Strategic brand management: Archetypes for managing brands through paradoxes

Abstract

Although brands are acknowledged as significant assets in a firm's value creation and differentiation process, branding literature often describes opposing perspectives and contradictory demands. This article develops a framework of three strategic brand management archetypes that provide new insights into the complexity and often paradoxical ambiguity of branding. By combining an empirical qualitative study with extant brand management and relational exchange theory, the authors suggests that firms create, reinforce, switch, or allow certain brandmanagement archetypes to coexist to optimize specific effects andmanage paradoxes. Fromamanagerial perspective, the article suggests that understanding strategic brand management and related paradoxes is fundamental for organizations to achieve desired effects with their value creation.