Brand Strategy Co-Creation in a Nonprofit Context: A Strategy-as-Practice Approach

Abstract

Literature increasingly acknowledges stakeholders’ voluntary involvement in formerly internal processes and structures of nonprofit organizations. This article contributes to extant literature by investigating how stakeholders get involved in and co-create brand strategy, a core intangible asset for nonprofit organizations. To this end, the article conceptualizes the process of nonprofit brand strategy co-creation from a strategy-as-practice perspective and empirically investigates this process in the context of a child care facility. The article identifies four processes characterizing strategic branding praxis—informing, relating, caring, and reassuring—that manifest in a variety of situated practices and foster the maintenance of a strategic status quo. The data further show a dynamic interplay of stability and adaptation shaped by individual, organizational, and market contexts. These findings provide the basis for proposing a model of brand strategy co-creation that synthesizes the social and contextual dynamics characterizing brand strategy development in a nonprofit context.