2.1 Brand associations and alignment: Review, research gap and methodological issues
A central issue in marketing research is the study of consumer brand knowledge and brand associations that synthesize consumers’ brand perceptions (Aaker,
1991). Consumer brand knowledge is related to the cognitive representation of the brand (Peter and Olson,
2001). Firstly, companies need to develop a clear understanding of consumer brand knowledge to implement marketing activities that will improve brand equity (Keller,
2003). Brand knowledge is defined in terms of “the personal meaning about a brand stored in consumer memory, that is, all descriptive and evaluative brand-related information” (Keller,
2003, p. 596). Thus, consumer brand knowledge is a strategic resource to be controlled and managed by companies over time (Romaniuk and Gaillard,
2007). Keller’s (
1998) model proposes that brand knowledge is made of brand awareness and brand image. Brand image is further detailed due to its complex nature. Brand image is the result of favourable, strong, unique brand associations held by consumers. Various types of brand associations are depicted in the model by Keller (
1998): product-related attributes; non-product related attributes, such as price, user/usage imagery, brand personality, and feelings and experiences; benefits (functional, experiential and symbolic); attitudes. Thus, brand associations compose the brand image as perceptual nodes that consumers associate with the brand and keep in their minds. Companies look for strong, positive and unique brand associations to increase brand equity (Broniarczyk and Gershoff,
2003). The perception of brand uniqueness produces brand differentiation (Pechmann and Ratneshwar,
1991) and has a positive impact on consumer choices and brand performance (Romaniuk and Gaillard,
2007). However, such a positive relationship is not taken for granted, since it implies a high degree of alignment between consumers’ and the company’s brand association. Nandan (
2005) describes alignment as a situation in which “the consumer has great understanding of (an agreement with) the brand message” (p. 271).
Therefore, studies on branding have highlighted the importance of congruence and brand association matching. In particular, congruence is defined as “the extent to which a brand association shares content and meaning with another brand association. […] The congruence among brand associations determines the ‘cohesiveness’ of the brand image-that is, the extent to which the brand image is characterized by associations or subsets of associations that share meaning” (Keller,
1993, p. 7). There can be brand image incongruity, defined by Sjödin and Törn (
2006) as the mismatch between brand communication and existing brand associations. In this regard, studies have been conducted on the fit between brand attitude and information conveyed through brand extension (Grime et al.,
2002), as well as the match between brand associations and advertising (Dahlén et al.,
2005) or sponsorship (Gwinner and Eaton,
1999). All these studies concern brand association matching that implies the degree of match/mismatch between brand associations defined by the company (company-defined brand associations) and brand associations perceived by consumers (consumer-perceived brand image).
Thus, companies look for an alignment (Venkatraman,
1989) between brand image and brand identity, which includes all the defining attributes that a company seeks to communicate externally (Keller,
2003). Despite companies’ intense efforts to effective communication, consumer brand perceptions may however assume features that differ from those companies seek to transfer as components of the brand identity. Ross and Harradine (
2011) addressed the issue of intended vs actual perceptions of brands and found a substantial misalignment between the perception of a clothing brand by its owners and the perception by consumers. Madhavaram et al. (
2005) observed that brand association matching is difficult to achieve because communication to transfer brand identity is complex. However, companies that manage to achieve a high degree of alignment can better reshape the network of brand associations in the consumer’s mind than competitors, with positive implications for brand image and brand equity management, positioning, communications and perceptual competition analysis (Till et al.,
2011; Crawford Camiciottoli et al.,
2014).
The evolution of the technological and sociological context implies new challenges and opportunities for research in this field, pushing towards greater integration and hybridization between qualitative and quantitative research methodologies (Guercini,
2014). The adoption of novel methodologies allows filling a relevant gap in the field of branding research, that arises in offline brand studies and persists in the recent online brand studies. Extant studies that explore the impact of offline communication on brand image, limit their investigation to the ensuing consumer-perceived brand associations, without a comparison with the company-defined brand associations (Meenaghan,
1995; Gwinner and Eaton,
1999; Underwood,
2003). No study takes into account a double perspective, not even those, to cite a few, on brand and store image brand image with the store image (Yoo et al.,
2000), consumer brand perception following decisions of brand extension (Salinas and Pérez,
2009), and country-of-origin effects (Diamantopoulos et al.,
2011). We find the same research gap in online brand studies.
