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A sizable research stream in marketing finds that a strong fit between a brand extension product and its parent brand encourages positive consumer responses. Yet this large body of literature fails to provide managers with specific practical guidance about how to create brand-extension fit for optimal results. The problem is a lack of understanding of what brand-extension fit really is, and there has been little work to address this issue by synthesizing the key dimensions of brand-extension fit. The current article addresses this gap by identifying the key constituent dimensions of brand-extension fit. This is an important topic because brand extensions are essential for business renewal and growth. We identify six dimensions of brand-extension fit: feature-based, function-based, resource-based, usage-occasion-based, market-based, and image-based fit. Each dimension addresses a different aspect of brand-extension fit and suggests ways for brand managers to create brand-extension fit. Less expected is that studies that use a strict subset of these dimensions overweight those fit dimensions that are included, and the associated estimated coefficients are biased. From a managerial perspective, counterfactual analysis also shows that reliance on a strict subset of these dimensions results in suboptimal decisions.

Leveraging cross-gender brand extensions (new product offerings under the same brand name for customers of the opposite sex) can facilitate brand growth. However, how such strategies should be implemented remains unanswered. A popular approach is to launch a brand extension in the same or a similar product category (high fit). However, for cross-gender brand extension, this strategy can dilute the gender personality of the parent brand (i.e. masculinity or femininity). We propose that launching cross-gender brand extensions in a product category with low fit is an effective strategy as it enables cognitive distancing of the extension from the parent brand. Two experiments confirm that introducing low (versus high) fit cross-gender brand extensions mitigate the parent brand’s gender personality dilution, leading to more positive evaluations of the parent brand amongst existing customers and higher purchase intention amongst new target customers for the cross-gender brand extension.

Entering a new product category or new geographic area may mean adding one or more new competitors with names similar to that of the now-extended brand names those competitors have trademarked or can claim by common law as first users. A company extending its brand therefore may be unable to use its own trademark legally unless it can show the brand extension as a natural expansion. Most such lawsuits settle, but this study uses legal research methods to examine 12 that went to trial. Results show a brand extender most often prevailing in court if and only if (1) its extension into a new product category is seen as similar to its current offerings or (2) its geographic expansion is seen as simply moving into an area in which it already has market presence. By contrast, a firm may lose out to a company already using a similar name for a diverse set of reasons: products differing from their current offerings, differing trademarks, weak marks, or if buyers seem unlikely to encounter both users of the name in question. But no bright line divides winners from losers.

While brand extensions have been widely practiced in contemporary business marketing and management, empirical rather than hypothetical examinations of extended branding in the hospitality sector are still scant. This study responds to current research gap by comprehensively modeling and assessing the effectiveness of brand extensions of a high-end automobile brand into full scale restaurant services. Brand fit is constructed as the mediator between the extended brand and the high-end parent brand. Data were gathered from 258 patrons at one ‘Mercedes me’ restaurant in east China. Research findings from Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) showed that brand quality, brand fit, brand satisfaction and brand loyalty were positively related to each other for the restaurant brand of the high-end auto maker. The interrelationship between brand quality and brand satisfaction of the extended brand was significantly mediated by its brand fit with the parent high-end auto brand modeling. This study contributes to knowledge enrichment on the mechanism of brand extensions and their effects on the equities of both the extended brand and the parent brand in the hospitality sector.

When business-to-business (B2B) brands extend into the consumer market, considering that end consumers are generally unfamiliar with B2B brands, managers often tend to expend extensive efforts in advertising the brand extension. However, insights into how B2B brands can leverage their industry background when extending into the B2C market are still lacking. In this study, we investigated whether, when, and how highlighting the industry background of a B2B brand in the advertisements of its B2C products influence brand extension evaluation. Our results indicate that presenting information on the B2B brand’s industry background may facilitate consumers’ evaluation of its extended B2C product. This positive impact is enhanced when the advertisement has competence appeal and alleviated when it has warmth appeal. The interaction between industry background and advertising appeal is mediated by consumers’ perceptions of brand personality appeal clarity. Our study provides insights into how B2B brand managers can leverage brands to drive an effective brand extension into B2C market.

