An Assessment of Brand Experience Knowledge Literature: Using Bibliometric Data to Identify Future Research Direction

• Author: Zhongqi Jin,T.C. Melewar,Pantea Foroudi,Dongmei Zha
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12226
• Published date: 01 July 2020

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 287–317 (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12226

An Assessment of Brand Experience

Knowledge Literature: Using Bibliometric

Data to Identify Future Research Direction

Dongmei Zha, T.C. Melewar, Pantea Foroudi and Zhongqi Jin

Business School, Middlesex University London, London, NW4 4BT, UK

Corresponding author email: P.Foroudi@mdx.ac.uk

There is wide consensus that the brand experience literature (BEL) suffers from a

deficit in conceptual works. This study argues that, for brand experience research to

overcomeits conceptual insipidity,it must re-examine the core of its intellectual structure

to rediscover what ‘an experience provided by brands’ truly implies. The purpose of

this paper is to reconceptualize and present a future research framework for research

into the concept of brand experience, by identifying both the core and peripheral

sources of knowledgeof the concept and its association with brand meaning. Through a

bibliometric process covering 136 articles published between 2002 and 2018, resulting

in a database of 2698 citations, this brand experience conceptual paper fills a critical

research gap by providing the first full-scale bibliometric study to date of the BEL,

using a combination of high citation and co-citation metrics. Based on this conceptual

reorientation, a matrix for future development is presented, enabling the reader to

visualize the scope and breadth of potential brand experienceresearch horizons in areas

relating to customer experience, consumer–brand relationship,online brand experience

and sensory brand experience. The four approaches listed in the matrix – firm-based,

social constructionist, virtuality and embodiment – providea roadmap for future brand

experience research undertakings to explorethe rich potential of experience evoked by

brands.

Introduction

Brands that offer the best overallexperiences are now

some of the most valuable assets in the world. Ama-

zon, which made the delivery of a frictionless expe-

rience for the customer the core of its brand proposi-

tion, has now risen to the top of BrandZ’s 100 most

valuable global brands (Financial Times2019). In the

same way, the video-streaming brand Netflix, with its

ability to deliver a seamless home video experience,

is now among the fastest rising brands in the an-

nual rankings, adding 65% to its brand value between

2018 and 2019 to reach a total of US$34.3bn. The

Financial Times report concluded that this trend vali-

dated the view that brands offering a total experience

versus those simply selling products were now more

popular with both the consumer and the investment

community.

On the contrary, in academia, researchers are only

now coming around to an awareness of the impact of

experiences provided by brands. While the origins of

the experiential approach can be traced back to the

seminal study by Holbrook and Hirschman (1982),

for most of the past three decades, the branding

factor in consumer experience has not been seriously

investigated on its ownmerits. Most would agree that

the publication of the 2009 paper by Brakus, Schmitt

and Zarantonello represents the formal conceptual-

ization of brand experience (BE) as an independent

construct. If we use MacInnis’s (2011) definition of

marketing constructs as ‘abstract, hypothetical con-

cepts’ with dimensions that can be ‘operationalised or

measured’ (p. 141), then Brakus et al.’s (2009) paper

represented a research marker. It offered, for the first

time, a definition of a consumer experience evoked

by brands, a defined set of dimensions and, crucially,

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288 D. Zha et a l.

empirical evidence to differentiate the concept from

other constructs such as brand attachment, brand per-

sonality or brand involvement (Andreini et al. 2019).

Since then, many facets of BE research have been

investigated, including brand relationship experience

(e.g. Merrilees 2016), innovative brand experience

(e.g. Lin 2015), service brand experience (e.g.

Ngo et al. 2016), corporate brand experience (e.g.

Shamim et al. 2016) and online brand experience

(e.g. Jim´

enez Barreto et al. 2019). While research

enthusiasm for exploring the various permutations

is encouraging, there is wide consensus that the

brand experience literature (BEL) at its core still

suffers from a deficit in conceptual work. In a recent

review summarizing BE research, Andreini et al.

