Original Article

The progression of brand

orientation literature in twenty
years: A systematic literature
review
Received (in revised form): 9th March 2016

Muhammad Anees-ur-Rehman
is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Marketing, Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland. His research
interest covers B2B branding and industrial marketing in SMEs. He is investigating how multiple strategic orientations impact
B2B brand performance.

Ho Yin Wong
is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
He has published in International Marketing Review, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Managing Service Quality, Journal of Product and
Brand Management, Asia-Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistic, and Marketing Intelligence and Planning, among others. His main
research interests are branding, international marketing, and marketing strategy.

Mokter Hossain
is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Strategy and Venturing, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management,
Aalto University, Finland. He studies innovation management in general. His main research focus is open innovation,
crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, grassroots innovation, frugal innovation, and reverse innovation. He can be contacted at
mokter.hossain@aalto.fi.

ABSTRACT This study reviews the progress of brand orientation literature in twenty
years. A systematic literature review approach has been applied in this study. Four
major publication databases have been used to extract pertinent articles for the
review purpose. Four major areas in the literature have been examined: publication
activity, integration of brand orientation, research design, and contribution of
empirical findings. Based on the synthesis of the current literature, ten future research
recommendations are suggested for the advancement of literature on brand orientation. Thus, this study deepens our understanding of the current literature and recommends future research avenues on brand orientation.

Journal of Brand Management (2016). doi:10.1057/s41262-016-0008-2

Correspondence:
Muhammad Anees-ur-Rehman,
Department of Marketing, Oulu
Business School, University of
Oulu, P.O. Box 4600,
90014 Oulu, Finland.
E-mail: muhammad.anees-urrehman@oulu.fi

Keywords: brand orientation; brand oriented; systematic literature review; brand

management

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www.palgrave.com/journals

Anees-ur-Rehman et al

INTRODUCTION
The marketing concept predominately
maintains that the primary objective of an
organization is to satisfy customers latent
and expressed needs. This customer-centric
approach has therefore become the pinnacle
of organizational strategy and culture in
market-focused organizations. To implement this customer-centric approach within
the organization, a market-oriented strategy was conceptualized in the writings of
Shapiro (1988), Levitt (1986), Narver and
Slater (1990), Kohli and Jaworski (1990),
and Deshpande et al (1993). However, a few
years later, an opposing but related concept
of brand orientation emerged to directly
challenge market-oriented strategy. Unlike
market orientation, brand oriented strategy
contends that the primary objective of an
organization is to protect and advocate its
brand values and identity while performing
organizational activities, including satisfying
customers requirements. It develops organizational culture and strategy based on
brand-centric values. The concept of brand
orientation was originally conceived in the
Ph.D. dissertations of Mats Urde and Frans
Melin. However, the first journal publication on brand orientation was Urde (1994).
Later, other research scholars including
Philippa Hankinson, Simon Mzungu,
Nicky Nedergaard, and Christian Koch also
based their Ph.D. dissertations on brand
orientation. These dissertations thus have
substantially contributed toward the
advancement of brand orientation literature.
According to Urde (1999, p. 117), brand
orientation is an approach in which the processes of the organization revolves around the
creation, development, and protection of brand
identity in an ongoing interaction with target
customers with the aim of achieving lasting
competitive advantages in the form of brands.
Evans et al (2012, p. 1471) defined it as the
extent to which the organization embraces the
brand at a cultural level and uses it as a compass

for decision-making to guide four brand behaviors; distinctiveness, functionality, augmentation

and symbolism. Urde et al (2013, p. 15)
emphasized its strategic importance and
described it as a new approach to brands that
focuses on brands as resources and strategic
hubs; and the continuous interaction between
values and identity at three levels is a key
proposition of brand orientation: the organization, the brand, and customer and non-customer
stakeholders.
Although brand orientation was introduced more than two decades ago, it is a
still-emerging concept and new paradigm for
brand management (Baumgarth et al, 2013,
p. 973). Louro and Cunha (2001) also
addressed the importance of brand-oriented strategy for effective brand management practices. Research scholars have
addressed the brand-oriented strategy in
diverse ways, for example, by using
resource-based view (Bridson and Evans,
2004), Biblical theology (Otubanjo et al,
2010), spiritual and social benefits (Casidy,
2013b), and even potentially transformed
the concept itself, e.g., service brand orientation (King et al, 2013). To the best of
our knowledge, no prior study has evaluated and quantified the progress of brand
orientation literature in more than two
decades. Therefore, for further advancement in brand orientation literature, we
believe that it is necessary to examine the
current literature to develop better understanding and overview of this concept. The
objectives of this study are to review the
progression of brand orientation literature
and to identify avenues for future research
that can potentially fill research gaps in the
literature.
The rest of the article has been structured in the following order. The second
section explains the research methodology
used in this study. Third section provides
the discussion on the analysis and results -which is further categorized into four

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

subsections: publication activity, integration of brand orientation, research design,

and contribution of empirical findings.
Future research recommendations are discussed in the fourth section. A conclusion
is provided at the end of the article.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The scope of the study requires methodology which maintains an objective and
pragmatic approach. Therefore, a systematic literature review method was selected
which is commonly used in literature
review studies in management sciences
(Keranen et al, 2012; Mainela et al, 2014).
The research methodology of the study is
explained in the following four subsections.