When new products are announced, stakeholders often expect them to be congruent with the brand. Nevertheless, brands often go against stakeholders’ expectations and announce less congruent new products. However, the effects of brand congruence on consumers’ brand engagement (i.e., the sharing and commenting of posts) are not well understood. Drawing on schema-congruity theory, we show that (1) consumers are more curious about less congruent new products announced on social media, (2) this curiosity drives their intention to engage with the posted announcement, and (3) brand background operates as a boundary condition of this effect. While prior work shows that high congruence drives positive evaluations of brand extensions, we find that this positive effect only holds for brands with a traditional (vs. non-traditional) background. We demonstrate the robustness of our findings across three experiments using real and fictitious brands.

Background Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament - a shorter version of the sport which is played between assorted company-owned or individual owner teams - has grown immensely popular over the last decade. There is long history of tobacco advertisement, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) in cricket. While direct and indirect TAPS is completely prohibited under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003 the nexus between tobacco industry and cricket in India continues. We monitored any tobacco product and allied brand or surrogate advertisement, promotion, sponsorship (TAPS) or placement during every match played in the IPL-13 season in the year 2020. Methods Using an investigative approach, 60 match highlights during IPL-13 (during September 19 to November 10, 2020) were monitored for TAPS (both on-site i.e. sportswear and/or in stadia) shown on the official website ( www.iplt20.com ). All sponsors and advertisers were validated using brand names or logos from their respective official website. Results Two IPL teams (Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bangalore) were sponsored by major tobacco industry owned brands. Violations by a major smokeless tobacco company promoting their brand extension product i.e. Vimal Elaichi, on the official telecast websites ( www.espncricinfo.com and www.cricbuzz.com ) and television channels ( www.Zeenews.india.com/Gujarati ) was observed. Tobacco companies i.e. Kamla Pasand and ITC Limited were also listed as associate sponsors for the 2020 championship. Conclusion Despite comprehensive ban under India's tobacco control law (COTPA, 2003), sponsorship by tobacco industry was found widespread in IPL-13. Advertisement and logos of tobacco companies are persistent during the telecast and promotion of the IPL events, in clear violation of India's tobacco control legislation and Article 13 of WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) and its guidelines. Given that India and South Asia comprise the largest audience for televised cricket, strong exclusion criteria is needed by the international cricket authority and national cricket associations to ensure compliance with the national law and global good practice, making the cricketing world truly tobacco free.

The study investigates how customer perceptions of parent brands influence the perceived value of brand extensions in the hotel industry and how these relationships are moderated by the nature of the brand extension in question. Drawing on brand equity logic, the study proposes that perceived positive brand attributes, awareness, attitudes, and loyalty toward the parent brand positively relate to higher perceived value of the brand extension, and that these positive relationships grow stronger in cases of step-down extensions rather than step-up extensions. Survey results from UK hotel customers reveal that only perceived parent brand attributes and attitudes seem to have a positive impact on perceived value of the extension and subsequent (re)visit intentions. The moderation results further reveal that the positive relationships turn stronger in cases of step-down extensions and insignificant during step-up extensions. Managers are therefore cautioned to apply step-up extensions too frivolously, as such extensions seem largely ineffective in generating consumer value and subsequent behavioral intentions, whereas the effectiveness is heightened in cases of step-down extensions.

The findings of prior research suggest that several factors, including consumer characteristics, parent brand characteristics, and extension characteristics, determine consumers’ acceptance of brand extensions. Our research posits that an extension’s associations, especially the one that transforms a product into a brand extension, are preeminent in determining consumer response to brand extensions. We present findings of five studies which show that the accessibility of the extension’s association with its parent brand is paramount in determining consumer response to brand extensions contingent upon fit, a moderating effect that persists even in the presence of additional highly diagnostic non-parental information. Implications of our findings are presented for brand extension researchers and managers.

