stages of a systematic review under five headings: framing questions for a review, identifying relevant work, assessing the quality of studies, summarizing the evidence, and interpreting the findings. Magarey [ 29 ] grouped the stages of an SLR under six headings: formulation of a research question, literature search, selection of studies to be included in the review, data extraction, analysis and synthesis, and reporting the results. Vrontis and Christofi [ 18 ] employed a 7-step process consisting of the following steps: question formulation, inclusion criteria, search strategy, exclusion criteria, selecting relevant studies, further search processes, and extraction, analysis, and synthesis. One of the most comprehensive definitions of the process belongs to Okoli and Schabram [ 30 ]. The authors defined an 8-step guide to conducting an SLR: defining the purpose of the literature review, protocol, and training, searching for the literature, practical screen (inclusion criteria), quality appraisal (exclusion criteria), data extraction, synthesis of studies, writing the review. This review employed the 7-step process proposed by Vrontis and Christofi [ 18 ].

3. SLR process

3.1 question formulation.

Although some authors [ 18 , 28 , 30 ] define this stage with different words, the point on which all authors agree is that the most important step for an SLR, as in all research in the field of marketing [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ], is the formulation of the research question. Formulating the research question clearly plays a key role in the success of the research as it shapes the future stages of the research. While formulating the research question of the present review, I focused on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements. Following Vrontis and Christofi [ 18 ] and collaborating with marketing researchers who have studied on the topic, I formulated the research question: What is the main focus of studies on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in the marketing literature?

3.2 Inclusion criteria

Vrontis and Christofi, Dada and Wang and Chung [ 18 , 20 , 22 ] applied three inclusion criteria to decide which studies to include in their systematic review: (1) to determine the search boundaries; (2) to identify the search strings, and; (3) to specify the search timeframe. In this review, I employed the first two criteria: to determine the search boundaries and to identify the search strings. Considering the previous SLRs, some authors [ 35 , 36 ] conducted the SLR process on a journal basis whereas many other authors [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ] conducted their review on a database basis. Since the database-based process is preferred more in SLRs, the present review followed this process. In the studies mentioned above, the researchers focused on EBSCOhost Business Source Complete, ScienceDirect, and Emerald databases but overlooked Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. For this reason, WoS and Scopus databases formed the boundaries of this review. Furthermore, following the suggestions put forward by Kauppi et al. [ 23 ], I created a comprehensive list of search terms related to the research topic. My purpose here was to minimize the possibility of excluding search terms related to the research topic. As stated above, I did not specify a specific search timeframe; therefore, I included all the studies on the topic, regardless of when they were conducted. I did this to eliminate the possibility of excluding important studies on the topic.

3.3 Search strategy

Khan et al. [ 28 ] state that researchers can use at this stage many criteria as research criteria such as title, abstract, full text, keywords, language, category, words other than keywords, etc. At this point, the researcher has the freedom to choose data sources and selection criteria [ 35 ]. In this context, the present review used all of the criteria mentioned above, and the first review was conducted to cover all relevant studies. I identified the search terms following [ 7 ]. These authors found that standardization and adaptation are stated with different terms in marketing terminology. Accordingly, some authors [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ] used the term “standardization,” while others (e.g., [ 1 , 2 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]) used the term “globalization.” Also, some authors (e.g., [ 1 , 3 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ]) used the term “adaptation,” while some others (e.g., [ 2 , 3 , 50 , 51 ]) used the term “customization.” Apart from these, some authors [ 48 , 52 , 53 , 54 ] preferred the British spelling of “standardization” (“standardization”), “globalization” (“globalization”) [ 55 , 56 ] and “customization” (“customization”) [ 52 , 57 , 58 ]. In this review, I used all the terms mentioned above in the database search to minimize the possibility of missing the studies on the topic.