Scope of study
Brand orientation is a strategic orientation
of an entity which primarily aims to build
stronger brand (Urde et al, 2013). It is a
value-based brand-centric strategy for
brand and organizational management.
More precisely, brand-oriented entities
accept the strategic importance of brand
and they take an inside-out perspective in
brand management. The inside-out perspective is the exclusive characteristic of
brand-oriented strategy and Urde et al
(2013, p. 15) described it in the following
manner, first, organizational values are
translated into core values and promises (what
the brand stands for), which guide the organizations efforts (how it works and behaves);
second, those core values are converted into
extended customer values (what the brand offers
and how it is perceived).
Brand-oriented strategy has been examined in relation to several aspects of brand
and organizational management. However,
the term of brand orientation, or similar,
had been also used in the literature to refer
the buying behavior of consumers toward
brand (e.g., Wilkes and Valencia, 1986).
Thus, the scope of this study does not

include such articles because it addresses

the buying behavior of consumer and its
theoretical framework consists on consumer-psychology (Schmitt, 2012).

Search of articles
Four databases, namely the Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, and EBSCO,
were used to search peer-reviewed journal
articles. The search was limited to these
databases because they cover a diverse
range of peer-reviewed journals in economics and management sciences. Three
search keywords brand orientation,
brand oriented, and brand-oriented
were used. The search was performed with
the aim of finding articles which used any
of the search keywords in the title, keywords or abstract. These keywords were
used one at a time in all four databases.
Search was limited to peer-reviewed journal articles published in English, and the
time period for article publication was not
specified. The first search was performed in
April 2015 and we found 459 articles. After
removing the duplications, we were left
with 168 articles, and these articles were
then collected. For about next four
months, the authors could not significantly
work on this project due to time constraints, and thus a second search was performed in August 2015 to include
additional articles and to update the article
list. We found eight new articles, and
therefore 176 articles were taken for further
analysis.

Selection of articles
In this stage, our objective was to include
those articles which are within the scope of
the study. Each of the 176 articles was
checked to establish whether the article is
relevant and meets the scope of this study.
Some articles were not so clear, and
therefore the full article was read thoroughly before taking an inclusion or

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

exclusion decision. In such cases, the

authors mutually discussed and agreed on
the inclusion or exclusion decision. From
this process, only 76 articles were found to
meet the scope of the study and thus
included in the study. This procedure we
followed is a common practice in review
articles (see Dahlander and Gann, 2010).
The selected articles are marked with an
asterisk (*) in the references.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

We categorized the analysis and results into
four subsections. These subsections provide
critical discussion on the (1) publication
activity, (2) integration of brand orientation, (3) research design, and (4) contribution of empirical findings.

Publication activity
Figure 1 provides the publication frequency by year from 1994 to August 2015.
The first article on brand orientation was
written by Mats Urde in 1994. Only six
articles were published within the first
decade (1994--2003). It shows that either
scholars were unfamiliar with the concept
or it failed to attract considerable attention.
From these six publications, the article of
Urde (1999) was the most noticeable
because it clarified the concept and paved
the way for further advancement. Although
the publication frequency has improved in
the following six years (2004--2009), it still
did not show considerable improvement.
Compared to the first decade, more
empirical articles appeared during this time
period. These empirical articles advanced
the brand orientation literature by using
industry-specific empirical data (e.g.,

Coding and analysis methods

Once the articles were selected, for the next
step we extracted necessary information
from each article and recorded it on a
spreadsheet. The information extracted
includes, but is not limited to, the following:
year of publication, the name of the journal
where the articles were published, types of
articles (conceptual and empirical), the topic
of articles with regard to brand orientation,
role of brand orientation for brand and
organizational management, the industryspecific application of brand orientation,
research design, and major findings. Two
authors tabulated information individually
and then crosschecked to correct anomalies.
Thereby, we have a complete list of information that is used in this review study.

22

11

6
4

3
1

Figure 1:

3
1

Publication frequency per year.

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

Bridson and Evans, 2004; Baumgarth,

2009; Ewing and Napoli, 2005). We found
that around 76 percent of total publications
on brand orientation appeared within last
five and a half years (2010 to August 2015).
This publication pattern suggests a snowball
effect which favors the shift in paradigm, as
the brand-oriented approach is beginning
to be acknowledged and valued as much as
the market-oriented approach (Baumgarth
et al, 2013; Urde et al, 2013). However, we
also noted that a number of publications
peaked in 2013 and then declined in the
following years, which raises some concerns. One of the reasons for the sharp rise

in 2013 is a special issue on brand orientation by the Journal of Marketing Management (Vol. 29, issue 9--10).
Articles on brand orientation have been
published in 36 journals. Table 1 shows the
list of prominent journals and classifies
them under a common theme. Almost half
of the articles appeared in the marketing
and brand management journals, followed
by nonprofit and strategic management
journals. Journal of Marketing Management has published the highest number of
articles. Thus, it seems that mainstream
marketing journals are confidently
responding to this evolving concept.

