When does brand purpose stop creating brand equity? The moralizations trap of strategic self-sabotage

Abstract

This study aims to conceptualize article challenges the assumption that brand purpose inherently strengthens brand equity. Drawing on hybrid logics theory, brand meaning theory and event system theory, the study examines the conditions under which brand purpose shifts from a value-generating resource to a source of erosion in consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). This paper adopts a theory-driven conceptual approach that integrates institutional hybridity, cultural branding and semiotics. It develops a process-based model that theorizes three mechanisms: hybrid logic imbalance, meaning saturation and moral alignment and articulates a temporal trajectory (infusion–saturation–dilution). Propositions specify the nonlinear relationships between purpose intensity and the core dimensions of CBBE: perceived quality, brand associations and brand awareness. Brand purpose enhances brand equity only when moral and market logics remain in a hybrid balance. When moral logic becomes disproportionately dominant, meaning saturation emerges, marked by virtue clutter, semantic overload and elasticity breakdown. This erosion is temporally structured, with brands evolving from moral enrichment to symbolic congestion and, eventually, dilution. Moral alignment moderates these effects: low alignment accelerates equity decline. This study reconceptualizes brand purpose as a fragile hybrid meaning system prone to symbolic exhaustion. By introducing hybrid logic imbalance and meaning saturation as explanatory mechanisms and theorizing their temporal dynamics, the paper offers a critical departure from linear purpose models and opens new directions for theory and empirical investigation in branding.