On the other hand, the brand elements forming this review’s topic were collected in three groups name, symbol, and slogan by Aaker [ 5 ] and Kotler and Keller [ 59 ]. Moreover, the symbol element consists of the components of logos, packaging, human, scenes, and cartoon characters. On the other hand, regarded name, slogan, symbol, logo, packaging, and character as well as URL and jingle as brand elements [ 6 ]. Kapferer [ 60 ] defined brand elements as name, slogan, symbol, logo, packaging, brand character, and color and sound. In the present review, as brand elements, I used the keywords of name, slogan, symbol, logo, packaging, and character, on which the above-mentioned authors agree, to identify the studies on brand elements. Thus, not only did I cover the studies on the topic at a maximum level but also determined the boundaries of the review.

Accordingly, I formulated the following search formula: (brand) AND (name OR slogan OR symbol OR logo OR packag* OR character) AND (standardi* OR globali* OR adaptation OR customi*). My first search with the inclusion criteria yielded a total of 1571 (Scopus, 577; WoS, 494) articles in databases.

3.4 Exclusion criteria

The sample of related studies that emerged after the first search was in need of a new appraisal to further clarify the most relevant studies. In this context, I followed the suggestions of various authors. First of all, although the field of the current review was business, the first sample contained articles from many different fields (e.g., environmental science, dermatology, pharmaceutical science, civil engineering, etc.). For this reason, following Khan et al.’s [ 28 ] suggestions, I selected the category of business. Next, following advanced SLR studies [ 35 , 61 ], I selected full-text articles. Thus, I was able to exclude non-academic studies such as reviews, conference papers, book chapters, and books. As a result of the second exclusion, I noticed that there were articles in languages other than English (e.g., French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.). Therefore, in the third exclusion step, I excluded non-English articles. I did this for two reasons: Firstly, I do not know the mentioned languages, and secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to focus on a common scientific knowledge base represented by the majority of prestigious scientific journals [ 23 ]. Thus, I accessed a total of 208 articles (Scopus, 131; WoS, 77), including duplicate records. As a result of the detection and removal of duplicate records, the two databases yielded a total of 173 articles on my research topic.

3.5 Identifying relevant studies

I completed carefully the inclusion and exclusion processes described above. Next, adhering to the processes of Nolan and Garawan [ 62 ], I first examined the titles and then the abstracts of the new list that emerged. At this point, I preferred not to comply with very strict rules. In other words, without stipulating a condition such that the titles of the studies fully or partially fit the research question of this review, I tried to identify the studies that would help explain the topic as much as possible. I excluded the studies that were not related to both standardization/adaptation and brand elements. By doing so, I aimed to include articles that would contribute to developing an insight into the standardization/adaptation of brand elements, even though they focused on other topics. Subsequently, I started the full-text review process. The full-text review process yielded a total of 37 articles that I deemed appropriate to be included in the review.

After this stage, I carefully examined all selected studies reference lists and tried to identify major relevant studies that I had failed to include in the review. Cross-referencing helped me to retrieve nine more articles, thus increasing the number of studies to 46. Figure 1 demonstrates the research process steps of the current review detailed above.

Research process.

The remainder of the paper focuses on mapping the field by making use of the descriptive and thematic analysis obtained from the final list resulting from the systematic review and reporting the findings in an integrative framework. In the analysis stage, Gaur and Kumar’s [ 35 ] “focus on research theme with broad scope” approach, one of the types of literature review, was used. Accordingly, the findings of selected articles reviewed by two academics with Ph.D. degrees in marketing were presented.

4. Findings

4.1 descriptive findings.

The analysis of the existing literature on standardization/adaptation in international branding contributed to the determination of the focus of the relevant studies and the gaps in the literature and the development of suggestions for future research directions. This section reports the publication outlets from which the data were collected, fields of research, year of publication, the type of articles published, author’s characteristics, and industrial analysis of the reviewed papers to provide a preliminary map of the existing literature and identify possible gaps that need further research.

