The associate professors Niels Kornum and Richard Gyrd-Jones published an article about brand identity

Research challenges branding as an inside-out, managerially controlled process. Brand are powerful because of what they mean for stakeholders: authors suggest this meaning is embedded in nested identities across stakeholders.

Find the article here:

Interplay between intended brand identity and identities in a Nike related brand community: Co-existing synergies and tensions in a nested system, Journal of Business Research.

Commentary by Robert Kozinets, here:

Brand Networks as the interplay of Identities, Sleves, and Turtles: Commentary on "Interplay between intended brand identities in a Nike related brand community: Co-existing synergies and tensions in a nested system"