(2019) observed with much disquiet that, since

the first conceptual models proposed by Schmitt

(1999b) and Brakus et al. (2009), no studies had

made a critical assessment or theoretical evaluation

of the essence of the BE construct. In the decade

since then, research has been primarily focused on

externalizing the relationship between BE and other

brand variables, and not on internalizing what ‘an

experience provided by brands’ truly represents.

Based on these observations, we assert that a

rigorous examination of its foundational intellectual

structure to achieve a broader and deeper concep-

tualization of the BEL is required. This paper fills

this research gap by providing the first full-scale

bibliometric analysis to date of the BEL’s intellectual

structure using a combination of high citation and co-

citation metrics. The deployment of bibliometrics is

apt at this juncture because this type of literary analy-

sis has the attested ability to ascertain how disciplines

evolve byproducing a retrospective description of the

‘invisiblecolleges of influence’ (Price 1965) that have

had a hand in shaping the BE construct. Identifying

these invisible colleges of influence, and recognizing

how they are captive to domain-specific traditions or

intellectual dispositions (White and McCain 1998),

providesus with the means to ar riveat a more nuanced

interpretation of the BEL’s intellectual structure.

A discerning deployment of appropriate bibliomet-

ric tools also offers researchers a quantitative basis

on which to conduct an objective analysis of BE’s

intellectual status quo, a useful supplement to the

qualitative reviews published so far. While it is true

that the BEL domain has been well served by several

literature reviews (Andreini et al. 2019; Khan and

Rahman 2015; Schmitt et al. 2014), so far, an analysis

of the BEL’s knowledge structure from a bibliometric

perspective remains unavailable. While literature

reviews provide researchers with an overview of

the thematic flow of thoughts, they are limited by

the inability to pinpoint with empirical certainty the

suppositions and sources underlying these ideas. For

instance, an earlier review by Schmitt et al. (2014)

was more an introspective essay in whichthe original

authors reflected on the development of the BEL since

the publication of Brakus et al. (2009), whereas the

present study takes a domain-wide perspective. Khan

and Rahman (2015), adopting the Meredith et al.

(1989) framework, provided an interesting map of

methodologies and approaches drawn from an analy-

sis of 73 BE papers. While parts of the computation

were insightful, overall the resulting framework the

authors offered was still an antecedent/consequence

model. The most recent substantial contribution is

Andreini et al.’s (2019) systematic review. While the

article offered an in-depth ontological and epistemo-

logical assessment of the BEL, the lack of literary

support through some form of information analytics

somewhat undermined the robustness of the authors’

literary perspectives. De Oliveira Santini et al.’s

(2018) meta-analysis, which had the expressed objec-

tive of investigating empirical correlations between

BE and other brand constructs, provided an analysis

of the impact of BE on other brand performance

variables. This present review, in contrast, looks be-

yond the antecedent/consequence axis to examine the

underlying theoretical strata of the BEL’s intellectual

structure. In view of these research gaps in the BEL,

the bibliometric approach offers a much-needed

literary scaffolding on which further BE conceptual

work can be firmly based and grounded.

Therefore, the objectives of this paper are: (1)

to present an anatomy of the BEL’s intellectual

structure through a bibliometric analysis identifying

both the core and peripheral sources of knowledge;

(2) to reconceptualize the BE concept with brand

meaning as a theoretical substrate; and (3) to present

a future research framework outlining emergent areas

of research for future research undertakings. Our

bibliometric analysis makes four major contributions

to the BEL. Firstly, it provides the first systematic

bibliometric analysis of the BEL using high-citation

and co-citation metrics and multidimensional scaling

visualizations. Secondly, it highlights the need to

reconceptualize BE as an independent concept, high-

lighting its unique contribution to the consumption

experience via a transaction involving brand symbols

and brand meanings. Thirdly, it contributes to BE

theory by extending the scope and relevanceof BE re-

search as it interfaces with other marketing domains,

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