From brand control to brand co-creation: paradigm shift and emerging new brand perspectives

special track strategic communication in collaboration with EUPRERA

From brand control to brand co-creation: paradigm shift and emerging new brand perspectives

Alfonso Siano, Agostino Vollero, Alessandra Bertolini

Brandsphere (de Chernatony, 2006) has radically changed in recent years, especially since the rise of the Internet and related interactive technologies (Christodoulides, 2009). New technologies led to a deeper involvement of consumers in the processes of collaborative knowledge and innovation (Nambisan 2002; Sawhney et al., 2005; Verona and Prandelli, 2006), in the processes of design and production of goods and in the evolution of brand values (Vargo and Lusch, 2016). Consumer empowerment (Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Denegri-Knott et al., 2006; Magee and Galinsky, 2008) expanded by the emergence of powerful digital tools and related user-generated content (Schultz et al., 2012; Østergaard et al., 2015), makes ineffective traditional command-and-control approaches to brand management and traditional hierarchical communication models. The current processes undermine the traditional branding as a process strictly controlled by companies (Keller, 1993; Gensler et al., 2013), thus favoring an open and collaborative approach of branding (Merz et al., 2009; Muniz and Schau, 2011; Ind et al., 2013). On these premises, brand strategies need to be substantially rethought, undergoing significant transformations and inevitable adaptations to these new participative and interactive environments.

#brand co-creation #brand control #brand hijacking #brand open source #negotiated brand #paradigm shift