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1. Introduction
[…] today’s problem [is] most, if not almost all, definitions that we come across aren’t definitions, but rather descriptions – most often they describe the effect brands have and call that brand, or something similar. Almost none of the practitioners and academics have an actual definition of brand to start with.
Johannes Christensen, Director Strategy, Interbrand, email correspondence, 2018.
We begin with this quotation because it shows that the problems of brand definition have practical consequences and reminds us that academic marketing has a constituency of practitioners to serve (Reibstein et al., 2009). Brand theorists have expressed concern that the term “brand” has become ambiguous and unclear in its definition, leading to a situation wherein empirical results cannot be compared due to the inability to identify which definition each author is using when conducting their research (Gabbott and Jevons, 2009; Gaski, 2020). In this status quo, different theorists develop their own understandings of the brand concept (Schultz and Schultz, 2004) and finding an agreed upon definition for the term “brand” is considered an impossible task (Brodie and de Chernatony, 2009). Some have argued that this is merely a sign of a dynamic area of study (Patsiaouras, 2019). However, given the importance of conceptual definitions (Alexander, 1937; Bartels, 1951; MacKenzie, 2003; Summers, 2001), we argue that this status quo must be questioned.
There have been past reviews and syntheses aimed at resolving the problem of brand definition (de Chernatony and Dall’Olmo Riley, 1998; Wood, 2000; Kapferer, 1992; Conejo and Wooliscroft, 2014), but given that the same definitional problems persist to this date (Gaski, 2020), one can argue that these works did not succeed in coming to an agreed upon definition. This paper presents empirical research to demonstrate the extent of the problem of brand definition by exploring the number of unique brand-related concepts, both in current usage and over time. The results present an alarming picture, but one that can be understood by tracking the history of the problem back to the adoption of what we call the “component model” of the brand concept. In the component model (CM), the brand concept is defined by its constituent components (i.e. brand-related concepts), which are, in turn, also defined by their constituent components, etc. Issues...