of the metaphor to organize, analyse and present the findings proves to be a fruitful way to illustrate these issue, and parallels between the two "stories" provide further insights into behaviour -the denial of responsibility for (and the existence of) social inadequacies; and the implicit (and inevitable) existence of the capacity for social inadequacy in any business organization.Practical Implications -the potential to communicate managerial lessons by telling "stories" (the case) through well known "stories" (the novel) is highglighted.Originality/Value -the use of the constructed metaphor to analyse a case of international retail divestment is, to our knowledge, unique and enhancers our understanding of the legitimisatyion process and the role of socio-moral codes in this process.

Echoing the shift in orientation from transactional to relationship marketing (Gronroos 2006), the debate over the process of branding has moved from a managerially closed to a socially open orientation (Pitt, Watson, Berthon, Wynn and Zinkhan 2006) creating a multidisciplinary intellectual puzzle. In light of the 'limit attitude' approach in critical marketing (Tadajewski and Brownlie 2008), this paper attempts to make sense of this puzzle through a critical examination of the evolution in branding thought. The paper concludes by developing a synthesis, through a constructed tree metaphor, which conceptualizes the multidisciplinary process of branding within a single organic (holistic and integrated) framework.

Purpose-The paper aims to shed light on the potential of ethnography to provide a dialectical approach to modeling the process of branding as its focus widens from managerial to social.Design/methodology/approach-A critical approach to ethnography is adopted and implemented in light of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's ethnographic modeling technique of 'Participant Objectification' (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).Findings-The paper demonstrates from the customer standpoint-of a case of a grocery retailer-the ability of critical ethnography to dialectically model the branding process as an organic cultural whole, which envelops an intricate set of different, yet interdependent, social and managerial systems, functioning in a coherent and complementary manner. Research limitations-The empirical evidence is limited to the area of grocery retailing. Thus, widening the application of the technique in other areas would be desirable. Practical implications-The dialectical nature of the critical approach to modeling yields a rich multi-faceted view of the branding process that could help remedy the problem of detachment from complex reality, which has often been a criticism of traditional approaches to modeling in marketing.Originality/Value-The suggested dialectical approach to modeling expands the potential use of ethnography within the critical orientation to theory building in marketing generally, and branding in particular through elaborating the process of cultural construction from textual via participant observation to dialectical via participant objectification.

As a highly customer-sensitive business, retailing is one of the most socially active industries. Nevertheless, when addressing retailers as brands, the retailing literature has failed to account for their unique social orientation, exposing a gap in the literature. This paper utilizes the sociological view of brands to socially construct a conceptual retail brand model from the customer standpoint. An ethnographic study of grocery retailing revealed that the store has, metaphorically, a tree-shaped culture, which can organically model the interplay between building the retailer brand as a culture and the phases constituting the social-self concept.