This research bridges the literature on developmental psychology and marketing by distinguishing perceived operational competence from perceived conceptual competence and examines their differentiated impacts on the evaluation of brand extensions. We conducted a study analyzing mixed secondary and survey data, a study based on big data analysis, and an experimental study. The results show that perceived operational competence, which represents the skills needed to manufacture existing products or familiar product features, leads to higher evaluations of near brand extensions through the “fit” of the transferability of manufacturing facilities, skills, or technologies. In contrast, perceived conceptual competence, which represents the ability to generalize the abstract brand concept and establish a relationship between existing situations and new settings, leads to higher evaluations of far brand extensions through the “fit” of brand concept consistency.

Brand extension is a strategy widely used among firms with high brand equity to launch new products into the market. This strategy has been the subject of considerable scholarly interest over the last few years. However, there are very few published works that have focused on analyzing brand extensions in the heritage context or, more specifically, in relation to the UNESCO World Heritage brand. The present study examines the extent to which the authenticity of a brand extension pertaining to a heritage destination parent brand affects the formation of brand equity for the extension. It takes into account the moderating roles of brand extension credibility and tourists’ experience and product knowledge. To fulfill the research objectives, an experimental design is applied to a sample of 217 tourists visiting the Monumental Complex of the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, Spain, and the degree of authenticity of the brand extension is manipulated between subjects. The findings show that brand extension authenticity exerts a direct effect on brand extension equity, and an indirect effect, via brand extension credibility: these effects being activated only beyond certain levels of tourist experience of the heritage site and product knowledge.

Although consumers often encounter brand extensions for the first time during a store visit, most research on brand extensions does not take into consideration how product display in retail environments might affect evaluation of a brand extension. We explore the effect of two distinct display formats on brand extension evaluations: by-brand display, where a brand extension is presented in the context of other products made by the same parent brand (e.g., Nike razors displayed with Nike sneakers, Nike sportswear, etc.), and by-category display, where a brand extension is presented in the context of competing brands within the extension category (e.g., Nike razors displayed with Philips razors, Gillette razors, etc.). Three studies demonstrate that low fit extensions of high quality brands are evaluated more favorably when displayed by-category than by-brand, whereas high fit extensions of low quality brands are evaluated more favorably when displayed by-brand than by-category. In support of the proposed underlying mechanism, we show that display format influences consumers’ evaluations of brand extensions by changing the weight of importance given to parent brand quality and brand-extension fit information. Finally, we demonstrate that display format not only influences evaluation of the extension, but also has downstream consequences for the consumption experience with the extension.

Asians are more likely than Westerners to have both a relational (vs. analytic) thinking style and a prevention (vs. promotion) focus. These two chronic dispositions can have opposite effects on their evaluations of brand extensions, the relative magnitude of which depends on whether the extensions are construed at a concrete or abstract level. Results of three experiments demonstrate that when an extension is psychologically close and construed at a concrete level, Asians' disposition to engage in relational thinking leads them to perceive the extension to be relatively more similar to the parent, leading them to evaluate the extension more favorably than do Westerners. On the other hand, when the extension is psychologically distant and construed at an abstract level and thus Asians are unlikely to engage in relational processing, their prevention focus leads them to perceive the extension to be riskier and evaluate it less favorably than do Westerners.

The use of co-branding and brand extension strategies, as a way to gain access to new markets and improve overall brand salience, has grown tremendously in the past few decades. Despite the continued success of alliances between brands belonging to diverse categories, there is surprisingly little research on identifying broader cross-category effects using current digital approaches. In our work, we introduce a new, scalable approach for inferring cross-category branding insights using implicit brand networks on social media. Unlike traditional social networks that involve explicit interaction between the entities, links within a brand network are implicit and arise due to common followership between brands on Twitter. Asymmetry among brand pairs is taken into account to calculate the transcendence of brands onto new categories. Transcendence of a brand along any given category is defined as the extent to which its followers overlap with other brands from that category. Asymmetry is also leveraged to show which brands will benefit more from a cobranding alliance. Overall, the analysis is conducted at different time periods to track shifts in brand transcendence and investigate its impact on co-branding opportunities. All findings are validated against external survey ratings and extensive robustness checks are conducted.

