Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
Brand equity (BE) is an important asset for most companies (Srivastava et al., 1998; Rust et al., 2004; Slotegraaf and Pauwels, 2006; Ishaq and Di Maria, 2020). Although there is a broad consensus among academics and marketing practitioners about the importance of brands (e.g. Baldauf et al., 2003; Bendixen et al., 2004; Datta et al., 2017; Keller and Lehmann, 2006; Oliveira et al., 2015; Ishaq and Di Maria, 2020) and a substantial number of BE studies and models (Leone et al., 2006), there are still gaps in BE literature (Chatzipanagiotou et al., 2019).
The definition and the meaning of BE have various perspectives and different purposes (Keller, 1993; Wood, 2000; Chi et al., 2020), but no common viewpoint has emerged (Chatzipanagiotou et al., 2019; Christodoulides and De Chernatony, 2010; Datta et al., 2017; Chi et al., 2020; Raggio and Leone, 2007). There is no complete consensus about BE terminology (Oliveira et al., 2015; Veloutsou et al., 2020) and little agreement on the dimensions that capture BE (Veloutsou et al., 2013, 2020).
Consequently, most BE models lack a rigorous theoretical base (Raggio and Leone, 2007) and fail “to provide a more holistic view of the CBBE formation process” (Chatzipanagiotou et al., 2019, p. 328-329). Besides scholars, agencies report different BE valuations for major firms worldwide (Ding et al., 2020). Basically, “there is no universally accepted way to measure BE” (MASB, 2018).
Based on the preceding discussion, we review prior research about BE to offer some contributions. First, we reflect the various perspectives on this construct, by addressing questions of terminology, components and the existing measurement approaches to determine the most established conceptual foundations for the development of holistic BE models. Moreover, we propose a BE chain from a holistic perspective that incorporates Consumer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) and Firm or Financial-Based Brand Equity (FBBE) measurement approaches.
Although Keller and Lehmann (2006) have already proposed a brand value chain (BEC), BE literature is still fragmented and inconclusive about the theoretical foundations, sources and measures (Chatzipanagiotou et al., 2019; Christodoulides and De Chernatony, 2010; Davcik et al., 2015). Hence, more theoretical studies and systematic literature reviews are needed...