Stakeholder approach in branding: Evidence from oil and gas sector of Pakistan

Early research has mainly focused on customer perspective in brand value creation. However, recent researchhas identified the importance of brand valueinto non-customer areas. The main objective of this case study is to reflect stakeholders’ relations and their role in the brand value creation for the energy companies in Pakistan. For this purpose, we conducted a qualitative case study of a large Pakistani oil marketing company (OMC). Our results show that brand value in energy sector depends upon many stakeholders which are linked in a network with each other. As compared to the customers, other stakeholders are also important sources of brand value for petrochemical industry of Pakistan. Especially, the role of suppliers, distributers and government is very important source of brand value in Pakistani energy industry. These stakeholders’ role is of primary importance in Pakistani environment and this role is more than a supportive role. Every stakeholder has different expectations from the company which results in different outcome of relation for each stakeholder. Energy companies’ managers should find important variables which might be the requirement of each stakeholder's group in their respective companies. These variables may change from time to time. Therefore managers should contentiously find those relevant variables so that companies may wholly or partially fulfill stakeholders’ expectations. Finally, OMCs’ managers should also measure the outcome of the relations and for this purpose they should use multiple and different relevant criteria for each stakeholder's group.