Dietrich, DanielDanielDietrich2023-04-132023-04-132020-02-17https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/112402Who truly owns a brand? Conventional marketing practice commonly designates companies as legal brand owners with the potential to determine a brand's meaning exclusively. However, market reality demonstrates that consumers are increasingly making use of their technologically-mediated capability of appropriating brands for idiosyncratic purposes. These consumer-driven brand utilisations often trigger brand meaning disruptions outside of marketers intention and control. Hence, the focal brand becomes subject to clashing interests of antagonistic market actors and, thus, contested. This can entail momentous and detrimental impacts for a brands meaning and value. Yet, existing branding literature offers neither sufficient theoretical depth to explain such market dynamics thoroughly, nor practical advice on how to handle them purposefully. Therefore, the present research profoundly investigates the socio-cultural phenomenon of contested brands. More precisely, the research objective was to develop a fundamental theoretical understanding of how and why contingencies of contested brands emerge, and what marketers can do to countervail the spread of undesired brand meanings. For this purpose, three distinct studies were conducted by means of a mixed method research approach. Firstly, a conceptual analysis revealed both an overarching conceptualisation and an integrated typology of contested brands. Secondly, a qualitative exploration - enabled by a practice-theoretical research lens - resulted in a comprehensive process model of brand meaning contestations, which explains the interplay of antecedents, market practices, and outcomes of contested brand incidents. Thirdly, by combining qualitative expert insights with quantitative verifications, a set of effective brand protection measures was developed. These measures support marketers in their forecasting, prevention, and counteraction of contested brands. In sum, the research at hand emphasises that brand meanings are no longer under exclusive control of legal brand owners but alter continuously due to contestation practices by antagonistic market actors. This postmodern paradigm of contested brands facilitates both a seminal understanding and a purposeful handling of brands embedded in todays volatile, multilateral, and heterogeneous market structures.enMarkenpolitikWettbewerbMarkenschutzEDIS-4942MarkenführungKonsumentenverhaltenconsumer behaviourbrand managementbrand meaningContested brandsmixed method designpractice theorydoctoral thesis