Table 1: Publications by journals

Journal/category
Marketing
Journal of Marketing Management
Journal of Strategic Marketing
European Journal of Marketing
International Marketing Review
Academy of Marketing Studies Journal
Industrial Marketing Management
Marketing Intelligence and Planning
Journal of Advertising
Journal of Advertising Research
Brand Management
Journal of Brand Management
Journal of Product and Brand Management
Nonprot Management
International Journal of Nonprot and Voluntary Sector Marketing
Journal of Nonprot and Public Sector Marketing
International Journal of Arts Management
International Journal of Educational Management
Nonprot and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
Strategy and Management
Journal of Business Research
International Journal of Business and Management
Corporate Communications
Retailing and Logistics
International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management
Asia Pacic Journal of Marketing and Logistics
International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research
Small Business Management
Journal of Small Business Management
Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development
Others
Total

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No. of published articles

26
11
3
3
2
2
2
1
1
1
11
6
5
11
4
3
2
1
1
6
3
2
1
4
2
1
1
2
1
1
16
76

%
34.2

14.4

14.4

7.9

5.2

2.5

21.0
100

Anees-ur-Rehman et al

Integration of brand orientation

concept
This subsection highlights the prominent
perspectives used in the literature to conceptualize and integrate brand orientation.
We divide our discussion into two parts:
(1) the nine schools of thought, (2)
extensions of brand orientation.

The nine schools of thought

Balmer (2013, p. 729) identified nine schools
of thought to conceptualize brand orientation.
These schools are philosophical, behavioral,
hybrid (philosophical and behavioral), strategic, performance, cultural, marketing, omni
brand, and corporate brand. Table 2 is adopted from Balmer (2013, p. 729) to illustrate
each school of thought. Balmer, however,
suggested that these schools of thought may
not be seen as mutually exclusive because they
share disciplinary roots. We do not elaborate
each school of thought here, but we would
encourage the reader to see Balmer (2013) for
details.

Extensions of brand orientation

This study identified seven possible transformations of the brand orientation concept,
named here as extensions. Five extensions are
supported with empirical data, while two
extensions are only conceptual.

Ewing and Napoli (2005) proposed the

concept of nonprofit brand orientation
(NBO) by merging the commercial brandoriented strategy with the nonprofit
mindset. The need for this transformation
was rationalized because the nonprofit
sector is thought to face competition in a
similar manner to commercial organizations. It has been defined as an organizational wide process of generating and sustaining a
shared sense of brand meaning that provides
superior value to stakeholders and superior performance to the organization (Ewing and
Napoli, 2005, p. 842). The NBO model
has three sub-dimensions: orchestration,
interaction, and affect. Napoli (2006) found
the positive effect of this model on nonprofit organization performance.
Urde et al (2013) suggested that brandoriented organizations should be vigilant
about how their branding activities are
perceived by the customers or by other
stakeholders in the external environment.
It is because the customers perception of
organizational values and identity, which
are expressed through brand, can potentially influence their understanding and
response toward the brand or the organization itself. The perceived brand orientation (PBO) refers to respondents perception
of the extent to which an organization engages in
brand-oriented activities and behavior

Table 2: Schools of thought in brand orientation

Schools of thought

Description

Philosophical school

Brand orientation relates to an organizational-wide philosophy that accepts

the organization as a brand
Brand orientation relates to how the brand guides behavior
Brand orientation relates to a brand-focused organizational-wide
philosophy and organizational behaviors
Brand orientation relates to an organizational-wide culture
Brand orientation is associated with improved corporate performance
Brand orientation is viewed as a starting point for corporate strategy
Brand orientation is viewed as component of the marketing function
Brand orientation relates to a philosophy and culture that focuses on an
organizations brand in their entirety
Brand orientation as it specically relates to a corporate brand

Behavioral school
Hybrid school
Cultural school
Performance school
Strategic school
Marketing school
Omni-brand school
Corporate brand school
Source: Balmer (2013, p. 729).

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

(Mulyanegara, 2011a, p. 230). The results

of empirical studies have supported the
proposition that the perceived brand orientation of customers is positively linked to
their behavior and response toward the
brand
and
organization
(Casidy,
2013a, b, 2014a, b).
Tourists places and destinations are
another avenue of the successful application
of brand. However, destination branding is
often co-created by a public--private partnership, which makes it different from
typical profit or nonprofit sectors. Thus,
the model of destination brand orientation
(DBO), proposed by Hankinson (2012),
highlights the importance of a strong desire
to build brand internally and actual service
delivery through external partners. The
model of DBO employs a brand-oriented
approach to incorporate profit and nonprofit dimensions for brand management.
Three dimensions (brand culture, brand
communications, and departmental coordination) are identified from the for-profit
sector, and two dimensions (brand reality
and brand partnership) are derived from the
nonprofit sector with special relevance to
destination branding.
King et al (2013) introduced the service
brand orientation (SBO) concept as a
hybrid state whereby service orientation
and brand orientation can coexist.
According to King et al (2013, p. 174) SBO
rests on the synergy between the organizational
culture and the brand as well as on a focus on
excellent and personalized customer service.
Thus, the objective of SBO is to maintain
high customer service while developing
organization-wide commitment to protect
brand values and identity. The model of
SBO is composed of four dimensions:
service brand leadership, service brand
standards, service brand HR practices, and
service brand empowerment.
Based on the work of Bridson and Evans
(2004), Bridson et al (2013) formally
introduced the concept of retail brand

