The making of brand attachment and brand meanings: the case of a UK engineering services firm

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how engineering employees perceive the functional, ethical and political dimensions of the corporate brand and its meaning(s) for other stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper explores brand meaning and brand attachment in the case of employees in an engineering consultancy firm operating within the defense and artillery systems sector. In-depth interviews with managers and consultants at a cross-section of organizational levels along with thematic and reflexive interpretation of qualitative data have been carried out.

Findings

Identity-based definitions of the brand, the definitions of a “strong engineering brand”, associations of the corporate brand with engineers’ personal brands, brand essence and integration and the meanings of a military brand have all been raised, explored and discussed from the engineer’s perspective.

Research limitations/implications

This paper is among the first of its kind to pursue brand research in an engineering-intensive firm with military and defense brand associations. Future research is encouraged to add further detail and verification to the themes and findings of this paper.

Practical implications

The military context is enmeshed with high levels of sensitivity and difficult research access particularly upon brand-related academic research. This has led in part to very limited marketing and branding knowledge into this setting despite its significance.

Social implications

Given that the engineering consulting sectors are among the top drivers of employment and knowledge advancement, and given that brand associations have considerable impacts on employees’ identification, self-awareness and emotional well-being, understanding the dynamism and complexities of employee-brand associations is inevitable in these settings.

Originality/value

The defense context has unique characteristics and has hitherto remained an under-researched context with respect to branding. This is despite that the defense sector deserves to be in the spotlight because professionals’ voices are rarely heard and acknowledged within the branding literature.

Citation

Sheikh, A. and Lim, M. (2015), "The making of brand attachment and brand meanings: the case of a UK engineering services firm", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 887-907. https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-06-2014-0106