Brand activism as a marketing strategy: an integrative framework and research agenda

This paper offers an integrative conceptual framework to posit brand activism (BA) as an organisation-driven phenomenon pertaining to the strategic marketing field. It is reasoned that, despite the growing managerial relevance of the phenomenon, BA still lacks a robust theoretical body, resulting in inconsistencies and ambiguities, in particular when it is explored from the firm perspective. Considering that BA is usually related to and confounded with other similar activisms, especially from the consumer perspective, we propose an integrative framework to synthesise the existing knowledge and explain how BA can be evidenced as a marketing strategy aiming to build specific ties with society that can evolve into a firm's relational resource. Applying the Antecedents, Decisions, and Outcomes framework to conduct a systematic literature review, we propose a framework that contributes to the extant literature by organising the knowledge on BA and clarifying the concept and the variables related to it. By doing so, we offer new research avenues, that will lead to further refinement and consensus on certain issues regarding BA, delineate the phenomenon in the marketing strategy field, as well as provide insights to managers in their decision-making process.