Adam Smith Business School

What inspires someone to post about a brand on social media, wear its logo with pride, or defend it when it’s criticised? For Professor Cleopatra Veloutsou, questions like these sit at the centre of modern branding. Her research lies in the multifaceted field of brand management, exploring how people form deep, often emotional connections with brands, and how these connections shape consumer experience and business value.

A leading scholar in brand management, Professor Veloutsou is particularly recognised for her expertise in brands as relationship facilitators, brand engagement, brand meaning and brand equity. Using diverse methodologies, she examines brands from both company and consumer perspectives across a range of national and international settings (online and offline) and industries, from fast-moving consumer goods to services such as banking and tourism.

Her work positions brands as relationship agents, both as partners in consumer relationships and as catalysts that foster relationships among consumers within brand communities. She studies contexts in which strong positive, negative, or mixed relationships emerge. Her research spans brand love and brand hate at the individual level, as well as collective expressions of identification within brand and anti-brand communities. More complex forms of brand relationships, such as brand polarisation or the transformation of brand love into brand hate, also feature prominently in her research agenda. Her findings highlight that meaningful brand relationships are shaped by repeated, personal interactions across a variety of settings, from lifestyle and fashion brands to digital platforms and co-created branding environments.

Professor Veloutsou’s work on consumer–brand engagement (CBE) conceptualises engagement as an active, invested relationship. Under this view, consumers do not simply use brands; they think about, care about, and interact with them in ways that reflect and shape their identity. In her published research, she identifies three core dimensions of engagement: cognitive, emotional and behavioural. Cognitive engagement reflects a consumer’s attention to and reflection on brand values; emotional engagement captures feelings of attachment, affection or trust; behavioural engagement includes visible activities such as creating brand-related content, participating in brand communities, or recommending the brand to others. Together, these dimensions explain why certain brands become central to a person’s self-concept and why consumers may advocate for them as they would for a friend or cause.

Her research on brand meaning, both conceptual and empirical, focuses on the creation and management of brand identity, image and reputation. A substantial part of her scholarly contributions develops theoretical frameworks for understanding and managing brand meaning, highlighting the roles of the brand as a symbol, a product, a person, user imagery, and experience imagery. She also examines brand co-creation, demonstrating that brand meaning does not simply flow from the company outward; instead, it emerges through interactions among firms, consumers and wider stakeholders.

Recognising brands as a company’s most valuable intangible asset, she also investigates the conceptualisation, measurement and dynamics of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). Her research shows how brand actions and participatory engagement contribute to stronger psychological connections and deeper brand equity.

Interdisciplinarity is a defining strength of her work. Drawing on marketing, psychology, communication theory and behavioural research, Professor Veloutsou adopts a holistic approach to understanding how brand relationships unfold in real life. Brands are not abstract constructs; they are experienced, interpreted, and even emotionally ‘lived’ by people. Her research helps to decode this lived experience in a way that is both theoretically rigorous and practically relevant.

Her findings align directly with the Adam Smith Business School’s strategic priorities in impactful research, cross- disciplinary insight, and real-world relevance. In an era when consumers expect authenticity and shared values, understanding how engagement is built and sustained has never been more important.

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For further information, please contact business-school-research@gla.systa-s.com 

First published: 25 November 2025