orientation (RBO) for retailers. RBO is

built on a resource-based view. The four
dimensions of RBO are the four distinct
capabilities (symbolism, augmentation,
functional, and distinctive) related to
retailers. With a brand-oriented approach,
all four capabilities are likely to provide
both functional and symbolic values for
consumers, thus strengthening the brand.
While some researchers are against the
application of marketing strategies in a
political context (Scammell, 1999), OCass
and Voola (2011) argued that the ideologies (values) of a political party make them
the ideal candidate for brand-oriented
strategy. Political brand orientation is the
degree to which the party values brands and its
practices are oriented towards building brand
capabilities (OCass and Voola, 2011,
p. 635). This strategy focuses on brand
capabilities to protect and advocate the
political values of the party which are
expressed through brand.
Balmer (2013) formally introduced the
concept of corporate brand orientation
(CBO). Model of CBO acknowledges the
importance of the focus on stakeholders
(including societal and corporate social
responsibility), and incorporates it with the
brand-oriented brand management practices for building a corporate brand. The
CBO model underlines the importance of
synergy between institutions philosophy,
employees, identity, strategy, management
vision, and stakeholder focus. Thus, CBO
refers to a category of the institution where the
corporate brand specifically acts as an entitys
cornerstone. It is a centripetal force that informs
and guides the organization. (Balmer, 2013,
p. 723).

Research design
This subsection provides an overview of
the research methodology used in the
brand orientation literature. From 76 articles, only 15 articles were found to be

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

conceptual (e.g., Urde et al, 2013; Urde

and Koch, 2014). From the remaining 61
empirical articles, 16 articles have used a
qualitative approach (e.g., Stride and Lee,
2007; Lee, 2013), 41 articles have used a
quantitative approach (e.g., Wong and
Merrilees, 2008; Napoli, 2006), and 4
articles have used a mixed approach (e.g.,
Ewing and Napoli, 2005). A high number
of empirical studies in comparison with
conceptual studies highlight the researchers approach of using empirical evidence
to examine theoretical frameworks of
brand-oriented strategy, which significantly
contributes toward building confidence in
the brand-oriented brand management
paradigm.
We found 25 articles (nearly 33 percent
of total articles) which have set the context
of the study on nonprofit sector (e.g.,
Hankinson, 2012; Napoli, 2006; Evans
et al, 2012). These publications show the
importance and applicability of brand orientation in the nonprofit sector. The
prominent nonprofit sectors are the church
(e.g., Casidy, 2013a, b), charity (e.g., Keller
et al, 2010), and museum (e.g., Baumgarth,
2009). On the other hand, the noticeable
sectors in profit-seeking organizations are
business-to-business (B2B) (e.g., Baumgarth, 2010; Reijonen et al, 2015), retail
(e.g., Bridson et al, 2013; Bridson and
Evans, 2004), hotel (King et al, 2013), and
banking (Wallace et al, 2013; Ahmad and
Khan, 2014). The majority of studies have
collected data from Australia, the UK,
Finland, and Germany. Only a handful of
studies used data from the USA (Keller
et al, 2010; Evans et al, 2012; Bridson et al,
2013). The majority of studies used primary data, whereas studies by Rentschler
et al (2011) and Rahman et al (2013) used
both primary and secondary data. Moreover, Benos et al (2015), Miller (2014), and
Rentschler et al (2011) are the only longitudinal studies. Around 11 articles explicitly stated their intention to base their

studies on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) (e.g., Reijonen et al, 2014;
Laukkanen et al, 2013).
We found that the overwhelming
majority of empirical qualitative studies
used the case study or in-depth interviews
or both (e.g., Wymer et al, 2015; Nedergaard and Gyrd-jones, 2013). In empirical
quantitative studies, several articles used the
exploratory factor analysis or ANOVA
methods for theory or model development
purposes (e.g., Reijonen et al, 2012, 2014),
while other used confirmatory, SEM, or
regression analysis for testing causal relationships or hypotheses (e.g., Baumgarth
and Schmidt, 2010; Matanda and Ndubisi,
2013).

Contribution of empirical findings

This subsection synthesizes the empirical
findings of the articles and discusses how
their findings contribute to brand orientation literature. Eight distinct contributions
have been identified (see Table 3). However, these contributions may not necessarily be seen as mutually exclusive.

The effects of brand orientation

Few studies used empirical data to determine the effect(s) of brand orientation on
various dimensions of organization, society,
and customers. Wong and Merrilees
(2007b) supported the moderating role of
brand orientation in partly closing the gap
between marketing strategy and brand
performance, as it improves the branding
activities while executing marketing strategy. Similar findings are also reported by
Park and Kim (2013). Baumgarth and
Schmidt (2010) developed a framework to
elaborate how brand orientation is related
to internal brand management and internal
brand equity in the B2B sector. Their
results also confirmed the high positive
effect of brand orientation on internal
branding equity. In small firms, however,

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

Table 3: Contribution of empirical articles

Contribution to literature

Research scope/context

References

Effect of brand orientation

Financial performance

Wong and Merrilees

(2007a, 2008)
Casidy (2013b)
Baumgarth and Schmidt
(2010)
Casidy (2014a)
Rentschler et al (2011)
Baumgarth (2010)
Keller et al (2010)
Bridson and Evans (2004)
Benos et al (2015)
Burmann and Konig
(2011)
Merrilees (2005) and Lee
(2013)
Wong and Merrilees
(2015)
Nedergaard and Gyrdjones (2013)
Matanda and Ndubisi
(2013)
Ewing and Napoli (2005)
Mulyanegara (2011a)
Hankinson (2012)
King et al (2013)
Bridson et al (2013)
Huang and Tsai (2013)
Hankinson (2001a)
Ahn et al (2015)
Hirvonen et al (2013)
Laukkanen et al (2013)

