Correspondence: Wim Jurg, Hofakkers 14, 9468 EE Annen, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 592271048; Fax: +31 455762103; E-mail: wim.jurg@ou.nl

¹is a PhD candidate at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, where he is completing his thesis on the usefulness of systems constellations to identify branding opportunities. He was born in 1957 and holds a Masters in Econometrics and a Bachelor in Psychology. He has been working as an assistant marketing professor at the Open University of the Netherlands for 15 years, and has been a part-time brand advisor for 20 years.

²is Professor of Business Administration, especially Market Analysis and Relationship Management, and Head of the Strategy and Marketing Department at the Radboud University, Nijmegen. Born in 1961, she got her PhD in 1993 at Maastricht University. As a consultant, she has worked for different national and international organisations.

³is Professor of Organization Development at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, Nijmegen since 1999. His educational and research interests include human resource management, emotions in organisations, gender in organisations, power in organisations, organisational change, team based work and research methodology.

⁴is Professor of Marketing at Nyenrode Business University. He was born in 1960, got his PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam and is specialised in Customer Relationship Management. At Nyenrode, he is Director of the Cluster for Marketing & Supply Chain Management and responsible for executive programmes.

⁵is a former student of the Open University of the Netherlands, who examined a case study on the systems constellation technique as his marketing dissertation: the identification of a name logo opportunity by a Dutch marketing director of a global franchise services company. He was born in 1970 and holds Master in Electrical Engineering and in Business Management. He has been working for over ten years in IT and telecommunications in various technical and commercial positions.

Received 1 July 2007; Revised 1 July 2007; Published online 17 August 2007.

Abstract

Building strong brands has become one of the main marketing priorities for brand-supportive companies. The leading positivist paradigm in marketing may not be, however, the most-effective perspective in identifying branding opportunities. This paper offers an alternative phenomenological point of view by applying the innovative systems constellation technique within the soft systems methodology to identify new branding opportunities. A case study illustrates its content validity but also shows there is limited support for its reliability, which is in line with the positivists' reservation on phenomenological methods and techniques.