How to build a conscientious corporate brand together with business partners: A case study of Unilever

Although a few scholars have suggested that the strategic alignment of the corporate brand’s business partnernetwork is essential to bring the corporate brand conscience to life, there remains limited research about theprocess of creating a conscientious corporate brand together with such a business partner network. Thus, thispaper aims to investigate how a conscientious corporate brand is built together with its business partners. Toaddress this research objective, we conduct a single case study of Unilever, comprising interviews with itsmanagers and business partners. Findings show how Unilever: drives business and business relationships arounda corporate brand purpose; embraces balanced stakeholder and temporal perspectives; promotes strategic cocreationinitiatives; and reinforces the strategic alignment of its ecosystem of business partners. The findingscontribute to the literature by identifying the elements and describing the process of conscientious corporatebrand building with business partners.