Spiritual and social benets

Internal brand equity

Brand orientation in industry-specic

study

Role of brand orientation in brand

management

Customer loyalty and satisfaction

Art gallery
Business-to-business
Nonprots
Fashion retailing
Agribusiness
Brand commitment
Rebranding
Brand engagement

Role of brand orientation in

organizational management

Brand-based innovation
Person-organization t and employee intention to stay

Extensions of brand orientation

Antecedents of brand orientation

Brand orientation with other strategic

orientations

Impediments of brand orientation

Nonprot brand orientation (NBO)

Perceived brand orientation (PBO)
Destination brand orientation (DBO)
Service brand orientation (SBO)
Retail brand orientation (RBO)
Organizational structure, culture, and resources
Strategic understanding of brand
Brand reality, communication, and partnership
Firm size and age, customer, and industry type
Market orientation, learning orientation, and
entrepreneurial orientation
Market orientation
Curatorial orientation and commercial orientation
Entrepreneurial orientation
Institution size, structure, and age
Management silos
Dissimilar place identities among stakeholders

Hirvonen and Laukkanen (2014) found no

direct effect of brand orientation on brand
performance.
Wong and Merrilees (2008) examined
the monetary benefits of being brand oriented. Their results suggested a significant
positive effect of brand orientation on
financial performance; but brand barriers
can, however, negatively affect brand-oriented strategy. In the nonprofit sector,
Hankinson (2002) examined the brandoriented approach of charities and its

Reijonen et al (2012)
Rentschler et al (2011)
Reijonen et al (2015)
Evans et al (2012)
Gyrd-Jones et al (2013)
Baxter et al (2013)

influence on managerial practices. Among

other benefits, the highly brand-oriented
charities were found to collect significantly
more donations than lower brand-oriented
charities.

Brand orientation in industry-specic study

Stakeholders evaluate nonprofit organizations based on the delivery of nonprofit
objectives. Therefore, it is highly important
for nonprofit organizations to establish and
protect their perception within the

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

community. In this context, corporate

brand-oriented strategy might be very
useful in the protection of an organizations
(brand) identity and values (Balmer, 2013);
however, among other things, the incorporation of brand-oriented strategy should
be achieved by top-down and bottom-up
integration of the service-dominant organizations (Gromark and Melin, 2011;
Santos-Vijande et al, 2013). These propositions were supported by Rentschler et al
(2011) and Keller et al (2010), which are
discussed in the following.
A longitudinal study of Rentschler et al
(2011) used the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as a case and collected primary
and secondary data. They observed that the
NGVs leadership drives the brand-oriented strategy and it is embedded in the
organizational culture. This strategy has
enabled them to use the brand as a platform
for planning and practice, to engage with
the external market and audience, invest in
internal and external brand building measures, and to bridge the gap between
curatorial and commercial priorities. On
the other hand, Keller et al (2010) explored
three charity organizations located in the
USA. Their analysis highlights inconsistencies in brand-oriented management,
despite the clear brand-oriented mindset of
their leadership. More specifically, they
observed that while brand values, objectives, and tag statements are clear at the
central office, they were not clearly
understood and followed by local offices
nationwide. They suggested to use more
consistent and thorough brand-oriented
management activities and to allow local
offices to make adaptive changes according
to local circumstances.
In the for-profit sector, Baumgarth
(2010) was the first to conceptualize and
empirically validate the framework of
brand orientation for the B2B context.
Although he developed a framework using
well-known cultural and behavioral

perspectives, the scale items were adapted

according to B2B context. The study
found the high positive effect of brand
orientation on the market and economic
performance. Benos et al (2015) used a
longitudinal data collection approach in
agribusinesses and demonstrated that organizational attributes (i.e., ownership and
control) are less effective compared to
strategic attributes (market and brand orientation) in relation to achieving higher
organizational performance.

Role of brand orientation in brand

management
Three articles demonstrated that the brandoriented approach can be used to guide and
manage other avenues of brand management
(e.g., brand commitment). The brand commitment of the employees is vital for the
success of branding strategy and company
performance, particularly when the
employees providing customer service are
not directly under companys management.
For instance, in a shared-service call center,
customer service agents handle inquiries
from customers on behalf of various companies. Burmann and Konig (2011) developed a framework that draws on the brandoriented approach to increase brand commitment for service agents in a shared-service
call center. The framework proposes several
brand-oriented initiatives and incentives
from both call center management and their
clients. Survey data validated the framework
and suggested a significant positive effect on
the brand commitment of employees.
For various reasons, organizations may
choose to undergo a rebranding process.
Even though the brand orientation is found
to be a useful strategy for rebranding
(Merrilees, 2005) it is not free from challenges (Lee, 2013). The case analysis of
Merrilees (2005) suggests that a successful
rebranding process consists of three steps:
brand vision, brand-oriented, and brand
strategy implementation, with the brand-

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

oriented approach responsible for coordinating and bridging the gap between the
other two steps. Lee (2013) explored the
rebranding process in brand-oriented
charities and identified three tensions.
These counterproductive tensions are
related to the realignment of the external
image and internal identity, engaging with
multiple stakeholders and balancing marketing requirements with organizational
identity. However, both articles encouraged the role of brand orientation in
making a rebranding process successful.

