Brand management as a social process. an exploratory survey on the impact of new internet brand touch-points

The internationalization and digitization of the economy increasingly affect the dynamics of brand management. Many studies have analysed the impact of the Internet on brand management emphasizing the relevance of the digital brand experience that overlaps with the real one. The role of the corporate web site, as a focal corporate brand touch point, tends to downsize as a result of social media, other User Generated Content (blogs, forums, opinion platforms) and Internet Applications that do not use the Web to access the Internet. This paper, starting from the studies on the consistency between real brand image and virtual one, investigates the effects on the effectiveness of brand management strategies and politics due to the broader process of social construction of the corporate brand. The survey involved a sample of twenty Corporate Brands.