Recently, many brands have invested resources toward their “brand purpose.” Studies have identified a correlation between brand purpose and long-term financial performance. In response to high-profile calls to action, and the apparent demand from consumers, brands in a wide variety of categories have sought to define, articulate, and communicate their purpose. These efforts have placed purpose at the heart of a brand’s meaning structure and business strategy. But what is purpose, as it applies to brands? In what ways is brand purpose similar to, and how is it different from human purpose? This session will examine brand purpose, explore its relationship to human purpose, and discuss how engagement with purposeful brands may contribute to consumers’ own sense of life purpose.

This Wharton Webinar Series is powered by The Wharton Fund and is exclusively available to Wharton alumni with PennKey login credentials.

Date and Time:
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
12:00 PM ET — 1:00 PM ET

About Patti Williams
Patti Williams is the Ira A. Lipman Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Vice Dean of Wharton Executive Education.

Professor Williams examines ways consumers’ emotional responses influence consumption and persuasion. Her current research projects focus on how emotions influence consumer decisions and processes of persuasion; consumer responses to emotional and attitudinal ambivalence; and emotion regulation.

Her research has been published in top-tier academic journals including the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. She serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Marketing Research and is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Psychology. She previously served as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research and as President of the Society for Consumer Psychology.

She teaches a course on Strategic Brand Management to undergraduate and MBA students; previously she has taught the MBA core courses and classes on Advertising Management. Professor Williams earned her PhD and MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BA from Stanford University.
 
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