Role of brand orientation in organizational

management
Brand-oriented strategy is not relevant to
branding only. We found some empirical
evidence of its incredible role in the management of the nonbranding activities of an
organization. Innovation, for instance, has
been thoroughly examined in the entrepreneurial literature and its contribution to
higher performance is well documented.
Nedergaard and Gyrd-jones (2013) argued
that innovation processes are often market
driven and lack a clear vision. To address
this limitation, they proposed a framework
drawn on the brand-oriented approach to
bring discipline to market driving innovation. They presented the case of Bang and
Olufsen to illustrate their framework.
Recruiting and retaining skillful employees are equally important aspects of organizational management. Matanda and Ndubisi
(2013)s conceptual model proposes that
person-organization fit and the intentions
to stay of the employees can be increased if
the organization can inspire their employees
to take ownership of branding and also
acknowledge and value their work. Results
supported their model and they suggested
that senior managers should be concerned
with employees responses toward brandoriented strategy, and their problems should
be addressed accordingly.

Extensions of brand orientation

In the earlier section, we discussed five
potential transformations (or extensions) of
brand orientation which are supported by
empirical evidence. These are nonprofit
brand orientation, perceived brand orientation, destination brand orientation, retail
brand orientation, and service brand orientation. We briefly report their empirical
findings in the following.
Ewing and Napoli (2005) conceived the
concept of nonprofit brand orientation
(NBO). They used Kellers brand report
card to develop scales to measure each of
the three dimensions of NBO. Later,
Napoli (2006) endorsed three dimensions
of NBO (orchestration, interaction, and
affect) because the study found positive
association of all three dimensions with the
success of the nonprofit organization. The
concept of perceived brand orientation
(PBO) originated from Mulyanegara
(2010). Mulyanegara (2010, 2011a, b)
examined the relationship between PBO
and consumers responses in the church
context. All three studies collected
responses from church attendees using a
self-administered survey. Results indicate
that PBO is positively related to the perceived benefits of church attendees and
increases church participation. Later,
Casidy (2013a, b) employed the PBO
concept in the higher education and
church sectors. Both the studies reported
the positive and significant effect of PBO
on perceived benefits, satisfaction, and
loyalty. Hankinson (2012) is the first study
of its kind and, therefore, the author used
both a comprehensive literature review and
rigorous empirical data analysis to support
his proposition of destination brand orientation (DBO). However, we argue that
key informant bias is the significant weakness of the study, because multiple identities of a place or destination may exist
among different stakeholders (Baxter et al,

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

2013). Therefore, the DBO framework

could incorporate broader stakeholders,
especially tourists, before this framework
can be generalized. Empirical evidence of
Bridson et al (2013) supported the model of
retail brand orientation (RBO). They
found that dimensions of RBO play different roles in relation to certain aspects of
positional advantage, which emphasize the
importance of developing competence in
all four dimensions of RBO. King et als
(2013) model of service brand orientation
(SBO) can help to predict the employee
behavior in the hotel industry. Their results
suggested that both the customer-oriented
behavior and brand-oriented behavior of
the employee can be improved by implementing the SBO at the corporate level.

Antecedents of brand orientation

The objectives of the studies from Huang
and Tsai (2013), Evans et al (2012), and
Hankinson (2001a) were to uncover the
antecedents of brand orientation. A survey
of manufacturing firms in Taiwan suggested that organizational culture, structure, and resources could facilitate in
becoming
brand-oriented
company
(Huang and Tsai, 2013). Likewise, from
the internal environment, Hankinson
(2001a) identified a personal vision, relevant education and experience, organizational culture, and environment factors as
the antecedents in the charities. Contrarily,
Evans et al (2012) found that some internal
factors (which previous studies found to
have a positive effect) have a negative effect
on museums. These internal factors are
organizational structure, institutional size,
and age. Moreover, Evans et al (2012) listed
commercial orientation, leadership, and
financial resources as drivers of brand orientation. From the external factors, an
increase in competition, customer demand,
industry type, and market life cycle play an
important role of anteceding the brand

orientation (Wallace et al, 2013; Hirvonen

et al, 2013).

Brand orientation with other strategic

orientations
This stream of research demonstrated that
the inclusion of other strategic orientations
along with brand oriented in the same study
can reveal interesting insights into the phenomenon under investigation. Laukkanen
et al (2013) found the direct positive effect of
brand orientation, market orientation, and
entrepreneurial orientation on business
growth. Results of Reijonen et al (2014) and
Reijonen et al (2012) indicate that growing
and growth-oriented SMEs are more likely
to adopt both brand and market orientations.
However, these SMEs are significantly more
brand oriented than market oriented. Similar findings were also reported by Cant et al
(2013). All these four articles had collected
data from SMEs. However, Reijonen et al
(2015) found that brand orientation has a
negative effect and entrepreneurial orientation has a positive effect on the market
performance of B2B firms.