On Sunday, February 26, 2017, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) erred on live television when Brian Cullinan, PwC's U.S. Board Chairman and Managing Partner of PwC's Southwest region, handed the announcers the wrong envelope for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards Ceremony (hereafter, the Oscars). Cullinan's blunder represented a clear lack of competence in a non-audit service (NAS) context. Building on prior brand extension research, we hypothesize that market participants transfer their assessment of Cullinan's Oscars ceremony (i.e., NAS) incompetence to the financial statement audit competence of PwC's publicly traded audit clients. Consistent with this prediction, we find that abnormal returns in the days following the error are significantly lower for PwC clients in the region Cullinan managed, suggesting an impaired reputation for audit quality. However, losses experienced by PwC clients were restored within a month after the blunder, suggesting the durability of PwC's reputation in overcoming the initial impairment. Taken together, our evidence suggests that investors find the disclosure of audit partner identity to be informative.

Based on resource advantage theory of competition, we attempt to identify industrial brand equity dimensions in today's competitive, high-technology, and global business-to-business environment. Through a quantitative study with 443 buying center members who are purchase decision makers, we find that industrial brand equity can be established in a number of dimensions: (1) functional advantage in products, (2) solution advantage in services, (3) analytical advantage in CRM, (4) omni-channel advantage in communication, (5) symbolic advantage in publicity, and (6) network advantage in resource sharing. The six dimensions have significant impacts on customer perceived value and brand loyalty. Furthermore, purchasers, managers, and users, who undertake major decision making roles in the buying center, weigh these dimensions differently during brand evaluations. The findings suggest that industrial brand managers focus on building brand equity through establishing key resource advantages in the different brand usage situations encountered by buying center members.

Hotels are becoming increasingly oriented towards developing relationships with their consumers (patrons/guests), giving rise to a heavy focus on consumer-brand relationships in tourism and hospitality research. This study examines the extent to which consumers’ perceived relationship orientations of hotel brands (i.e., PBRO) influences their identification with and anticipated emotions towards hotel brands, which in turn drives desirable performance outcomes for hotels such as the share of wallet, consideration set size, and revisit intention. To test our hypotheses, we recruited 376 respondents via Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). We found that consumer-brand identification and anticipated emotions mediate the relationship between perceived brand relationship orientation and all performance outcome variables. These mediating effects are moderated by consumer involvement with hotel choice. Specifically, consumer involvement positively moderates the link between PBRO and consumer-brand identification and negatively moderates the effects of PBRO on anticipated emotions.

As a widely-used strategy among firms wishing to launch new products, brand extension has been the focus of numerous studies in recent years. However, very few works have focused on analysing brand extensions in the cultural context – that is, the use of a brand linked to cultural heritage as the parent brand from which to grow the extension. The present investigation is designed to shed light on this issue, taking the Monumental Complex of the Alhambra and Generalife (MCAG) as the parent brand for analysis. The work examines the effect of two factors, brand extension fit and brand extension authenticity, on attitudes toward the brand extension. A between-subjects experimental design was used: 2 (high vs. low degree of brand extension fit) × 3 (high, moderate, and low degree of brand extension authenticity). The results demonstrate that there is a transfer of positive effect from the MCAG parent brand to the brand extension, and that the greater the degree of the extension's authenticity relative to the Monumental Complex, the stronger this transfer.

