A Cultural Approach to Branding in the Global Marketplace

International marketing's commitment to a technical and universalizing approach to solving managerial problems has meant that researchers have adopted an ethnocentric approach to branding. This is becoming problematic as the global marketplace develops. The authors argue that to meet the theoretical and methodological challenges of global branding, international marketing scholars will need to revise some key premises and foundations. Branding research in the future will need to be contextually and historically grounded, polycentric in orientation, and acutely attuned to the symbolic significance of brands of all types. The authors offer some conceptual foundations for a culturally relative, contextually sensitive approach to international branding in which the construct of brand mythology is central.