Branding & Consumption

Branding & Consumption concerns the role of brands and branding in consumer society. Brands have transformed the way companies manage their business and consumers manage their social lives. Brands function as an interface between companies and consumers and works as a medium for meaning making. Consumers have also become more active in sharing their views of brands with many others through new media channels. Brand management is thus increasingly an issue of managing meaning.

The course takes a social constructivist approach. From such an approach, brands are viewed as socially constructed and negotiated by market actors such as managers, marketers and consumers. The aims of the course is to provide the students with a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand and analyze the relation between branding and consumption and give them the opportunity to develop practical knowledge through a real business case. Therefore, the course is divided into two phases: a theoretical and a practical one.