Increasing competition, digitalization, and experience-based marketing approaches have transformed brands into strategic value-creation mechanisms for firms. Parallel to this transformation, conceptual diversity in the brand management literature has increased; however, this development has also led to a notable terminological ambiguity, particularly in the use of the concepts of brand building and branding. The frequent interchangeable use of these two concepts in the literature weakens theoretical coherence and has been observed to obscure causal relationships in empirical studies. The aim of this study is to conceptually distinguish between brand building and branding and to systematically clarify their focal points, functional boundaries, and the cause–effect relationship between them. The study adopts a conceptual research design and is based on a systematic literature review and conceptual–thematic analysis of studies published in SSCI- and Scopus-indexed journals over the last decade. The findings indicate that brand building represents perceptual and behavioral outcomes that emerge in consumers’ minds over time, whereas branding constitutes the strategic and managerial processes that enable these outcomes. The study demonstrates that brand building and branding are not alternative but complementary conceptual structures, thereby contributing conceptual clarity to the brand management literature.
Brand Management, Brand Building, Branding