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Introduction
Research on brands and branding has expanded to include cultural, sociological and theoretical analysis that both expands and elaborates upon corporate, economic and managerial approaches. Brand researchers have argued that understanding brands and branding involves an awareness of management contexts as well as cultural processes, which include historical context, ethical concerns, consumer response and regulation (Fournier, 1998; Holt, 2002; Kornberger, 2010; Schroeder, 2005). Within this approach, brands have representational and rhetorical power both as valuable cultural artefacts and as engaging and deceptive bearers of meaning and value, reflecting broad societal, cultural and ideological codes (Schroeder, 2009). Thus, the cultural landscape has been profoundly transformed into a commercial brandscape in which the production and consumption of images rivals the production and consumption of products (Schroeder and Salzer-Mörling, 2006). This move in brands and branding research and thinking can be divided into four perspectives: corporate perspectives, consumer perspectives, cultural perspectives and critical perspectives (Schroeder, 2015a). This typology builds upon prior brand typologies (Aaker, 1991; Balmer, 2012; Balmer and Gray, 2003; Kornberger, 2010) that place brands in wider networks of stakeholders, and note the ethical and societal aspects of brands (Balmer, 1998, 2011; Balmer and Greyser, 2003; Borgerson et al., 2009; Jeanes, 2013).
These four perspectives demonstrate the growing interdisciplinary interest in brands and branding, and how brand research sheds light on basic issues of management, marketing and contemporary culture. From a broad viewpoint, brands and branding are not just corporate tools or marketing concepts; they represent complex ideological, managerial and scholarly objects (Schroeder, 2015a). Brands are not only mediators of cultural meaning; they themselves have become ideological referents that shape cultural rituals, economic activities and social norms. The four brand perspectives acknowledge a shift from a focus on the brand-consumer dyad towards broader sociocultural concerns.
While the corporate marketing and corporate brand management literature have usefully mapped brands from a corporate perspective, this commentary builds upon the multidisciplinarity of foundational conceptions of corporate branding (Balmer, 1995) and expands the potential of brand research by reviewing the growing interdisciplinary research on brands and corporate marketing. These alternative perspectives have made useful additions to the understanding of brands from multiple angles. This article provides a brief overview of the four perspectives on brands and provides visually driven...