Strengthen Brand Association through SE: Institutional Theory Revisited

Brand association includes connecting images and symbols with a specific brand or its benefits. Brand marketers attempt to initiate new strategies to strengthen brand association in order to respond effectively to the ever-changing business environment. In today's business context, it has been claimed that business philosophy has shifted from being predominantly orientated towards long-term growth and shareholder profit to broader goals based on the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental protection and enhancement. Consequently, organizations seeking to survive in this dynamic environment should include social benefits in their business operations. By drawing upon institutional theory and examining the key dimensions of brand equity, we show that business social enterprise is not just emerging but becoming a normative pressure on organizations. Thus, we propose that organizations conforming to this new form of business model as a so-called social enterprise (SE) can strengthen their brand association, leading to further gains in legitimacy in the field. We derived two formal hypotheses from this conceptual framework and expect that conforming to social enterprise businesses would increase brand association performance from the institutional theory perspective as proposed. We hope that this research paper contributes to the branding as well as social enterprise literature by providing a comprehensive framework and discussing relevant issues in explaining key variables. We conclude the paper with specified implications for future research and management practice.