This empirical study integrates the theory of brand touchpoints and the theory of brand experience to investigate the combined effect of pre-consumption and consumption experience on consumer perceived value (CPV) and brand preference. We chose cosmetics retailing for investigation and consumers from a major emerging market: China. Findings reveal that favorable experience with the brand's marketing communication activities during the pre-consumption stage will elicit positive affective responses to enhance brand preference that contributes directly to perceived value and indirectly to brand loyalty. The study extends the conceptualization of consumption-based evaluation of perceived value of service brands to include the consideration of pre-consumption experience. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the impact of different contact points on the development of brand equity in both pre-consumption and consumption phases from a holistic brand management perspective and provide guidelines for resource allocation on various marketing mix programs.

The aim of the present study is to establish a framework for the study of luxury brand extension and to discover whether the brand equity of the parent product brand can be transferred to the extended service brand. Despite many benefits achieved by implementing successful brand extension strategies in the luxury industry, there are several obstacles that negatively influence both the extended brand and the parent brand. Because a negative effect of the vertical brand extension was found in past studies, this study focused on the horizontal brand extension to evaluate and predict possible positive outcomes in the horizontal brand extension process. Thus, this study investigates the role of brand equity, especially when the luxury brand was used to introduce upscaled service brands, in relation to a theoretical framework of brand equity. Additionally, the difference in the purchase intention among demographic groups was examined as it might offer an opportunity for developing a new strategy.

Different studies on consumer/customer-based brand equity (CBBE), have revealed varying pictures of components and divergent relationships. The current study analyzed a large dataset with path analysis to test: 1) the validity of a general CBBE model (familiarity, image, quality, brand value, consumer value, and loyalty); 2) the validity of a customer model (+satisfaction) using data for a single destination brand; 3) the cross-brand validity of the general model for five U.S. destination brands; and 4) the cross-market validity of both models for different segments based on nationality, gender, and past visitation. The results revealed that familiarity and image were the two most prominent components explaining loyalty in both models, although both consumer value and brand value also had some mediating effects on loyalty. The model was variant for different destinations, variant for different nationalities, partially variant for different genders, and invariant for visitors and non-visitors of one destination brand.

Fashion retailers are increasingly entering into brand alliances with visual artists, but the conditions under which such alliances are most effective are not clear. Drawing on brand personality and implicit personality theory, we used two experimental studies to show both negative (dilution of retailer's original personality) and positive (expansion of personality) effects. Study 1 demonstrated that retail brand personality was diluted when the visual artist had a strongly incongruent personality, while it was expanded when the artist had a personality moderately incongruent to the retailer's brand, but only for consumers who hold an incremental theorist view of personality. Study 2 showed that consumers' implicit theory beliefs can be primed to design the intended personality of retail brands through artist partnerships. Our findings suggest visual artists are an untapped source of value that retailers can exploit to create differentiated brand personalities as a way to gain a greater market appeal.

Pressure to manage complex and dynamic brand portfolios has posed a serious challenge for firms in protecting their brand identity and retaining loyal customers. To help firms overcome this challenge, the authors propose the new construct of brand portfolio coherence (BPC) to describe consumers' perceptions that (sub-)brands in a brand portfolio share a common underlying logic of features reflected in design, personality, and status. Through three comprehensive studies, the research develops and validates a multi-dimensional measure of BPC and differentiates it from relevant constructs, such as brand fit, connection, positioning, trust, and loyalty. Nomological examination shows that perceived BPC improves (re)purchase decisions with regard to brands in the portfolio. Furthermore, the research uncovers the mechanisms through which BPC exerts its impact and identifies customer-, product-, and brand strategy–related boundaries of the effect. Overall, the BPC construct and measure offer useful tools and managerial implications for firms to effectively manage brand portfolios to retain and grow customer base.

In this study, we conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of store brand introductions on the price leadership relations in a distribution channel between a retailer and national brand manufacturers. We analyze a multi-product category retail database from a major grocery chain, which captures both a period before and a period after the introduction of a store brand in each product category. By applying the time series approach to this data set, we show that store brand introductions frequently lead to price leadership changes, generally in a more favorable direction for the retailer than for the national brand manufacturer, evidenced by either the decay of the manufacturers’ price leadership or the rise of the retailer’s price leadership. However, such a change is not universal but tends to be concentrated among a certain quality tier of national brands, which is not always the low-tier, but sometimes the top-tier despite the low-price low-quality position of the store brand. The patterns detected in the data suggest that these changes are likely to reflect the retailer’s strategic effort to reshape the price leadership environment in a product category aided by the enhanced bargaining power and managerial sophistication that accompanied the store brand introductions.

