A Critical Account of the Process of Branding: towards a synthesis

Citation

El-Amir A & Burt S (2010) A Critical Account of the Process of Branding: towards a synthesis. Marketing Review, 10 (1), pp. 69-86. http://www.westburnpublishers.com/journals/the-marketing-review.aspx; https://doi.org/10.1362/146934710X488951

Abstract
Echoing the shift in orientation from transactional to relationship marketing (Gronroos 2006), the debate over the process of branding has moved from a managerially closed to a socially open orientation (Pitt, Watson, Berthon, Wynn and Zinkhan 2006) creating a multidisciplinary intellectual puzzle. In light of the ‘limit attitude’ approach in critical marketing (Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008), this paper attempts to make sense of this puzzle through a critical examination of the evolution in branding thought. The paper concludes by developing a synthesis, through a constructed tree metaphor, which conceptualizes the multidisciplinary process of branding within a single organic (holistic and integrated) framework.

Keywords
branding; critical marketing; conceptual frameworks; constructed metaphors; Branding (Marketing); Social marketing

Journal
Marketing Review: Volume 10, Issue 1