Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, 6th edition

Published by Pearson (July 1, 2026) © 2027
  • Kevin Lane Keller
  • Vanitha Swaminathan

Title overview

For strategic management courses.

Creating profitable brand strategies in the digital age

Strategic Brand Management delivers unmatched breadth, depth and relevance in branding education. Prioritizing the consumer’s point of view, it combines a robust conceptual foundation with practical insights for optimizing short- and long-term brand strategies. An extensive collection of illustrative examples from US and global brands enhances topical discussions.

The 6th Edition features a new Chapter 2 covering modern marketing trends, such as consumer empowerment, generational shifts, data saturation and omnichannel expansion. The authors examine the skills and perspectives needed for building strong brands in the face of AI, maturing technologies and an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Hallmark features of this title

Learning by example

  • In-text examples illuminate key ideas and often highlight a specific brand or an issue faced by a brand.
  • Branding Briefs are real-world case scenarios that take a closer look at a brand’s strategy.
  • In-depth timelines for megabrands such as Amazon, Google and Apple reveal patterns in brand development.

Topical explorations

  • A Brand Focus section at the end of each chapter delves into specific branding-related topics such as brand audits, private labels and legal issues.
  • The Science of Branding sections throughout the text discuss the latest academic research on a topic, using jargon-free language.

New and updated features of this title

Forces defining modern marketing

  • NEW: An all-new Chapter 2, “Branding in the Modern Era,” describes the forces shaping modern brand management. New Branding Briefs in this chapter include “Marketing to Gen Z,” “Getting Creative with AI,” “How Brands Are Navigating the Amazon Era” and “Marketing Sustainable Products.”
  • REVISED: Connections to new AI and digital developments have been integrated throughout the text and across marketing applications. A variety of company-specific examples were also added.
  • REVISED: Chapter 8, “Integrated Marketing Communications,” has been thoroughly revised to reflect new and emerging technology-based concepts and practices, including emerging AI issues.

New examples and boxes in all chapters

  • UPDATED: More than 75 new examples were integrated across chapters. Ranging from Bob Marley and Star Wars to Oreo and Crayola, the examples span industries, geographies and organization types.
  • UPDATED: More than 30 new Branding Briefs include “Campbell’s Branding Challenges,” “Classic Brand Characters,” “The Downsides of Discounts” and “Location-Based Mobile Marketing.”
  • UPDATED: More than a dozen new topics in branding were incorporated, from brand journeys and data analytics to branding in emerging and developing markets.

Key features

Features of Pearson+ eTextbook for the 6th Edition

  • NEW: Embedded practice questions throughout the eTextbook are aligned with learning objectives. They reinforce understanding while actively engaging students with key concepts.
  • NEW: Interactive elements, exclusive to the eTextbook, deepen understanding through a dynamic, hands-on approach to learning branding concepts.

Table of contents

PART 1: OPENING PERSPECTIVES

  1. Brands and Brand Management
  2. Branding in the Modern Era

PART 2: IDENTIFYING AND DEVELOPING BRAND PLANS

  1. Elements of a Successful Brand Positioning
  2. Brand Resonance and the Brand Value Chain

PART 3: DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING BRAND MARKETING PROGRAMS

  1. Choosing Brand Elements
  2. Designing Marketing Programs
  3. Integrated Marketing Communications: Traditional Mass Communication Options
  4. Integrated Marketing Communications: Digital Communication Options and Artificial Intelligence
  5. Leveraging Secondary Brand Associations to Build Brand Equity

PART 4: MEASURING AND INTERPRETING BRAND PERFORMANCE

  1. Developing a Brand Equity Measurement and Management System
  2. Measuring Sources of Brand Equity: Capturing Customer Mindset
  3. Measuring Outcomes of Brand Equity: Capturing Market Performance

PART 5: GROWING AND SUSTAINING BRAND EQUITY

  1. Designing and Implementing Brand Architecture Strategies
  2. Introducing and Naming New Products and Brand Extensions
  3. Managing Brands Over Time
  4. Managing Brands Over Geographic Boundaries and Other Market Segments

PART 6: CLOSING PERSPECTIVES

  1. Closing Observations

Author bios

About our authors

Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Professor Keller has an AB (with distinction) in math and economics from Cornell University, an MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University and a PhD in marketing from Duke University. At Dartmouth, he has taught popular MBA and executive education courses on strategic brand management and marketing management.

