Executing the Perfect Retail Brand: The Impact of Multiple Level Brand Meanings

The alignment of employees around the corporate brand has emerged as a major area of study in corporate and service branding literature generally and in the retail branding literature in particular. Corporate brand scholars are focused on achieving coherence in brand expressions. Traditionally focus has been on using corporate communication to align employees around the corporate brand to achieve this. Through in-depth, longitudinal, ethnographic research this paper suggests that coherence can only be achieved by understanding the complex interplay of identities between occupational groups and management levels in the organisation. It is argued that responsibility for brand expressions should be more decentralised.