Industrial BRAND-personality formation in a B2B stakeholder network: A service-dominant logic approach

Abstract

Business-to-business (B2B) companies have strategically developed industrial brand personalities. Nevertheless, research on industrial brand personality remains limited and the seller-centric standpoint dominates, which makes it difficult to isolate the meaning of an industrial brand personality and how one is formed. This research is guided by service-dominant logic and explores the formation of meaningful brand personality associations in a stakeholder network. We employ a longitudinal case study to investigate brand personality from a multiple-stakeholder standpoint in the context of an industrial firm's six-year-long transformation toward adopting service-dominant logic in its marketing. We present a conceptual model showing the formation of industrial brand personality through its engagement with stakeholder interactions and a network's social processes. Our findings extend current knowledge on service-dominant logic and branding by demonstrating that industrial brand personality becomes meaningful when embedded in the network's institutional context and reflecting the operant resources of stakeholder co-creation.