Brand Purpose
Introduction
Antecedents, Co-Creation, Outcomes, Special issue of the Journal: Journal of Product & Brand Management; 30 Nov 2025
INTEREST CATEGORY: MARKETING STRATEGY
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals
Posted by: Amy Richmond
Introduction
The term brand purpose is widely used by managers and consultancies. In fact, many brands have defined a brand purpose during the last decade. However, surprisingly, academic research lags behind (Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021) and there are only a handful of articles in leading journals which include the term brand purpose in their title or keywords (e.g., Iglesias and Ind, 2020; Hajdas and Keczek, 2021; Mirzaei et al., 2021; Williams et al., 2021; Rudeloff and Michalski, 2023; Iglesias et al., 2023; Kjeldsen and Schmeltz, 2024). This implies that there is still a lack of construct clarity (Swaminathan et al., 2020). Additionally, even if many brands have defined a purpose and a few research articles have tried to conceptualize the construct, most brands are struggling with how to embed the brand purpose across their organization and their value proposition (Iglesias and Ind, 2020). In the same vein, there is a lack of academic research studying how to best activate a brand purpose (Markovic et al., 2023). Moreover, most of the articles approach brand purpose from a corporate perspective and draw on the business strategy literature (Rudeloff and Michalski, 2023), failing to recognize that brand purpose can also be developed at the product brand level and that very significant differences might exist between these two types of brand purpose. Overall, brand purpose represents an emerging area of research, relevant to business and society, that requires more conceptual and empirical studies which can help the field to further develop.
Brand purpose can be seen as the fundamental reason for a brands existence (Williams et al., 2021; Iglesias et al., 2023). It requires brands to look inwards to their history, competences, and ambitions (Iglesias and Ind, 2020) and outwards to the delivery of value to all stakeholders (Kujala et al., 2022). Brand purpose can help managers make coherent strategic choices (Iglesias et al., 2023), provide additional motivations for consumers to purchase (Williams et al., 2021), and energise employees (Keller, 2023) and business partners (Hadjas and Kleczek, 2021). A core characteristic of brand purpose is its ambition to positively transform society and the environment (Mirzaei et al., 2021). This has led Iglesias et al. (2023, p. 8) to define brand purpose in terms of a moral compass that guides an intended transformational impact. Yet, for many brands, the challenge is to translate the strategic intentions incapsulated into their moral purpose (Mitnick et al., 2023) into consistent action. This implies not only willing to be good and look good, but actually be good (Chun et al., 2013).
Despite the increasing managerial and academic interest in the topic of brand purpose, the study of brand purpose, which is extremely relevant to business and society, is still very much under-developed. Therefore, this special issue welcomes submissions that focus on enhancing the existing body of literature on brand purpose. Contributions can be conceptual and/or empirical (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods).
List of Topic Areas
- How can we conceptualize brand purpose?
- What are the characteristics of a good brand purpose?
- What are the drivers of brand purpose?
- Which processes are used to construct brand purpose?
- What are the outcomes of brand purpose for different internal and external stakeholders?
- What is the role of brand purpose in driving brand equity?
- What are the tensions in enacting a brand purpose and how are they managed?
- What is the role of co-creation in defining and implementing brand purpose?
- What are the roles of different stakeholders in defining and activating brand purpose?
- How can organizations best embed a brand purpose?
- What is the relationship between corporate and brand purpose?
- What is the relationship between a brand purpose and the personal purpose of employees?
- How can brand purpose best be measured and evaluated?
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here:
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to Please select the issue you are submitting to.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions:泭30/06/2025
Closing date for manuscripts submission:泭30/11/2025