Practices in the brand management system: identification and considerations for five business sectors

Purpose – Brand management systems (BMSs) are of prime importance for brands to monitor effective brand management and enhance firms' performance. The existing scales take various conceptual bases and sometimes eliminate some dimensions, depending on the sector of activity. Based on praxis and a variety of sectors, the purpose of this paper is to identify stable dimensions of BMSs and make configurational patterns emerge according to firms' and sector's characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 15 in-depth interviews (with a semi-structured questionnaire) were conducted with marketing and communication directors in five sectors of activity (cosmetics, convenience goods, industry, bank/insurance, media). Content analysis was used to examine the configurational patterns that emerged, following a strategy-as-practice approach. Findings – A general BMS pattern emerged from the content analysis with three dimensions: brand identity and values-based, hierarchically based, and implementation based. Interestingly, typical configurations were identified on each dimension and distinct configurational patterns for five sectors. Research limitations/implications – Additional research on other sectors is suggested to further validate the findings as well as building a scale on the basis of the general pattern to analyze the effect of BMS on performance. Practical implications – Configurational patterns represent a flexible, adaptive, and easy-to-apply way to approach and monitor BMS for researchers and managers. Originality/value – This cross-sector research delineates innovative and integrated BMS dimensions and subdimensions emerging from practice and examines their universality. The key subdimension(s) for each dimension is (are) identified and related to recent research on BMS.