Customer and brand manager perspectives on brand relationships: a conceptual framework

Purpose – To provide a conceptual framework to help researchers and managers understand the complex factors affecting the associations between brands. Design/methodology/approach – Brand extension, co‐branding and other associative techniques together with an increasingly communicative environment are resulting in an increasingly complex set of networks and relationships between brands, with singular and multiple relationship forms. There are two key perspectives on these complex relationships, that of the customer and that of the brand owner, i.e. what is seen at the point of transaction and what is expressed by the various brand constructors. Two key perspectives on brand relationships are used that of the customer and that of the brand owner, to describe and discuss an analytical classification of these relationships. Findings – A conceptual synthesis of the dynamics of brand networks and business relationships is presented and a 2 × 2 matrix is developed to classify and describe the four categories that emerge. Practical implications – Different management strategies for different types of business‐brand relationships are suggested. Originality/value – The conceptual synthesis is new and some uses of the classification for researchers and brand managers are suggested.