Il corporate re-branding: un’analisi sistematica della letteratura e la proposta di un’agenda di ricerca

The aim of the work is to propose a systematic literature review on the subject of corporate re-branding to provide a detailed description of the current state of research and guide future studies. A systematic review of the literature was conducted through a qualitative content analysis, and the scientific production was the subject of a descriptive and thematic analysis of its content. The analysis, conducted on 73 journal articles, allows to: profile the literature, in terms of both temporal and per magazine distribution of the articles, and identify the research methods used in the papers; determine the thematic categories deepened by the corporate re-branding literature; evaluate existing research on corporate re-branding and propose future research paths. The paper limits the review to academic articles published in national and international journals and, therefore, to the exclusion of conference proceedings, books, book chapters and editorials. The work provides the first systematic review of the literature in the field of corporate re-branding, where scientific production is characterized, in numerical terms, by the prevalence of papers that adopt a “phenomenon- driven” approach, in which, more and more often, there are case studies based on the observation of real phenomena, that are considered, in the uniqueness of their manifestation, as part of a specific context and, therefore, are difficult to generalize. In particular, these case studies focus only on some aspects and phases of re-branding, leaving scholars and managers without a vision of the business process in its entirety.