Building Brand Governance: A Small Company Study

摘要

The paper initiates a discussion about the role of relational norms, Selection, Solidarity, Flexibility, Information Exchange and Trust (Heide and John, 1992, Stephen and Coote, 2007) as brand governance mechanisms in entrepreneurial SME organizations (Heide and John, 1992; Wathne and Heide, 2004; Busco et al., 2006; Ind and Bjerke, 2007; Hatch and Schultz, 2010; Rondel et al, 2015; Renton and Richard, 2016). The paper's two major contributions are to investigate the role of relational norms in helping organisations socialize partners and to prepare the way for a quantitative study into the role of relational norms in brand driven SME organisations (Wathne and Heide, 2000). The lower architectural capability for value creation within SMEs (Renton and Richard, 2016) highlights an increased need for socialization with exchange partners and the sharing of brand related goals, a key aspect of Brand Governance (Hatch and Schutz, 2010). The context within which this study takes place is the engagement activities of SMEs which use Social Media (SM) platforms. We contribute to the SME and SM discussion by exploring the role of relational norms in facilitating socialization, brand governance and value creation in SME Social Media engagement contexts.