Brand Architecture Strategy: Research Review and Prospects

Jiang Lianxiong; Zhu Huihuang; He Yun; Wu Shuilong

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20200720.301

Summary

The brand research on product level is the main position of the origin and development of brand theory. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the issue of corporate brand system management. Scholars have developed the theory of brand architecture strategy to study it, which has become an important field of corporate level branding research. As a brand theory at the company level, it aims at and explains how a company promotes business growth and corporate performance by systematically managing the relationship between brands and products, the role of each brand and their relationships. In terms of research units, theoretical construction and research methods, it is also different from the brand research on product level.

Most of the existing studies are conceptual analysis and case study, which explore the concept of brand architecture strategy, and the driving factors of the development and evolution of measurement methods. In recent years, empirical studies have emerged to analyze the relationship between corporate brand architecture strategy, business activities and corporate performance, which indicates the shifting of research from initial basic concepts and measurement methods to the core issues of corporate branding strategy and the causal relationship between them. In addition, the research scope of brand architecture strategy has expanded from manufacturing industry to the brand structure and strategy of service industry, agriculture, and public sectors.

This paper reviews the literature on brand architecture strategy. On this basis, it analyzes the meaning, nature and significance of brand architecture strategy, as well as its relationship with brand portfolio and other basic issues, sorts out the types and concepts of its diversity, the development of measurement methods, and analyzes the research progress of its evolution driving factors and its relationship with corporate business activities and corporate performance. Finally, the research trends are summarized, and the future research directions are identified and proposed, including empirical research on the development of company level, deepening the research on the driving factors of brand architecture strategy evolution, carrying out systematic research on the relationship between brand architecture strategy and corporate performance, strengthening the research on the relationship between brand architecture strategy and companies’ business activities, and providing theoretical contributions from the Chinese market and the Chinese enterprise research.