Models for brand relationships

Abstract

Among the marketing academic journals, the Journal of Product & Brand Management has been the leading journal publishing articles related to brand relationships (Veloutsou and Ruiz-Mafé, 2020). The journal has also dedicated two special issues to the topic (Fetscherin et al.,2016; Fetscherin et al., 2019), with papers that were either originally presented at International Consumer Brand Relationship Conferences (www.consumerbrandrelationship.com) aswell asregular submissions to the journal. This editorial aims to discuss the state of the current thinking and research on brands as relationship builders. To achieve this aim, the editorial presents a consumer brand relationship model, Fetscherin’s (2020) Brand Relationship Wheel, and introduces a comprehensive framework that explains the role of brand relationships in the brand building process. It also provides a short summary of the nine papers included in this special issue.