Previously, Professor Keller was a tenured member of the faculty at Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he also served as the head of the marketing group. Additionally, he has been on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also been a visiting professor at Duke University and the Australian Graduate School of Management and has two years of industry experience as Marketing Consultant for Bank of America.

Professor Keller’s areas of expertise include consumer psychology and branding, communications and marketing strategies. His research has been published numerous times in each of the four major marketing journals—Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research and Marketing Science. An academic pioneer in the study of brands and branding, with more than 135 publications, he is one of the most highly cited of all marketing academics worldwide and has received numerous awards for his research accomplishments and impact.

Actively involved with industry, he has worked on a host of different types of marketing projects. He has served as a long-time consultant and trusted advisor to marketers for some of the world’s most successful brands, including Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Samsung. Additional brand consulting activities have been with other top companies such as Adobe, Allstate, Beiersdorf (Nivea), BJs, BlueCross BlueShield, Campbell, Capital One, Caterpillar, Colgate, Combe, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, General Mills, GfK, Goodyear, Hasbro, Heineken, Intuit, Irving Oil, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, L.L. Bean, Mayo Clinic, MTV, Nordstrom, Ocean Spray, Red Hat, SAB Miller, Serta, Shell Oil, Starbucks, Time Warner Cable, Unilever and Young & Rubicam.

Professor Keller served as an academic trustee for the prestigious Marketing Science Institute from 2000 to 2006, as its executive director from 2013 to 2015 and as a member of its executive committee and board from 2015 to 2022. He has also served as an expert witness for top firms and organizations such as Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Eaton, Ernst & Young, Facebook/Meta, Mercedes-Benz and the NFL. A popular and highly sought-after speaker, he has made keynote speeches and conducted workshops with top executives in a wide variety of forums. Some of his senior management and marketing training clients have included such diverse business organizations as AT&T, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Telekom, ExxonMobil, Fidelity, GE, Google, Hershey, Hyundai, IBM, Macy’s, Microsoft, Novartis, Pepsico, S.C. Johnson and Wyeth.

He has lectured at more than 150 conferences, conventions, seminars and symposiums all over the world, from Seoul to Johannesburg, from Sydney to Stockholm, and from Sao Paulo to Mumbai. Professor Keller is currently conducting a variety of research studies that address marketing, branding and communication issues. He is also the co-author with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev of Marketing Management, the most widely used MBA textbook in marketing around the world, now in its 17th edition.

An avid sports, music and film enthusiast, he has helped to manage and market, as well as serve as executive producer, for one of Australia’s great rock and roll treasures, The Church, as well as for the late American power-pop legends Tommy Keene and Dwight Twilley. He is a longtime member of the board of directors for the Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism. Professor Keller lives in Etna, New Hampshire, with his wife, Punam (also a Tuck marketing professor).

Vanitha Swaminathan is Thomas Marshall Professor of Marketing and Director, Center for Branding at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. She also serves as Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. Her research focuses on branding strategy and the conditions that foster consumer–brand relationships. Additionally, her research investigates how firms can successfully design brand strategies—such as co-branding, brand extensions, brand acquisitions and marketing alliances—to strengthen customer loyalty as well as to firm up stock market performance. More recently, her focus is on understanding how brand managers can leverage the power of social media to build stronger relationships with customers.

Professor Swaminathan has published in various leading marketing and management journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science and Strategic Management Journal. She recently completed a three-year term as co-editor of Journal of Marketing and has previously served as associate editor for the Journal of Consumer Psychology and Journal of Marketing. She has won awards for her research, including the Lehmann award for the best dissertation-based article and Journal of Advertising’s Best Paper Award; she was also named as a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar. Professor Swaminathan previously served on the American Marketing Association’s Academic Council from 2014 to 2020, and during that time served as a president of the Council. In light of her many scholarly and service contributions to the field of marketing, the American Marketing Association named her as AMA Fellow in 2024. In 2025, she won the university-wide award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring at the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Swaminathan’s research and commentaries on branding and digital marketing are quoted in various international media outlets such as Forbes, Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, The Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, NPR, Sirius Radio, Science Daily, Slate, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Economic Times (India), Frontline (India), BBC Brasil (UK) and Último. She has worked with companies such as the Hershey Company, Kraft Heinz, StarKist, AC Nielsen, GlaxoSmithKline and Procter & Gamble on marketing and branding consulting projects. She has also worked extensively with small businesses, advising them on their digital marketing efforts.

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