Abstract:

The article focuses on brand value co-creation and how brand managers, marketing managers, public relations specialists, and communication specialists could expand their knowledge and deepen their understanding of the ways in which they could implement co-creation activities to create brand value.

Brand value co-creation occurs when customers provide their time, energy, money, and knowledge to brand owners, which can be used to develop, refine, or extend brands. Brand co-creation is an attractive and inexpensive marketing strategy for firms entering new markets and developing new brand meanings.

In the article, two ways of co-creating brand value are presented: relationship management strategy and sense-making strategy. Both building relationships with consumers and other stakeholders and sense-making are integral parts of brand value co-creation.

Relationship management efforts can boost the quality of relationships the organization has with its target customers and help foster value co-creation. The consumers desire to socialize and participate in online activities is discussed, as is how the need for socialization could be used to develop the relationship between the brand and its stakeholders. Relationship management helps to create consumer loyalty to the brand and provide support for the consumers. Consumers who feel supported are more likely to share large amounts of information that can be used to develop brands.

The article discusses the sense-making strategy, the process that helps to create shared understandings among relevant stakeholders for collective action. Sensemaking refers to a process, prompted by violated expectations, that involves attending to and bracketing cues in the environment, creating intersubjective meaning through cycles of interpretation and action, and thereby enacting a more ordered environment from which further cues can be drawn. The individuals can engage in sense-making of their own and develop a shared understanding of an issue. Sensemaking takes place between individuals, where shared understanding is developed through a mutually co-constituted process.

The research methods used in this academic article include a literature review, systematic analysis, and generalization. The main purpose of this article is to present some recommendations that would help brand managers, marketing managers, public relations specialists, and communication specialists to expand their knowledge and deepen their understanding of brand value co-creation and raise their qualifications in understanding the strategies that could help manage brand value co-creation activities.

Keywords:

Co-creation, relationship management, sense-making.