4.2 Studies by year of publication, type of paper, and methods

According to Table 1 , which outlines the studies by year of publications, there has been an increase in studies on standardization/adaptation in branding since the 2000s. Studies on the topic reached a peak in 2015 (n = 4). Although the topic started to be studied by academics more than 30 years ago, the number of studies has been increasing recently. The number of studies on standardization/adaptation in branding has increased significantly in the second decade compared to the previous decade (30% increase compared to the first decade). Moreover, approximately 30% of the studies have been carried out in the last five years. This indicates that researchers interest in the topic has increased over the years, and the research area has evolved. The review yielded that the listed articles were published in a wide range of journals. The studies were mainly (46%, n = 21) published in marketing journals, followed by brand-related journals (20%, n = 9). Seven studies (15%) were published in journals on general business, and others (20%, n = 9) were published in journals focused on different fields. The journal with the highest number of published studies on the topic (13%, n = 6) was the Journal of Product and Brand Management, followed by International Marketing Review (11%, n = 5).

Distrbution of studies by years and journals. 1

 Till the end of June 2020.

Notes: JPBM, Journal of Product and Brand Management; JTIB, Journal of Teaching in International Business; IJEBR, International Journal of E-Business Research; IMR, International Marketing Review; JBM, Journal of Brand Management; JoBM, Journal of Bank Marketing; JIBS, Journal of International Business Studies; EJM, European Journal of Marketing; JM, Journal of Marketing; IBR, International Business Review; JAPC, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication; JBR, Journal of Business Research; JIntM, Journal of Interactive Marketing; MSQ, Managing Service Quality; SB, Service Business; GBER, Global Business and Economic Review; IJA, International Journal of Advertising; SS, Social Semiotics JIM, Journal of International Marketing; MRR, Management Research Review; MS, Marketing Science; IJRM, International Journal of Research in Marketing; BJM, Baltic Journal of Management; JBIM, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing; IJM, International Journal of Marketing; JMC, Journal of Marketing Communications; SD, Strategic Direction; JCM, Journal of Consumer Marketing.

4.3 Studies by the number of authors and authorship origin

As can be inferred from Table 2 indicating the number of authors of the studies, the studies with a single author constituted the least number (15%, n = 7). In other words, most of the studies were conducted by more than one author, and the highest number (33%, n = 15) belonged to the studies conducted by three authors. Moreover, the majority of the studies (63%, n = 29) were conducted by researchers from the same country. The lowest rate (9%, n = 4) among the studies that included information about the authorship origin belonged to those published by academics from three different countries.

Authors’ information of studies.

As regards the authorship origin, authors from the USA were in the first place (n = 19), followed by Australia (n = 14), Spain (n = 8), and China (n = 7) ( Figure 2 ). In addition, considering the regions from which author contributions come from, the majority of authors (46%, n = 47) come from Europe, followed by America (21%, n = 22), Asia (18%, n = 19), and Australia (15%, n = 15).

Origins of studies’ authors.

4.4 Studies by geographic coverage

According to Figure 3 , where the studies are presented in terms of geographic coverage, most of the studies (30%, n = 14) are based in more than one country. As can be inferred from the figure, the geographic coverage is narrow in studies based in a single country. Most of the studies based in a single country were conducted in China (24%, n = 11), followed by the USA (4%) and Pakistan (4%), with two studies each. Studies based in a single country focused on five countries (11%), both from Europe and Asia each. On the other hand, Australia was examined in only one study (2%), while the African continent was completely ignored. In fact, none of the studies focused on Central Asia and the Middle East. Finally, eight studies (17%) included no information about their geographic coverage.

Geographical coverage of the studies.

