Brands are ubiquitous and adorn contemporary marketing systems. Modern branding practices spawn contradictory social mechanisms, value co-creation and value co-destruction. This paper considers the societal implications, including personal, psychological, social, ecological, and economic consequences of branding. It posits brand externalities as meaning-led discrepancies and symbolic spill-overs igniting mechanisms detrimental to the integrity of the social system. Brand externalities accompany the assortment of brands in contemporary marketing systems. We propose a taxonomy of brand externalities and elucidate societal consequences of branding upon brand exchange actors themselves, their immediate others, future others and general others. This stakeholder orientation sets a future research agenda and calls for redefining branding from the system’s perspective.

Purpose This paper aims to conceptualise and characterise brand systems and outline propositions and research avenues to advance the systems’ view of branding. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual synthesis approach is adopted to integrate the extant branding research perspectives. The conceptual framework is grounded in the theoretical foundation of marketing systems theory. Findings The conceptual framework delineates brand inputs, throughputs, outcomes and feedback effects within a brand system. It configures the complexity and dynamics of brand value formation among brand actors within the branding environment. Research limitations/implications This paper contributes to systems thinking in branding and brand value co-creation research. It extends marketing systems theory into the branding context and provides research directions for exploring the structural and functional configurations, cause–consequence processes and outcome concerns of brand value formation. Practical implications This conceptual framework informs brand development, management and regulation at a macro level. Managers can apply the brand system concept to identify and manage conflicting expectations of brand actors and alleviate adverse brand outcomes such as negative brand externalities, enhancing overall brand system health and societal value. Originality/value This research expands the scope of brand actor agency and identifies the likelihood of disproportionate brand outcomes. It provides methodological guidelines for analysis and intervention in brand systems.

This paper presents Systematic Theory Mapping (STM), a comprehensive and systematic method, as the first step toward defining and dealing with complex and wicked problems. Social systems exhibit a messy, multifaceted, and multi-level composite of problems characterized by causal complexities and non-linear interactions of numerous contributing variables. Exploring such a wicked composite of problems for causal explanations and theory building through reductionist empiricism is unrealistic, expensive, and futile. Systems thinking is required to understand the configurations driving wicked problems and navigate their causal complexities. We construed brand externalities as a wicked problem and provided an illustrative example for STM. A systematic narrative review is used to amalgamate diverse stakeholder perspectives and capture the structures and processes that generate brand externalities. System dynamics, employing a causal loop diagram, is used to organize the findings and develop a causal theory of brand externalities. The proposed method can help scholars, managers, and policymakers better define complex managerial and social problems and identify the likely consequences of their actions.

Across the globe, the importance of the service sector is flourishing as a result of which significance of research to understand the characteristics and attributes of services is rising exponentially. Poor understanding of service characteristics has led to an undue reliance on branding models previously designed for tangible products. Although most of the researches have tried to modify their branding models to cater to the requirements of service branding, most of them are largely based on managerial and organizational perspectives. Few researches have attempted to highlight consumer’s perspectives of what they consider important in a service brand. This study focuses on consumers’ perceptions of important service brand associations and aims to be a stepping stone in the process of developing a specialized model for service branding. The qualitative information garnered for this research allowed digging deeper into the consumer’s mind through in-depth personal interviews. The analytical method of coding, sorting, and sifting assisted in discovering the service brand associations. The results indicate salience of brand associations for consumers of service brands. The most frequently identified service brand associations include service environment and facilities, staff behavior, word-of-mouth communication, price, core service quality, experience (of the service provider and consumers), and advertising of the service brands.

Learning outcomes (Core) Objetivos de aprendizaje esperados (y resultados): 1) comprender las decisiones de posicionamiento de marca, construcción de marca y extensión de categoría de una marca farmacéutica (operativa en una de las industrias más competitivas y reguladas de un país en desarrollo); 2) analizar los resultados de las decisiones relacionadas con ventas estratégicas, creación de marca, marketing y reestructuración estratégica para superar los desafíos del crecimiento; y 3) Diseñar soluciones estratégicas para el desarrollo de la marca. Case overview/synopsis Este caso explora la estrategia de lanzar y establecer una marca farmacéutica en una industria que tiende a ser una industria altamente técnica y la más regulada. Representa datos de investigación de mercado, análisis de la industria, dura competencia, asuntos regulatorios y elabora diversas decisiones estratégicas tomadas por la empresa. Los datos primarios para el caso se acumulan a través de entrevistas en profundidad de seis expertos de la industria en marketing farmacéutico que estaban bien familiarizados con Maple Pharma y datos secundarios se extraen de la literatura sustantiva. Maple Pharmaceuticals lanzó Starpram, una marca de antidepresivos genéricos de alto crecimiento y alto potencial (en la categoría de sistema nervioso central) que contiene la molécula / sustancia química de escitalopram. Tenía experiencia y ventaja competitiva en flujos cardiovasculares y antidiabéticos, pero dicha iniciativa parecía tener una extensión de categoría, con la intención de diversificar el riesgo y expandir la compañía para lograr mayores economías de escala. El primer año en que los ingresos por ventas de Starpram parecieron demasiado sombríos como para estimular la inauguración de nuevos productos. En consecuencia, se realizó una revisión estratégica para establecer la marca en la industria farmacéutica altamente fragmentada. La empresa carecía de experiencia en la categoría de antidepresivos, junto con ventas deficientes, combinación de marketing y estrategia de marketing en general. Finalmente, la gerencia ejerció una reestructuración estratégica para establecer el valor de marca y el crecimiento observado. Complexity academic level Licenciados (MBA), MS, PhD (ciencias de la administración). Subject Code CSS 8: Marketing.