Towards modeling the retailer as a brand: A social construction of the grocery store from the customer standpoint

Citation

El-Amir A & Burt S (2010) Towards modeling the retailer as a brand: A social construction of the grocery store from the customer standpoint. Journal of Brand Management, 17 (6), pp. 429-445. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2009.36

Abstract
As a highly customer-sensitive business, retailing is one of the most socially active industries. Nevertheless, when addressing retailers as brands, the retailing literature has failed to account for their unique social orientation, exposing a gap in the literature. This paper utilizes the sociological view of brands to socially construct a conceptual retail brand model from the customer standpoint. An ethnographic study of grocery retailing revealed that the store has, metaphorically, a tree-shaped culture, which can organically model the interplay between building the retailer brand as a culture and the phases constituting the social-self concept.

Keywords
retailing; branding; sociology; social construction; conceptual modeling; Retail trade; Sociology research

Journal
Journal of Brand Management: Volume 17, Issue 6