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Cayla and Arnould show that this way of thinking about key phenomena, such as branding, reflects Western assumptions and premises about the way the world works. Researchers use these reflections on branding to begin questioning the idea of international marketing as a set of universal, practical, and easily transportable techniques. The authors propose a cultural approach to global branding that overturns the notion of international marketing as a universal technique by acknowledging the cultural dimension of international marketing discourse and practices. They provide theoretical and methodological foundations for such an approach, with the objective of stimulating further research on brands as sociocultural entities and branding as a culturally infused way of organizing and representing the world. They argue that it is only by embracing this cultural dimension of branding that researchers can better understand the role of brands in the global marketplace.

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. Cayla and Arnould offer some conceptual foundations for a culturally relative, contextually sensitive approach to international branding in which the construct of brand mythology is central. Looking at brands through the lens of stories helps researchers move away from the idea of consumers as passive recipients of brand meaning to the idea of consumers as cocreators of brand meaning who contribute meaning to brand architectures reflective of local cultural imaginaries.

Biography
Julien Cayla is Senior Lecturer at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales. His research on global marketing has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Handbook of International Marketing, Advertising and Society Review, and International Marketing Review. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado where he majored in marketing and minored in cultural anthropology. His dissertation examined the way companies learn about culture in the context of their interactions with advertising agencies. This work received the prestigious Alden Clayton Prize from the Marketing Science Institute as well as the Sheth Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Prize. In his research, he draws on anthropological theories and methodologies to study global marketing issues. He is the recipient of the 2008 Australian School of Business Research Award.

Eric Arnould is the University of Wyoming’s Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Business Practices. Dr. Arnould received his PhD in cultural anthropology with a minor in archeology from the University of Arizona in 1982. From 1975 to 1990, he worked on economic development in more than a dozen West African nations. Since 1990, he has been a full-time academic. His research investigates consumer ritual (Thanksgiving, New Year’s, football bowl games, Halloween, inheritance), service relationships (friendship and betrayal), West African marketing channels, and the uses of qualitative data. His work has appeared in the three major U.S. marketing journals (Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research) as well as many other social science periodicals and books.

J International Marketing, Volume 16, Number 4, December 2008
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