Brand Orientation

The term brand orientation was coined in the beginning of the 1990s as an attempt to single out how brands could be used as a strategic resource rather than as an “add-on” to products. The concept was an answer to the prevailing idea—captured in idioms like “Customer is king” or “The customer is always right”—that corporations should establish an understanding of customers’ needs, get to know what it is that influences these needs, and thereafter engage themselves in activities that are intended to meet the needs of the most important customer groups. That is to say, they should be market oriented. In contrast to this, brand orientation highlights the importance of giving integrity to brands and sees it as a part of a corporation’s strategic ...