How do Brand Managers Conceptualise Brands as Complex Phenomena?

The purpose of this research is to investigate how brand managers conceptualise brands as complex phenomena based on in-depth interviews with 20 brand managers across a range of industries and types of organisation. The results show that managers use elements of up to four interrelated key categories when conceptualising brands: meanings, manifestations, internal stakeholders, and external stakeholders. By identifying these categories and the interplay between them the paper makes an empirical contribution to improving the critical issue of concept clarity in brand management research and practice. The findings suggest that brand stakeholders, as well as the meaning and manifestation-related co-creation processes between them, need to be integrated in future brand research to be able to capture and address the full diversity and complexity of brand conceptualisations in management practice.