4.5 Thematic analysis

As part of SLR, thematic analysis develops an integrative perspective on the focus of relevant research [ 17 ]. In this context, in this review, following Aakers approach [ 5 ], three themes, namely name, symbol, and slogan, related to international branding, were determined. Since some authors [ 5 , 60 ] divide the symbol into three sub-themes, namely, logo, packaging, and character, this review also considered these three sub-themes, thus increasing the number of elements to five. Appendix A presents the studied articles according to their themes. As can be inferred from the table, a majority of the studies focus on the brand name, followed by studies on multiple brand elements. On the other hand, none of the reviewed studies focuses solely on the slogan.

Appendix B describes the sectors on which the studies are focused. 30% of the reviewed articles contain no information regarding the studied sector due to either their nature (conceptual study, literature review, etc.) or failure to specify the topic. On the other hand, those that mention the studied sector mostly focus on more than one sector (28%, n = 13). Besides, those that focused on a single sector were mostly (11%, n = 5) conducted in the context of consumer goods.

Following this, the review on each of these themes revolved around the main research focus of the reviewed articles. Findings of the current study show that studies on the topic mostly deal with consumer behavior towards different brand elements. For example, some studies [ 63 , 64 , 65 ] aimed to determine the effect of the brand name on consumer behaviors, while others [ 66 ] sought to determine the effect of the packaging on consumer behaviors. On the other hand, the most studied topic is standardization and adaptation in branding. At this point, some researchers [ 67 ] focused solely on standardization in branding, while others [ 68 , 69 ] focused solely on adaptation. In addition, some of the studies on the field discussed the topic more specifically and dealt only with the standardization or adaptation of brand elements. For example, Alashban et al. [ 70 ] and Okazaki [ 71 ] examined the standardization of the brand name, whereas Barnes et al. [ 72 ], Usunier, and Shaner [ 73 ] studied the adaptation of the brand name. Khan et al. [ 74 ] investigated the standardization of symbols, another brand element, while Khan et al. [ 75 ] studied the adaptation of the packaging. The analysis also yielded cross-cultural studies, one of the important topics of international branding. In this context, some authors [ 76 , 77 ] dealt with the topic from a broader perspective, while others [ 78 ] investigated it in the context of packaging, which is one of the brand elements. Furthermore, some studies [ 79 , 80 ] tried to reveal the relationship between brand elements and the country of origin in the context of consumer behaviors.

On the other hand, it was found that some issues related to the topic were not addressed in the reviewed studies. For example, the effects of positioning in international branding [ 81 ], and branding on firm performance [ 82 ] were each the topic of only one study.

4.6 Gaps for future research directions

This section is devoted to the gaps thought to guide future research (in terms of theory, methodology, authorship, and scope) in hopes of helping future studies. I believe that these research gaps will provide fruitful research avenues for further research.

4.6.1 Theory

As a result of the present review, several issues emerged in terms of theory. First of all, though some authors have contributed to the field using several theories (brand name standardization/adaptation, consumer behavior, etc.), some issues related to international branding still lack a clear theoretical basis. Our finding is similar to and supports previous studies in other fields (e.g., [ 83 , 84 , 85 ]). Therefore, I suggest that academics studying the standardization/adaptation of brand elements should focus on studies that are blended with other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, etc., where the ideas and theories in these disciplines are used more, and they should try to present a wider perspective.

Second, the reviewed studies give little coverage to Aaker’s [ 5 ] brand equity and Keller’s [ 6 ] brand elements, which are generally accepted in the literature. Brand loyalty and perceived quality concepts were encountered in a few studies [ 5 ], whereas brand elements were almost never encountered [ 6 ]. Therefore, it is recommended that future research focus on brand association, brand awareness, brand identity, brand personality, brand recognition, and brand recall.

Third, when the suggestions for future research were evaluated in terms of literature themes, it was found that the studies focused on a certain theme, as was seen in previous reviews [ 83 ]. A significant portion of the studies [ 63 , 64 , 65 , 68 , 69 , 72 , 86 ] was found to focus on the brand name while those on symbols were found to focus on the packaging [ 74 , 78 , 87 ]. Our findings reveal that the literature still needs studies on slogans, logos, and characters. Therefore, I anticipate that studies on standardization/adaptation related to these elements, which will be supported by different theories, will attract significant attention.

