Sustainability in the Context of Strategic Brand Management : A Multiple Case Study on the Automobile Industry

Abstract: During the last decades the importance of sustainability has steadily increased and nowadays, sustainability is not only a governmental responsibility any more. Besides the concept of sus- tainability, the field of brand management has gained more relevance in the last decades as well. Today, companies invest large amounts of money in the development of their brands. Considering the increasing importance of both concepts, the question for a combination of these two concepts arises. As the potential of sustainability in the brand management research field is not exploited to date and the focus of such a combination is mainly on the operative part, this study developed the concept of Sustainable Strategic Brand Management. With a focus on the automobile industry a first step of a practical-based research is done. The analy- sis of the integration of sustainability in the strategic brand management through a multiple case study of the three automobile manufacturing companies Daimler AG, Volvo Group and Volkswagen AG, is the most suitable and effective method to answer the research question of this study: How do automobile manufacturing companies integrate sustainability in their strategic brand management process? The main finding of this study is that automobile manufacturing companies integrate sustainability to different extents and manners in the seven steps of the strategic brand management process. Moreover, there are different levels and potentials for the integration of sustainability in the strategic brand management process. However, there is still potential and demand to improve the integration of sustainability in the strategic brand management process.