Guest editorial: Cultivating a broader paradigm to understand family business brands and the branding process

Abstract

As the predominant form of business worldwide, family firms [1] play a crucial role in shaping the global economy through their contributions to innovation, wealth creation, job creation and competitiveness (Calabrò et al., 2019; La Porta et al., 1999; Miroshnychenko et al., 2021; Westhead and Cowling, 1998; Zellweger, 2017). In an increasingly competitive market where competition is constant, family firms need to brand their products and services to succeed and create a distinctive value for their offer (Anatolevena Anisimova, 2007; King, 1991; Reinartz et al., 2019; Suchek et al., 2021). At the same time, consumers today behave differently and have access to a wider set of products and services as they consider their options, contributing to making brands and branding a relevant topic today. Branding strategies provide a bundle of information that helps consumers differentiate a company’s products and services from those of competitors (Balmer andGray, 2003; Balmer and Podnar, 2021; Hulberg, 2006; Kotler, 1991; Iglesias and Ind, 2020). Although research on brands and the branding process has boomed, only in recent years scholars and practitioners have become interested in understanding this phenomenon as it relates to family businesses (Andreini et al., 2020; Beck, 2016; Binz Astrachan et al., 2018; Sageder et al., 2018 for recent reviews). Defining a family firm is not an easy task. In its broadest sense, family firms are companies where members of the same family, or related family branches, hold a majority interest and where the owning family exerts a dominant influence on the strategic direction of the company (Chrisman et al., 2005). When compared to nonfamily-owned firms, family firms place greater importance on long-term and value-oriented business models (Krappe, 2009; Krappe and von Schlippe, 2013). Also, because family firms couple financial goals with nonfinancial ones, their strategic decision-making is distinctive from that of nonfamily firms in that it includes the need of the family to preserve socioemotional wealth (Reina et al., 2022). Thus, family firms can leverage the involvement of the family in the firm as a unique value proposition that helps to differentiate them in the marketplace to gain competitive advantage (Binz Astrachan et al., 2018; Craig et al., 2008; Krappe et al., 2011; Zellweger et al., 2010). One of the ways through which family firms leverage their uniqueness is through the use of family business brands (Rauschendorfer et al., 2022). In a general sense, a family business brand encompasses “the formal and informal communication of the family element of firm essence, which includes the family’s involvement in a firm, and which leads to associations and expectations in the mind of stakeholders that help differentiate these firms from others in the marketplace and other venues” (Binz Astrachan et al., 2018, p. 5). On the same token, family business brands communicate the family nature of these firms, which leads to associations and expectations that differentiate these firms from competitors in their market. Theoretical, empirical and ample anecdotal evidence supports the assumption that promoting the firm’s family nature as a building block of the organizational brand identity can offer important benefits (Bargoni et al., 2023a; Beliaeva et al., 2022; Binz et al., 2013; Deephouse and Jaskiewicz, 2013; Sageder et al., 2018; Zellweger et al., 2012). Scholars have been particularly interested in understanding how family involvement in a business makes a brand different, how family firms make choices about their brand and how consumers perceive family business brands (Andreini et al., 2020; Beck, 2016; Binz Astrachan et al., 2018; Sageder et al., 2018). Despite the growing interest in family business branding, research in this area is still in its infancy and provides interesting opportunities for further exploration. This opening article of the special issue “Building Bridges Across Branding Research: Family Business Brands and The Branding Process” seeks to discuss some of the limitations of our current knowledge in this area and provide avenues to advance this field. We particularly discuss the importance of including multiple paradigms and the need for varied methodologies of exploration to build a more comprehensive understanding of family business branding. Up to now, family business branding research is rooted in a stimuli–reaction paradigm (Andreini et al., 2020). This approach focuses exclusively on the cognitive and emotional understanding of how consumers perceive and process the family business brand. However, a widely shared view among branding scholars suggests that a brand and its significance are largely a by-product of a negotiation of meanings that takes place in the marketplace (MacInnis et al., 2019). From this paradigm, the brand is seen as the outcome of a socially constructed process and/or as an outcome of co-creation practices that involve consumers, producers and other audiences. Therefore, relying on a stimuli–reaction paradigm for our understanding downplays the role that contextual forces play in shaping consumer cognitions, emotions and perceptions. This suggests that, to move forward in our understanding of family business brands and branding, we need to create connections between different forms of scholarship to build a more comprehensive view of this topic. The prevalence of the stimuli–reaction paradigm has also narrowed the type of methodological approaches currently used in the study of family business brands. Research so far relies on experiments, surveys or interviews as the primary forms of data collection. Although these methodologies have brought richness to the family business field (Evert et al., 2016), there are other methodological approaches that can enrich what we know about The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:https://www.emerald.com/insight/1061-0421.htm