Impediments of brand orientation

The implementation of brand-oriented
strategy faces some challenges. An understanding of which and preparing an adequate response is necessary for a successful
implementation of the brand-oriented
strategy. Evans et al (2012), in the context
of the international museum, suggested that
complexity in organizational structure and
history of the museum may impede the
development of brand orientation. Similarly, Gyrd-Jones et al (2013) examined the
process of major brand-revitalization to
become brand oriented in a company
operating in home market. They found
that despite a strong brand vision and a
high level of management commitment,
functional and management silos associated
with different mindsets contributed to the

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

failure of new brand-oriented strategy. On

the other hand, Baxter et al (2013) reported
that multiple identities exist among different stakeholders, which may either act as
barrier or support for the place branding
strategy.

FUTURE RESEARCH
RECOMMENDATIONS
This study has found research gaps which
still exist in the brand orientation literature,
even though the literature has grown in the
past two decades. To address these gaps,
this study recommends ten avenues for
future research to gain a fuller picture of
brand orientation.
First, the existing literature on brand
orientation mainly focuses either on a
corporate level or product level. What role
brand orientation plays in strategic business
units (SBUs) remains unexamined. Particularly in large organizations, the SBU is
often composed of several individual
products and services. And because the
SBUs strategies need to be in congruence
with overall marketing strategies (Whitney,
1995), topics such as how brand orientation
flows from the corporate level to SBU level
to product level, and how to manage the
interplay of brand-oriented strategy
between these levels can be further studied.
The multinational conglomerate companies (e.g., Samsung) or even large media
companies (e.g., Comcast) could be an
interesting empirical context in this regard.
The second recommendation is related to
the first one to a certain extent, that is, how
to implement brand orientation in a company. Successful marketing strategies
involve robust and effective implementation (Ramaseshan et al, 2013). They further
argue that strategy cannot be executed in
isolation from its operational contexts.
With the ever changing market environ-

ment, the strategy and implementation

needs to be integrated so as to avoid any
mismatch between market need and firm
capability. In other words, only creating
effective marketing strategies is inadequate
for firms to succeed. They need to have a
good implementation plan in place to
facilitate marketing strategies in order to
achieve better firm performance. As discussed in the impediments of brand orientation section, the case study of Evans
et al (2012) shows the difficulty of implementing a brand-oriented strategy without
proper mechanisms in place. Thus, further
empirical studies are needed to examine
what implementation mechanisms are used
by brand-oriented firms and the links
between firms brand orientation, marketing strategies, implementation, and firm
performance, especially in a large-scaled
quantitative study.
Third, most of the studies examine brand
performance from the financial perspective.
Financial performance is measured in a
quantitative manner in terms of sales
turnover, profitability, and market share. A
few studies examine brand performance in
a qualitative manner, such as brand
awareness, brand reputation, and customer
brand loyalty (Wong and Merrillees,
2007a, b; Huang and Sarigoellue, 2014).
However, a more comprehensive measurement of brand performance to include
customer mindset, brand performance, and
shareholder value is called for, especially for
high-involvement product and services
(Huang and Sarigollu, 2014).
The fourth recommendation calls to
examine the impacts of managers personality factors on brand orientation. This
aspect of research emphasizes the role of
individuals, top management, and their
interaction in driving firms strategies and
outcomes. Gavetti (2012) argues that
superior firm performance depends partly

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

on a strategic leaders superior abilities to

identify, to act on, and to legitimize
opportunities. Similarly, firm strategic orientation is believed to be the function of
various managerial factors (Lackman et al,
2000; Qiu, 2008; Voola and OCass, 2010;
Hankinson, 2001a). As stated in the section
of contribution of empirical findings,
Hankinson (2001a) conceptualized that
managers personal visions can be an
important antecedent factor affecting brand
orientation. Hence, it is recommended to
examine managerial personal factors as an
antecedent of brand orientation. In particular, whether and how various managerial
personalities and personal visions can affect
brand orientation and other marketing
strategies need to be addressed. Empirical
evidence from this microaspect of managerial factors can shed light on the causes
of brand orientation.
The fifth recommendation calls for the
empirical examination of how brand-oriented strategy interacts with other strategic
orientations of the firm to achieve performance objectives. This research avenue
sheds light on why firms should use more
than one strategic orientation and what
impacts should be worthwhile pursuing.
There are three main perspectives embedded in this recommendation. First, the
future studies may examine the possible
pattern in which the brand-oriented strategy may have complementary interaction
with other strategic orientations. Hakala
(2011, p. 209) identified three patterns of
complementary interaction that could be
present between strategic orientations,
namely, correlation, moderation, and
mediation. The notion of complementary
interaction rests on the idea that different
strategic orientations can complement each
other to achieve organization objectives.
Second, the idea of hybrid orientation
could also be used to address this question.
Urde et al (2013) conceptualized the hybrid
strategic orientation between brand and