This study analyzes the effects of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) on brand equity and customer response in the airline industry. A survey was conducted with a total of 302 passengers who used social media managed by airlines, and the collected data were analyzed via structural equation modeling. The results showed that trendiness was the most important SMMA component, and airline SMMAs had significant effects on brand awareness and brand image. In addition, the results demonstrated that brand awareness significantly affected commitment and that brand image significantly affected online word-of-mouth and commitment. It is expected that the results of this study may be used as fundamental data in the development of airline SMMA strategies, particularly by investigating the relative importance of each SMMA component and analyzing the effects of SMMAs.

This study analyzes a retailer’s store brand quality decision in vertically differentiated product categories. We analyze a game theoretic model composed of one or two national brand manufacturers and a retailer, who strategically chooses the quality level(s) of its store brand(s) relative to the well-established national brand position(s) to maximize its category profit. Our analysis reveals that the nature of a retailer’s store brand quality positioning is quite different from the manufacturer’s national brand positioning decision, and that the best position for a store brand is not “as close to a national brand as possible” as previous studies suggest. Instead, the optimal quality position of each store brand is remarkably sensitive to the distribution of consumers’ willingness-to-pay. In particular, the relative proportions of quality sensitive consumers and price sensitive consumers determine the balance of three key strategic forces — the market expansion force, the retail margin force, and the consumer profitability force, leading to different optimal product line designs for store brands across different category environments. Interestingly, against multiple incumbent national brands, the retailer’s optimal product line design includes a store brand positioned at the highest quality level in the category only if most consumers are moderately quality conscious. We also analyze the implications of national brands’ brand equity for retailers’ store brand strategy.

Fast fashion brands, such as H&M, have co-branding projects with designer luxury brands. However, how the brand loyalties of the associated brands theoretically affect the co-branding's performance is largely unknown. Motivated by the observed industrial practices, we build a formal analytical model to examine the impacts of brand loyalty on revenues in luxury and fast fashion co-branding. The commonly adopted schemes in industry such as the profit sharing scheme, fixed-royalty scheme and mergers scheme are examined to investigate the brand performance. It is analytically found that the associated brands would perform best under the mergers scheme. This implies that the internal cooperation within a big group is the most desirable strategy for co-branding. Moreover, we provide the analytical evidence that fast fashion brands should work with well-known luxury fashion brands for brand alliance.

This study examines the effects of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) components (i.e., brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand image) of luxury hotel brands on consumer brand attitude and purchase intention with brand performance as a contextual factor. Through a survey involving 327 tourists conducted in luxury hotels in Macau, results reveal that all four CBBE elements positively relate to brand attitude, and three directly influence purchase intention. Brand attitude mediates the relationship between four CBBE elements and purchase intention, and brand performance moderates the relationship between brand attitude and purchase intention. This study expands CBBE theory to include luxury hotel brands and contributes to the literature by clarifying the direct, indirect, and total effects of each CBBE element on brand attitude and purchase intention. In addition, the study identifies brand performance as a contextual factor rather than a consequence of brand equity and brand attitude.

In this paper, we investigate an under-researched issue by examining the financial performances of both partner firms in a brand alliance. We find that a participating firm's brand value and other brand characteristics are associated with not only its own financial performance but also its partner's financial gains from the collaboration. Our results show that the participating firm gains higher stock returns when its partner's brand value is higher. However, brand value differential reduces the positive effect of brand value on the partner firm's financial performance. In addition, the primary partner's brand alliance experience helps increase the positive effect of primary partner's brand value on the stock returns of the secondary partner. The secondary partner's brand exploitation attenuates the positive effect of secondary partner's brand value on the stock returns of the primary brand firm.

