The real purpose of purpose-driven branding: consumer empowerment and social transformations

Despite the concept of purpose gaining attention in the business world, academic research on purpose-driven branding is scarce and the cognitive–affective–conative categories used in previous studies are not sufficient to explain how it works. This paper outlines a framework that explains how purpose branding is performed in practice. Such a framework is lacking from the extant scholarship, the key reasons for which can be found in the research limitations in previous studies. We argue that studies on brand purpose should include new theoretical categories: consumer empowerment and transformation of practices. We advance this idea based on the theory of social practices. Using case studies of purpose-branding campaigns, we discuss how brand purpose empowers consumers and fosters transformations of their practices. We present a framework that explains how purpose branding works using the categories suggested.