Call for paper: Brand Purpose: Towards a deeper understanding of the construct, its antecedents, co-creation process, and outcomes

Brand Purpose: Towards a deeper understanding of the construct, its antecedents, co-creation process, and outcomes

The term ‘brand purpose’ is widely used by managers and consultancies. In fact, many brands have defined a brand purpose during the last decade. However, surprisingly, academic research lags behind (Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021) and there are only a handful of articles in leading journals which include the term ‘brand purpose’ in their title or keywords (e.g., Iglesias and Ind, 2020; Hajdas and Kłeczek, 2021; Mirzaei et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2021; Rudeloff and Michalski, 2023; Iglesias et al., 2023; Kjeldsen and Schmeltz, 2024). This implies that there is still a lack of construct clarity (Swaminathan et al., 2020).
Brand purpose can be seen as the fundamental reason for a brand’s existence (Williams et al., 2021; Iglesias et al., 2023). It requires brands to look inwards to their history, competences, and ambitions (Iglesias and Ind, 2020) and outwards to the delivery of value to all stakeholders (Kujala et al., 2022). Brand purpose can help managers make coherent strategic choices (Iglesias et al., 2023), provide additional motivations for consumers to purchase (Williams et al., 2021), and energise employees (Keller, 2023) and business partners (Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021).
Despite the increasing managerial and academic interest in the topic of brand purpose, the study of brand purpose, which is extremely relevant to business and society, is still very much under-developed. Therefore, this special issue welcomes submissions that focus on enhancing the existing body of literature on brand purpose. Contributions can be conceptual and/or empirical (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods).

List of Topic Areas

How can we conceptualize brand purpose?
What are the characteristics of a good brand purpose?
What are the drivers of brand purpose?
Which processes are used to construct brand purpose?
What are the outcomes of brand purpose for different internal and external stakeholders?
What is the role of brand purpose in driving brand equity?
What are the tensions in enacting a brand purpose and how are they managed?
What is the role of co-creation in defining and implementing brand purpose?
What are the roles of different stakeholders in defining and activating brand purpose?
How can organizations best embed a brand purpose?
What is the relationship between corporate and brand purpose?
What is the relationship between a brand purpose and the personal purpose of employees?
How can brand purpose best be measured and evaluated?

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpbm
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jpbm
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.