International audience; This research shows that consumers' relationship to terroir store brand, measured through attachment and two facets of brand loyalty (attitudinal and behavioral) is respectively influenced by their perceptions of the product, retailer and store. More specifically, the perceived authenticity of the products of the terroir store brand and its perceived value have a positive and significant influence on the attachment and behavioral loyalty of the regular buyers of this store brand and a positive and significant influence on the attachment of its occasional buyers. Trust in the retailer has a positive and significant impact on the behavioral loyalty of the regular buyers of this terroir store brand while perceived image of the store has only a positive and significant impact on the attitu-dinal loyalty of its occasional buyers.

Marketers using social media are struggling with its successful implementation, specifically in engaging their audiences through creation of popular brand content. Yet, creating popular brand content can lead to positive financial and brand outcomes. This research examines Fortune 500 companies' brand content strategies that contribute to Facebook content popularity metrics (i.e., number of likes and comments) for service versus goods offerings. Building on psychological motivation theory and the noted differences in culture and capabilities between goods and service firms, the article analyzes the key differences in service and goods brand content strategies in terms of branding, message appeals, and vividness. The findings from a multivariate multilevel Poisson model show that the use of corporate brand names is more popular for service messages whereas the use of product brand names, images, and videos is more popular for goods messages. Furthermore, service messages generate a higher number of comments than goods messages.

This research examines the impact of a luxury limited-edition offer in the face of core brand image dilution of a luxury brand. Through utilizing two millennial subgroups (college- vs. post-college age) as research participants in two studies, the findings suggest that in a brand dilution condition, the limited-edition product enhances consumers’ attitudes toward the luxury brand and that these effects are more pronounced for consumers with a higher self-presentation motive. We also find that college-age millennials are more strongly influenced by social influences than post-college age millennials. The implications for academic researchers and luxury brand retail managers are discussed.

Brand pages in social media are a great way to foster consumer gathering around a brand, but it can be challenging to keep fans engaged and coming back to see updated content. Brands with millions of fans on Facebook have seen organic reach fall below 2% of their base. In this article, we describe how the creation of virtual brand communities can help brand managers increase fan engagement. We suggest the steps, conditions, advantages, and limitations involved in nurturing a brand page as an online social gathering that assumes some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community. The results of our study show that a brand page can have some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community—topical information exchange, identity communication, and establishment and internalization of cultural norms. We also show the importance of having celebrities among fans in order to foster social interactions and legitimate social practices on brand pages.

The brand management literature has long acknowledged the strategic importance of managing brand identity. However, prior empirical research has largely ignored brand attractiveness in building such identity in the eyes of consumers. Focusing on the airline industry, this study investigates the role of brand attractiveness in fostering customer brand identification. The empirical testing of the conceptual model suggests that brand prestige, brand distinctiveness, and memorable brand experiences have a significant indirect effect on customer brand identification through brand attractiveness, while brand social benefits contributes directly to such identification. The results also challenge prior empirical findings by providing strong support for the need to include brand attractiveness in cultivating identification. When brand attractiveness is incorporated in the model, the effects of brand prestige, brand distinctiveness, and memorable brand experiences became non-significant in predicting customer brand identification. The findings highlight the importance of projecting a brand identity that is attractive to target consumers in order to achieve customer brand identification.

In this research, we develop a fresh analytical model to examine the impact of brand quality on the firms’ performances when two firms selling substitute products form a brand alliance. Our results indicate that when two products have equal brand qualities, brand alliance is always a beneficial strategy for two firms to employ. However, when two products have different brand qualities, brand quality differential shows a positive relationship with the profit of the firm with the low-quality brand but demonstrates a negative relationship with the profit of the firm with the high-quality brand in the brand alliance. Our results also show that brand quality differential has a greater effect on the profit of the firm with the high-quality brand than on that of the firm with the low-quality brand. In addition, we find that brand alliance becomes much more valuable to the firm with the high-quality brand when the brand quality differential decreases, but the value of brand alliance has a concave relationship with the profit of the firm with the low-quality brand when the brand quality differential increases.