Additionally, our findings showed that the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in international marketing concentrates especially on China in terms of cultural theory but fails to notice different cultures. For this reason, it is recommended that scholars who are interested in the topic carry out studies to reveal the perspectives of consumers from different cultures.

4.6.2 Methodology

The results of the current review highlight the obvious insufficiency of qualitative research on the topic. It is probable that the main reason for this insufficiency is the difficulties in analyzing the data obtained through the qualitative research design. However, information obtained through various approaches is needed to reach more in-depth information about standardization/adaptation in branding, which is predicted to make important contributions to the field. Identifying the antecedents and successors of the complex structures of the topic and adding them to the existing knowledge base and valid research methods require significantly more qualitative inquiry.

4.6.3 Authorship

The findings of the review may lead to the interpretation that South American and African authors have made no contributions to the field. It is obvious that studies to be carried out by South American and African writers in their own regions or in other regions with international cooperation will enrich the field.

As stated above, researchers from the USA and Australia make up more than half of the total authors. Therefore, I recommend that researchers from other countries conduct research and enrich the field. Moreover, it was found that co-authorship was not at a sufficient level in the reviewed studies, and most of the studies were carried out by academics from the same country. For this reason, this finding presented an important opportunity for international authors on the topic. In this context, I believe that studies to be carried out by researchers from different cultures and different continents or regions will make significant contributions to the field.

4.6.4 Context

Industrial focus: First, most of the reviewed articles clearly support the literature on the manufacturing industry. Therefore, there is an obvious need for studies that can reveal more findings related to the service sector to generalize the results of the reviewed studies. Second, although there has been an increase in the number of studies focusing on more than one sector, studies comparing different sectors will always maintain their importance in every period. This is because cross-sectorial differences are subject to inconsistencies between the findings of studied sectors and those of other sectors [ 17 ]. Therefore, conducting research to compare sectors that have not been studied in the literature is an important opportunity that the present review offers researchers. Third, the studies on the topic conducted so far have focused on consumer goods. Hence, examining a wide variety of industry contexts and a better understanding of the relationships between models through analysis at the sectoral level are expected to enrich the literature.

Geographical scope : Undoubtedly, one of the important factors that make a theory robust is the test of applicability in the context of different geography and development levels and the comparability of findings. In this direction, developing economies cover a wide variety of countries in terms of both their geographical locations and development levels. Considering our findings in this context, the researchers, who planned to address the standardization/adaptation of brand elements at a single country level, focused on the USA and Australia but overlooked developing economies such as Brazil, Russia, and India, which are defined as BRIC. It was seen that the country among the developing economies that received the most focus was China. Similarly, regarding MINT countries, no studies focused on Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria, whereas only one study was conducted in the context of Turkey. The findings of the present review revealed that future research to be conducted in these countries would fill an important gap in the literature.

One of the most important points in international branding is cultural influences and consumers reactions in different cultures to the standardization/adaptation of brand elements [ 76 , 77 ]. When our findings are considered from a cultural perspective, China attracts the most attention in the studies. This is acceptable from a cultural perspective as China hosts one of the worlds most interesting cultures. However, apart from China, it was seen that India, the Middle East, the African continent, and Northern European countries such as Sweden and Norway failed to attract enough attention. Although the highest number of studies in the geographic context belongs to the studies comparing countries, the fact that these studies did not focus sufficiently on the above-mentioned cultures stands as an important opportunity for researchers who want to enrich the literature. Doing so will also help companies find an answer to the question of what kind of strategy they should implement in different cultures.

