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On BrandWhether a Semiotic
Marketing System or Not
Journal of Macromarketing
1-4
The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0276146714548929
jmk.sagepub.com
John F. Gaski1
Abstract
Problems of definition and conceptualization have plagued the word brand for longer than any readers professional memory.
Conejo and Wooliscroft have recently addressed this issue in their creative and radical Journal of Macromarketing article challenging especially the American Marketing Associations official definition of brand. The following note offers response to the central
content of the authors framework and discusses derived semantic and conceptual concerns, while endeavoring to contribute to a
coherent and viable understanding of the brand construct and its surrounding conceptual system, but from a different posture
than their approach. Unless a generally accepted understanding of the elemental brand term and construct is settled upon, shoring
up our fields conceptual underpinning, one large part of the body of marketing theory will remain ethereal.
Keywords
branding, marketing conceptual systems, marketing definitions, marketing language, marketing theory, macromarketing
Indeed, everyone and his or her brother in the field of marketing now seem to have a personal, idiosyncratic, renegade definition of brand (Sullivan 2014). It truly is a Tower of Brand
Babble out there (Phillips 2011).
So, do Conejo and Wooliscroft deliver the Rosetta stone of
branding, or roil the linguistic and lexicographic landscape further? Despite their conceptual contributions, the position taken
here is that Conejo and Wooliscroft (CW), in fact, add to the confusion and move marketing thought in the wrong direction with
yet another brand definition that is problematic and maybe
even not coherent conceptually. Differences with CW regarding
the concept of brand and the term brand itself will now be summarized after some appropriate foundation is presented.
Corresponding Author:
John F. Gaski, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Email: jgaski@nd.edu
Journal of Macromarketing
(3)
Gaski
their article, CW use brand in its traditional AMA managerial sense. Beyond the earlier semantic issue, what this confirms is that the name, term, etc. construct definitely has a
substantive role in the newly manufactured CW-GSTSemiotic Brand System (SBS) world, which undercuts the purity of CWs framework and the effectiveness of their argument.
In other words, we are not exactly replacing the brand definition when CW continue to use that very definition! Consider
the following examples of this inconsistency:
Branding dates back at least . . . to the mid-1800s, when firms
were already . . . developing powerful brands (p. 2).
[B]rands are not modern . . . . [B]rands are said to have emerged
with Mesopotamias Urban Revolution; pre-modern civilizations . . . with products and brands actively sought; we do not
believe in distinct eras into which brands can be neatly classified
(p. 3).
No doubt some of todays brands are still very basic . . . . Brands
are identified with finished products . . . products being more
important than their brands (p. 4).
Branding has been researched for decades (p. 5).
[T]he SBS central component is the brand. . . . The brand is surrounded . . . by its immediate stakeholders; firms capitalize on
the brands popularity to generate sales (p. 6).
Despite their commercial nature, brands are also legitimate
sources of original and relevant content (p. 9).
Journal of Macromarketing
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks Editor Terry Witkowski for his consideration.
Author Biography
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.