Corporate Brand Identity Co-Creation in Business-to-Business Contexts

Part of: Digital Marketing Topic 7 — Trends: Mobile / Voice / Location · Reading Citation: Iglesias, O., Landgraf, P., Ind, N., Markovic, S., & Koporcic, N. (2020). Corporate brand identity co-creation in business-to-business contexts. Industrial Marketing Management, 85, 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.09.008 Key concepts: Corporate Brand Identity, Co-Creation, Stakeholder Theory, Brand Governance, B2B Branding

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TL;DR

Challenges the traditional view that Corporate Brand Identity is fixed and controlled top-down by managers, advancing the emerging dynamic, multi-stakeholder perspective in which identity is fluid, polysemous and co-created. Using a multiple-case study of five SME B2B brands and 37 narrative interviews, the authors find corporate brand identity stems from the founders' values but becomes a temporary outcome of an ongoing co-creation process. They identify four interrelated stakeholder performances — communicating, internalizing, contesting, elucidating — through which internal and external stakeholders continually reshape the identity. Managers must therefore shift from brand custodians/guardians to brand conductors who reconcile stakeholder perspectives while protecting core values.

Why It's on the Reading List

It is the conceptual counterpart to the Dell case (06b), giving the theory behind co-created corporate identity and a clean four-performance model — exam-relevant for B2B branding, co-creation, stakeholder theory and the shift in brand governance.

Background & Research Question

The corporate brand's main element is its identity — what makes it unique and relevant versus competitors (Kapferer, 2008) and the source of differentiation and competitive advantage (de Chernatony, 1999; Beverland et al., 2007). The traditional view treats identity as stable and unilaterally manager-determined; the emerging view (da Silveira et al., 2013; von Wallpach et al., 2017; Iglesias et al., 2013) treats it as co-created by multiple stakeholders as organisational boundaries become permeable. Only three prior B2B studies addressed co-creation, all single-case. Objectives: (1) explore how corporate brand identity is co-created by multiple internal and external stakeholders in B2B; (2) identify which stakeholder performances co-create it.

Key Concepts & Definitions

Definition — Corporate brand identity (emerging view)

Not the fixed "essence" of a brand but a set of fluid, dynamic, polysemous meanings co-created by multiple internal and external stakeholders; a "temporary stabilization in an ongoing change process" (Törmälä & Gyrd-Jones, 2017).

Definition — Co-creation

A process that unfolds over time through a series of interactions between multiple internal and external stakeholders (Iglesias et al., 2013; Ind et al., 2017).

Definition — Performativity

Drawing on Goffman (1959), identity is something stakeholders do/perform, not something a brand statically has. Brand meaning is agent-ascribed — tied to each stakeholder's experiences and values.

Definition — Brand conductor (vs guardian/custodian)

A manager who allows identity to change progressively by reconciling diverse stakeholder perspectives — using a humble, open, empathic, participatory leadership style — while still preserving core values (Michel, 2017).

Main Arguments / Findings

The founder origin. In all five cases, corporate brand identity reflects the founder's identity and shared values ("I am the company"; "this is the DNA of the company"). But once exposed to stakeholders, it is in constant flux, generating competing interpretations.

The four stakeholder performances (P1a–P1d):

Contesting in vivo (Corporate brand B)

An employee contests the CEO's "innovating" slogan: "What innovation are you talking about? You are not an R&D focused company… the brand is trying to express something that is not there." Identity and image diverge, pressuring managers to adapt.

The central tension

There is an ongoing tension between managers (conservative, protective brand custodians wanting to preserve foundational core values) and other stakeholders (who reinterpret and enact the brand, generating a polysemous bundle of meanings). Managerial resistance tends to produce progressive, subtle change rather than radical change.

Methodology

Qualitative, inductive multiple-case study (Eisenhardt; Yin) of five SME B2B corporate brands — A (life-science business development), B (Spanish branding consultancy), C & D (international meetings/events agencies), E (Spanish motor manufacturer) — across different sizes, sectors and geographies; all established ≥2 years (so core values are grounded), large multinationals excluded. Data: 37 semi-structured narrative interviews with founders, managers, employees, customers and other external stakeholders (saturation reached), analysed in Atlas.ti via open → axial → selective coding, triangulated with archival/secondary materials. Trustworthiness addressed via Lincoln & Guba criteria (credibility, transferability, external audit/peer debriefing, confirmability, audit trail).

Framework / Model

Corporate Brand Identity Co-Creation Process (Fig. 4): founders' values seed a foundational corporate brand identity; at each time step the four stakeholder performances (communicating, internalizing, contesting, elucidating) transform it into Identity(1), Identity(2) … Identity(n) — a continuous, recursive, time-dependent loop. Contribution vs prior work: first to empirically study B2B corporate brand identity co-creation with a balanced set of multiple internal and external stakeholders across multiple cases (including founders), enabling greater generalisability.

Implications for Marketers

• Accept that managers do not fully control the brand; identity is organic and in constant flux — adopt a new form of Brand Governance.
• Move from guardian to conductor: a participatory, humble, empathic leadership style that integrates stakeholder input while preserving core values — especially feasible for SMEs with close stakeholder relationships.
• Operationalise each performance: invest in clear communication channels; foster internalization through recruitment-for-fit and training; create mechanisms (feedback processes, online brand communities) for stakeholders to contest and elucidate.

Exam Takeaways

Likely exam points

• Traditional (stable, top-down, manager-controlled) vs emerging (dynamic, fluid, polysemous, multi-stakeholder co-created) view of corporate brand identity.
• The four performances: communicating, internalizing, contesting, elucidating (be able to define each).
• Identity stems from founders' values but is a temporary outcome of ongoing co-creation.
• Manager role shift: brand custodian/guardian → brand conductor.
• Contesting compares identity with image and needs boundary spanners; elucidating reconciles tensions.
• Method: multiple-case study, 5 B2B SMEs, 37 narrative interviews, performativity (Goffman) lens.

Summary

• Corporate brand identity is co-created, fluid and polysemous, not a fixed managerial creation.
• It originates in founders' values but evolves through four stakeholder performances over time.
• Communicating, internalizing, contesting and elucidating are the core co-creation mechanisms.
• Managers should act as conductors, balancing stakeholder influence against core-value preservation — a finding grounded in five B2B SME cases.

Related Notes

• Digital Marketing — subject hub
• Corporate Brand Identity — the focal, co-created construct
• Co-Creation — the underlying multi-stakeholder process
• Stakeholder Theory — internal + external stakeholders as co-creators
• Brand Governance — guardian-to-conductor managerial shift
• B2B Branding — relational context (links to the Dell case, 06b)