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Martha McEnally is a professor at the Joseph M. Bryan School of Business and Economics, 366 Bryan Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402-6165, USA, Tel: Int. code +1-336-334-3429, Fax: Int. Code +1-336-334-4141, e-mail: [email protected]. Prof. L. de Chernatony is the Benficial Bank Professor of Brand Marketing, The Open University Business School, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, England, Tel: Int code +44-1908-654739, Fax: Int code +44-1908-655889, e-mail: [email protected].
Creating, developing, implementing and maintaining successful brands is frequently at the heart of marketing strategy. Successful branding requires a strategic perspective (de Chernatony 1998) whereby strong brand concepts are presented and communicated to well targeted segments resulting in favorable brand images which reflect the brand's identity (Gardner and Levy 1955, Reynolds and Gutman 1984, Kapferer 1997).
One could look at the processes involved in successful branding from two perspectives-- those under the control of management (e.g. developing a vision and brand values) and those controlled by consumers (e.g. forming associations, images and perceiving usage situations). There is a sequential process interlinking brand managers with brand consumers in so far as activities and information from the corporate side feeds into the consumer market, initiating a decoding, interpretive and responding process. This is funneled back into the corporation, ready for studying and fine tuning of brand strategy. This process has been modeled by de Chernatony and Dall'Olmo Riley (1997) and is shown in Appendix A. Both processes must synchronize for the corporation to achieve the goals it sets for its brands. While each of these processes have been researched and written about, the relationship between them has seldom been explicitly discussed in the literature. It is crucial that academics and practitioners have a good understanding of the relationship between these two processes to successfully meet the challenges of the increasingly hostile brand environment.
One aim of this review is to examine the literature about brand concepts and brand images in order to explicate the relationship of brand image formation in consumers' minds with the brand concept developments made explicit in the brand identity plans of management. Successful brand management requires both an understanding of how the brand strategy is implemented and communicated to consumers and how consumers respond to this. Evidence...