TY - THES A1 - Resch, René Matthias T1 - Three Essays on Brand Management in the Business-to-Business Context: Brand Identity, Brand Culture, and Brand Essence N2 - This dissertation examines the overarching research question of how the suppliers’ brand management in the form of brand identity, brand culture, and brand essence influences buyer-seller relationships in three independent essays. In Essay 1, I address the structure, capabilities, and outcomes of brand identity from a supplier perspective. Through qualitative interviews with suppliers, I examine how widespread the concept of brand identity is in practice and what exactly practitioners understand by it. Going further, I look at what capabilities and conditions are necessary for brand identity to be successful and what outcomes suppliers hope to achieve. Using an Information-Display-Matrix (IDM) test and a sample of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students, I examine the relevance of brand functions in more detail. In Essay 2, I use a dyadic dataset with matched buyer-seller dyads to examine the causes and effects of perceptual congruence and incongruence of brand culture strength on the buyer-seller relationship, while considering relationship-specific investments and interaction mechanisms as moderating effects. I show that congruence and incongruence have different effects on customer loyalty and price sensitivity and that these are strongly context-dependent. In Essay 3, I deal with brand essence strength interactions and their effects on the buyer-seller relationship. I use a dyadic dataset with matched buyer-seller dyads to show how brand essence strength influences customer loyalty and customer profitability, and how it interacts with key customer attitudes and other important buyer-seller relationship closeness indicators. This dissertation makes a significant contribution to the literature on brand identity, brand culture, and brand essence in buyer-seller relationships. Furthermore, my dissertation offers practical implications for managers at B2B suppliers who (re)shape their brand management with a focus on the inner parts of the brand. KW - brand management KW - business-to-business KW - brand identity KW - brand culture KW - brand essence Y1 - 2023 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-uni-passau/frontdoor/index/index/docId/1158 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-11589 ER -