Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Sense-Based Innovation And Brand Strategy: The Role Of Meanings And Relations
Eleonora Di Maria, University of Padua, Italy
Marco Paiola, University of Padua, Italy
Introduction
The paper is devoted to explore how firms can gain competitive advantage in the production of superior market values
founded on sensemaking. More specifically, we consider the sensemaking process as an innovative activity in which
brand management has a fundamental role. From a literature point of view, little effort has been undertaken in order to
describe the brand management as a specific process that support the intangible type of innovation, where the core of
the innovation output is sensemaking. In our opinion, this is an important endeavor, since a lot of innovation success is
nowadays due to non-technological intervention on the offering system (Normann, 2001; Krippendorf & Butter, 1984).
Moreover, much of the intangible innovation process related takes place outside the firm, in the contexts of
consumption (von Hippel, 2005). From this perspective, customers are not passive receivers of brands, but they can
always participate in the brand creation and management, such as in the case of brand communities (Muniz & O‘Guinn,
2001). We argue that the roles of meanings and relations are becoming critical in building a sustainable competitiveness
for firms in the framework of soft innovation (Sebastiani & Paiola, 2010; Stoneman, 2010).
The intangible dimension of innovation
Recent research streams on innovation have highlighted the progressive growth of importance of non-technological
elements in innovation management. Stoneman defined soft innovation as
―innovation in goods and services that primarily impacts upon sensory perception, aesthetic appeal or
intellectual appeal rather than functional performance.‖ (Stoneman, 2009, p. 21)
Modern innovation refer increasingly to the social dynamics of the demand and to the way meanings related to
products, services and their uses are created, transmitted and modified by the users (Sternberg, 1999; Dalli & Romani,
2007; Di Maria & Finotto, 2008). As many scholars pointed out (Schmitt, 1999; Silverstein & Fiske, 2003; Postrel,
2003; Ravasi & Lojacono, 2005), purchasing processes are increasingly based on immaterial features such as aesthetics,
design and the many meanings that they are able to transmit. Products can be seen as parts of hedonic consumption
processes and means to obtain emotional responses (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982). Or, as post-modernity scholars
have well described, they can be perceived as ―linking objects‖ (Cova, 1997), that is semiotic elements capable to link
people as belonging to the same community or sharing similar identities.
Other studies, focused on lead users, tribes and communities of consumptions, emphasized the role of relations in
modern innovation management in terms of connections between the firm and the consumption side, as well as among
customers (i.e. Franke & Shah, 2003; Cova et al., 2007; Kozinets et al. 2008; Sawhney & Prandelli, 2000). Those
contributions emphasize the collective action that supports the firm‘s innovation process where the relational dimension
is important to allow customers‘ experience and knowledge sharing.
Hence, innovation is a process that should primarily take into account, on the one hand, the development of new
meanings and the administration of existing ones and, on the other hand, the management of relationships with
customers and suppliers able to sustain such processes of sensemaking.
We argue that brand strategy and brand management can positively support sense-based innovation in firms, enhancing
the creation of new meanings to be offered to customers as well as the interactive relationships between the firm and its
customers as well as among customers. While on the one hand, brand are semiotic tools able to create and drive
meanings to the market (Semprini, 1992), on the other hand meaning attached to brands are more and more built on an
interactive basis with customers (Schau et al., 2009).
The role of brand in soft innovation: creating meanings
Sensemaking is an increasingly important driver in marketing strategies as it consists, on a broad perspective, in the
process of making sense of the firm‘s offering. From this point of view sensemaking contributes also to the nontechnical
dimension of the innovation and it becomes a process a firm should be able to manage properly.
Firms recognize this condition when they rank the brand as their first source of sensemaking. In effect, in terms of
symbolic values of the offer, the activity of sensemaking is mainly driven by the work the firm does on the brand and its
identity (Aaker, 1996; Schmitt & Simonson, 1997). Brands can represent major semiotic elements that provide a given
meaning and sense to products and services. They must be fed by organized, structured and voluntary work (Semprini,
1992; Klaus & Maklan, 2007).
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