The advent of social media has stressed the multi-vocal nature of the brand, which is related to the participatory, collaborative and socially-linked behaviours by consumers that serve as creators of brand stories thus determining brand associations (Gensler et al.,
2013). The risk for companies is to lose control over their brand communication because of the multi-vocal nature of brand authorship in online contexts, where the voice of consumers is the most relevant. Consumers experience multiple virtual settings (blogs, forums, social networks) as new market spaces where they spontaneously interact, exchange information, opinions and perceptions (Kozinets,
2002) in the form of user-generated content (UGC) and give voice to their relationship with products and brands (Ramaswamy and Ozcan,
2016). Moreover, social media have a highly pervasive impact on the market since they are digital, visible, ubiquitous, available in real-time and dynamic (Hennig-Thurau et al.,
2010). Such characteristics and trends can’t be ignored either by marketing researchers or by brand managers. The latter need to deal with a critical question that is to “understand how to successfully coordinate consumer and firm generated brand stories” (Gensler et al.,
2013, p. 243). Marketing researchers need to develop methods that measure the brand association alignment and tools to deal with UGC. Only a limited number of studies proposes a dual perspective. An attempt to combine the voice of consumers with what the company communicates emerges in the studies of Crawford Camiciottoli et al. (
2014) and Költringer and Dickinger (
2015). Both of them do not provide measurements of brand association alignment but demonstrate alternatives to extract brand identity and brand image through web content mining. Ranfagni et al. (
2016) adopt a dual perspective and develop indicators to measure the alignment between the brand personality that consumers perceive and what a company intends to communicate. Following this line of reasoning, we develop a mixed methodology that includes netnography and text mining techniques and allows a combined investigation of UGC in online communities and the company’s online brand communication.
2.2 The study of art museum’s brand
When it comes to museums, research on the topic has increasingly emphasized the market orientation and the application of marketing management in the museum sector (Caldwell,
2000; Camarero Izquierdo and José Garrido Samaniego,
2007), and specific attention has been given to brand management (Caldwell and Coshall,
2002; Wallace,
2006; Liu et al.,
2015). Studies on art museums have dealt with brand associations, namely the complex of values and images that consumers associate with art museums (Caldwell,
2000; Caldwell and Coshall,
2002; Scott,
2008). In this regard, Caldwell and Coshall (
2002) consider art museums as the locus of both product and brand associations, intended as visitors’ attitudes, impressions, dispositions, or mental constructs. The two authors note that, in the case of art museums, a peculiar characteristic of brand associations is that they are developed by visitors both to the museum as a brand name and to the experience of visiting the collections. Such research on brand associations has been conducted with the repertory grid method that allows detecting the cognitive constructs relevant to the consumer’s image of the museum, and what these constructs tell about the associations which visitors have developed about art museums as brands.
Brand associations that visitors develop constitute a set of expectations about a particular museum (Caldwell and Coshall,
2002). Research in this field has also dealt with brand identity. Pusa and Uusitalo (
2014) discuss ways to create brand identity in art museums and rely on the four general brand dimensions described by Aaker (
1996) – product, person, symbol and organization – discussed in the context of an art museum. Art museums can be perceived as products, in which collections and exhibitions form their core product, and museum services (e.g., museum shops or educational programs) form the augmented product. The view of museums as persons implies the building of a brand personality. Art museums have a personality that is partly defined by the sum of personalities of exhibited artists (Schroeder,
2005). The museum’s manager, curator or founder, especially for smaller organizations, can contribute to building brand personality by projecting their characteristics and artistic taste onto the museum.
The creation of brand identity for museums goes also through symbolism. Scott (
2008) states that museums provide many symbolic and intangible benefits for communities. Components of museum brand as symbol are also the brand name, the brand inheritance and also the museum building and its architecture. Art museums can be also seen as organizational brands, in the sense that certain organizational characteristics, such as values, culture, norms, people and behaviours, contribute to the creation of brand identity in museums. Art museums that manage to build a strong brand identity can compete, promote exhibitions and achieve long-term objectives (Pusa and Uusitalo,
2014). Even for art museums, the study of brand associations matching, and thus the relation between brand identity and brand image can be relevant. Each art museum has a distinctive identity, but it may fail to communicate it, with consequences on brand image based on visitors’ perceptions and how visitors distinct the museum from its competitors.