market orientations. The hybrid orientation basically proposes that a firm may
develop more than one strategic orientation simultaneously, with the possibility to
develop these orientations at different priority levels, which can coexist and complement each other. This approach could
be used to examine how high or low levels
of strategic orientations produce the highest possible performance effect (see Atuahene-Gima and Kos, 2001; Mzungu et al,
2015). Under this approach, different pairs
of strategic orientations may be examined,
for instance, entrepreneurial orientation
and brand orientations, or market orientation and brand orientation and so on.
Third, it is worthwhile to examine how
firms may change strategic orientations
over time due to changing circumstances.
In this regard, how to change from one
orientation to another, what obstacles cause
problems, and what outcomes of changing
orientations are to be expected.
Sixth, very few studies look into brand
orientation from the international marketing perspective. A review of the existing
literature, in the section of publication
activity, finds that only two brand orientation studies are in the context of international marketing. The two studies on
international brand orientation in the
existing literature can serve as the point of
reference. More empirical and conceptual
studies are needed to elucidate the role of
brand orientation in international marketing. As suggested by King et al (2013,
p. 179), further research on (service) brand
orientation would illuminate the unique
challenges presented in a (service) industry
that is dominated by Western cultural values but is developing in an eastern cultural
context. In particular, Wong and Merrilees (2007) suggest examining the impacts
of various international branding issues on
international firm performance. Particular
areas can include the interrelationships
among firms marketing and branding

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The progression of brand orientation literature in twenty years

strategies, external market environments,

managerial personal characteristics, and
firm performance from the international
marketing point of view. Further empirical
findings in these areas in the international
context could provide a more holistic view
of the role of brand orientation in the
international marketing context.
The role of brand orientation in the area
of service branding is understudied. Thus
the seventh future research recommendation
encourages investigation in, for example,
the way in which brand orientation works
in the service industry? King et als (2013)
service brand orientation includes four
dimensions; they are service brand leadership, service brand standards, service brand
HR practices, and service brand empowerment. However, service brand orientation is found not to significantly affect
employee--customer-oriented
behavior.
Thus, a research gap exists in terms of what
other dimensions in service brand orientation can affect employee--customer-oriented behavior. In addition, empirical
results suggest that brand orientation plays
an important role in the service industry
(King et al, 2013; Evans et al, 2012).
Nevertheless, it is not clear if service brand
orientation affects firm performance
directly or indirectly or not at all.
The eighth recommendation suggests
examining whether brand orientation in the
online/digital setting is different. Online and
in-store shopping behaviors are different
(Degeratu et al, 2000). Brand names become
more important online in some product
categories, especially when information on
fewer attributes is available online. Casidys
(2014b) study in higher education also shows
that there is a difference between online and
face-to-face university students in terms of
the impacts of perceived brand orientation
on service quality. If brand orientation in the
online/digital context is different, where do
the differences lie and why do the differences
exist?

The ninth recommendation is related to

research methods. This study has found
only three studies to have used longitudinal
research design and data (Benos et al, 2015;
Miller, 2014; Rentschler et al, 2011). A
longitudinal research approach is very
effective to warrant confidence in determining the causality. Thus, more research
using longitudinal data is needed to provide
further evidence for the causal relationships
with regards to the antecedents and consequences of brand-oriented strategy. Furthermore, conceptual and empirical
qualitative studies are also needed, as they
are useful in theory building and empirical
validation.
Finally, the last recommendation is related to the resource and capability paradigms. The organizational capability
perspective can be viewed as the ability of
an organization to integrate resources to
perform at an optimum level (Hitt et al,
2001; Teece et al, 1997). In general,
resources are more static, whereas capabilities are more dynamic. Combined together, the resources and capabilities of the
firms are the primary source of creating
value with the consequence of competitive
advantage (Urde, 1999; Wong and Merrilees, 2007). Baxter et al (2013) suggest
that there needs to be an alignment with
internal resources and capabilities so that
brand orientation, as an unconditional
response, is not made confusing for both
the place and the market. Evans et al (2012)
find that financial resources are the antecedent of brand-oriented strategy. While
financial resources are one of the dimensions under the resource and capability
paradigms, the role of other resources such
as human resources remains untouched.
From the capability perspective, firm
experience, technological knowledge,
market knowledge, research and development capacities, organizational culture, and
planning skills are the few capabilities that
can be studied to determine how brand

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Anees-ur-Rehman et al

orientation can facilitate firms capabilities

or vice versa.

CONCLUSION
Research on brand orientation has grown
in the past twenty years. Various conceptual and empirical studies have advanced
the knowledge of brand orientation. This
study has systematically reviewed brand
orientation literature from four major perspectives - publication activity, integration
and extension of brand orientation concept, research design, and contribution of
empirical findings. However, four main
limitations are present in this study due to
systematic literature review approach. First,
only four databases were used to search for
relevant articles. Even though these four
databases are commonly used in the field,
some research work might have been left
out due to not being indexed in these
databases. Second, only articles published
in English are included. Third, literature
related to brand orientation which could be
available in the books, dissertations, conference papers and proceedings, magazines
and trade journals, and other sources are
not included. Fourth, those journal articles
which have not used any of the search
keywords in the title, abstract, or keywords
may have been left out.
The review of the existing literature
demonstrates that the literature has evolved
from covering what brand orientation is to
why brand orientation is important for
entities. In addition, we found that
researchers have used a number of research
methods to examine the brand orientation
concept. Research gaps still exist despite the
growing interest from academics and practitioners. Thus, this study has proposed ten
future research recommendations to fill the
research gaps in the existing literature. With
empirical findings from these proposed
areas, a more comprehensive understanding
of brand orientation can be expected.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Muhammad
Anees-ur-Rehman
and
Mokter Hossain are grateful to the Finnish
Cultural Foundation for funding this study.

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