Based on the above comments, an important gap that emerged as a result of the review is the tendency to focus on relatively few regions and countries. Over-focusing on contexts such as China, the US, and Europe can lead to false generalizations about other contexts, about which I still know very little. The extant literature obviously reveals invaluable information on the topic. However, studies in geographic areas such as Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, and even Japan, which have been researched in only a small number of studies, are likely to reveal new theoretical developments and novel insights into the topic. Moreover, the field deserves to be enriched in the context of these regions. In this context, to expand the geographic coverage of the field, I recommend reaching out to academics or industry stakeholders from countries where research is planned, who are likely to have a deeper contextual understanding and can assist scholars in accessing data that is often difficult to retrieve in such countries.

5. Conclusion and limitations

5.1 theoretical contributions.

First of all, the current review is the first systematic review of studies on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements in the field of international marketing. In this regard, the review has the potential to substantially enrich and expand the literature on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements. Further, systematic approaches to the topic are still very limited. As emphasized by some scholars (e.g. [ 88 ]), systematic reviews contribute to resolving definitional ambiguities and outlining the scope of the topic, offer an integrated, synthesized overview of the current state of knowledge, identify inconsistencies in prior findings and potential explanations, appraise extant methodological approaches with unique insights, present conceptual frameworks related to previous research, and describe existing gaps and future research directions. Similarly, this review mapped research on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements, structured results from the extant literature, and provided unique and general insights that allowed for an easier and better understanding of the relevant literature.

Secondly, the present systematic review made a substantial contribution to the identification of theoretical synthesis and development opportunities on the topic. Moreover, given that the strength of using the systematic review approach is to provide a solid evidence basis for future research directions, I hope that researchers interested in this topic will use this work as a basis for further expanding the research on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements.

Thirdly, the results of this review highlight a number of knowledge gaps to be filled by future research regarding the following purposes: developing a stronger theoretical basis on the topic, achieving a better contextual positioning, and adapting methodologies that are more exploratory in nature. These arguments can lay the groundwork for the emergence of research that can make significant contributions to the development of the field because the gaps highlighted in the literature reveal the issues overlooked in previous studies on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements. Such an analysis can at least provide a more holistic understanding of the nature of research on standardization/adaptation of brand elements and encourage conceptual expansion and empirical research in a field of review that may have more theoretical and practical relevance than ever before.

5.2 Contributions to practice

Besides significant insights on theory, our findings also make important contributions to practice. Most importantly, our review contributes to determining appropriate strategies in the context of the standardization/adaptation process of brand elements in geographical, cultural, etc. For example, should decision-makers prefer standardization by using the brand image in different cultures, such as the Far East, Middle East, Europe, USA, etc., or should they prefer adaptation by considering differences in different geographies? Moreover, what strategies to be used for consumers of countries with different levels of development will provide more benefits to the company? Decision-makers can determine the best strategy by considering the findings of this review.

In conclusion, I hope that, with this review, researchers can be encouraged working and planning to work in the field to appreciate the rich data of previous research. Through the relevant structures that I uncovered using the process in the review, I think it would be beneficial for new ideas to benefit from the present review.

5.3 Limitations

As with all studies, this review has a number of limitations, which should be considered when examining the findings. First of all, since the focus of this review was previous research on the standardization/adaptation of brand elements, I did not provide detailed recommendations linking the elements, which would be the logical next step. Second, this review covered studies indexed in certain databases: Web of Science and Scopus databases, which seemed to have been overlooked in previous reviews, were reviewed. Although I tried to eliminate this problem as much as possible by thoroughly examining the reference lists in the articles included in the review, I may have still failed to observe studies indexed in databases outside of these databases. Third, I used certain keywords to identify the studies to be examined. Doing so may have potentially led us to miss some relevant research. Nevertheless, I believe that our rigorous systematic review process reduces the likelihood that the studies that were unintentionally left out contain information that would critically change our results. Finally, I carried out the analysis process only thematically, in line with Gaur and Kumar’s [ 35 ] classification. Moreover, our approach was carried out in light of one of the thematic classifications. This, in turn, inevitably resulted in the failure to evaluate some of the information in the studied studies.

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