The Intellectual Structure in Brands and Branding Research

Abstract

This chapter is based on a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the 30 most-cited articles (adjusting to the length of publication time) on brands and branding, retrieved from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database (1975-2008). Following the multidimensional scaling method and social network analysis, the results demonstrate five major subareas, which are characterized with different but interrelated intellectual structures. Among the selected core literature, a few theoretical or empirical articles play a key role in incubating or developing a research paradigm. Based on the analysis results, the authors observe that those five major domains and a relatively small number of seminal papers have important impacts on shaping the research paradigm with a lasting effect on future research directions. On the other hand, the authors argue that existing research on brands and branding has been dominantly focused on Western developed countries while brand management issues in emerging markets have been largely ignored and therefore deserve special attention in future research.