A Bibliometric Analysis of the Global Branding Literature and a Research Agenda

A bibliometric analysis of the global branding literature and a research agenda

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Vasco de Azambuja

21/11/2017

A bibliometric analysis of the global branding literature and a research agenda

This paper is basically about the citations used by Global Branding Literature (GBL) to “identify important topical influences” to inquire about international branding strategy, brand positioning, brand/country origin, brand concept-image and brand performance. Nowadays, Multinational corporations concentrate their efforts in branding in order to remain their presence in different industries. Moreover, companies have had to adapt to international markets in order to generate a wider scope which lets them understand what clients wish/need. This allows firms to generate marketing strategies accordingly to the context in where the market stands. Talking about marketing strategies, MNCs are aware that maintaining a broad portfolio of brands is vital which means to keep local and international brands. One of the most important aspects surrounding MNCs and global brands is the “underlying development of knowledge” specially in a matter of understanding GBL’s structure, which occurs as time passes. In order to understand this, a co-citation analysis was developed which examined the “structure of global branding” that lead to progress in this field.

Global branding is not new to this world. Due to the fact that firms expanded into international markets, global bands started to arise. Along the increase of MNCs, international brands started to grow as well causing globalization to arise as well. Nevertheless, there wasn’t as much “global” when talking about these brands. When talking about the method, one of the most important aspects to take in consideration is the scope used to research. The global branding concept deliberately withstands relevant publications that relate directly to global branding. This is key when investigating global branding because the term “global” has been varying along the years. A global brand and an international brand cannot be considered the same. This is pretty clear because a product that is sold in only two countries cannot be considered a global brand. Another very important distinction to make is the difference between global brands and global branding. Global brands gave birth due to different firm’s global branding effort to become international. Due to the fact that there is not a precise definition of global brand, it’s considered that a brand that sells its product or service in many marketing which causes brand standardization, can be considered a global brand. When talking about global branding specifically, it refers to “a decision-and action-oriented term that conveys the firm’s branding strategy.” Therefore, this term takes in consideration when a firm “selects, manages, and controls its brands across international markets.” In consequence, global brands emerge due to global branding activities. Global branding can me interpreted in the wrong way because it’s not obligatory to market the exact brand across different countries in order to be considered as “global branding”. “It can convey the process of selecting and managing separate brands in various markets, it may involve a strict focus on the development and use of uniform brands internationally, or it can be a combination of these two concepts.” With that being said, global branding is not specific, due to the fact that there are many ways to achieve global branding. In addition, it also includes the use of a variety of brands “for the same product across markets” which explains how global branding can be so broad.

An experiment was conducted in order to investigate Global branding literature which gave results to “the most highly cited global branding publications”. There were a series of specifications in order to conduct this experiment in order to get results of the bibliometric analysis.

In the results we could see a clear relation between global branding and global brands which gives a clear view of GBL’s knowledge structure. The core of the GBL resulted to be foreign product branding as well as others in different groups which concentrated their efforts in international branding issues. Another very interesting result we could see that there is a tension among consumers in the market when they get to evaluate local and non-local brands. In general, we could see that a range of articles provide a global versus an international focus. This means that there is not a clear understanding between these two terms. Due to the fact that in this paper there are a lot of results,