National brands have begun to engage in direct distribution, displaying the brand in its own biotope. Such operation of flagship stores is one means of forward verticalization. From samples of visitors to two flagship stores of fast-moving consumer goods brands, this study analyzes the effects of the flagship store visit on brand experience, brand equity, brand attachment, and loyalty. In the low-involvement FMCG context, flagship stores are useful for reinforcing brand experience. However, flagship store-fueled brand experience does not necessarily lead to favorable consumer reactions; its effect on future purchases is mediated by both brand equity and brand attachment.

We build a game-theoretic model of price competition between a national brand manufacturer and a retailer that also sells its private label. In particular, we examine a national brand's strategy of building brand premium in the context of channel coordination. The importance of national brand's brand equity has been well-documented in many empirical and behavioral studies. We reinforce the argument that building brand premium should be the first line of defense for a national brand instead of aggressively cutting wholesale price. Not only does the national brand manufacturer benefit from it, but also the retailer who sells both the national brand and its own private label has less incentive to promote the latter. Therefore, it can induce retailer cooperation, which is essential for a successful strategy in a distribution channel.

First, this paper aims to research and document the merger between two Companies. T-Mobile [Nasdaq] and Sprint [NYSE]. This merger is an agreement between the two wireless networks to undertake and unite the two in a prevailing agreement merger into one entity. Next, this strategic alliances, which accounts for the company willingness to consolidate with another company is an opportunity they both seek. The reasons for the merger with these two companies are to gain the market shares or to expand into new business segments (DePamphilis, 2017). Hence, the primary reason for each of these company's involving themselves into this activity is to please shareholders. Hence, a merger could be a vertical move, horizontal move, market extension, product extension or a conglomerate (DePamphilis, 2017). What we know about T-Mobile (TMUS) that it was considered a downtrodden wireless carrier in 2012 trying to change the employee’s morale in 2017 as the revenue started to rise, after the announcement of a merger with Sprint (Lieberman, 2019). Thus, T-Mobile had a bad year at the start of 2012 with major disappointments in market shares dropping behind Verizon (VZ), and AT&T (T) in the number of subscriber.

Extending a brand beyond its original product category is a major strategy for long-term profitability. A brand owner can internalize the development of the extension product, or license the brand to an external partner in order to exploit the licensee’s better capabilities and higher efficiency on the targeted market. Brand extension is characterized by the presence of the socalled reciprocal effect, whereby the effort exerted to develop and market the extension has a feedback effect – either positive or negative – on the value of the parent brand. Under licensing, this effect is an externality from the standpoint of the brand owner. The licensing relationship is characterized by double-sided moral hazard, requiring an incentivizing contract; the reciprocal effect adds a further element that should be governed by the contract. Indeed, a positive effect can boost the attractiveness of licensing relative to internal development, whereas a negative one can have the opposite effect. Drawing from extant literature, we build a game-theoretical model and show how reciprocal effect, (dis)similarity between the extension product and the parent brand, and (in)efficiency of the brand owner relative to the licensee in developing the extension shape the optimal licensing contract and affect the choice between internal development and licensing.

Brand extension is an important concern in the success of a brand and if not done properly, can cause a serious damage to the brand being extended. This study aim to investigate the factors of brand extension and their impact on parent brand image. The selected factors were Perceived Fit, Customer awareness and innovativeness, and Brand Associations, and their impact on Parent Brand Image were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and Structural Equation modeling. For this likert scale type questionnaire was used to gather data from 189 people in the city of Karachi. The result suggested that brand extensions affect their parent brand in terms of certain variables (discussed later in the study). This paper also shares some real time examples of brands involved in attempts of extending them.

It is a common belief that users of a brand in one category are more likely to purchase brand extensions than non-users of the brand. This study examines whether extensions actually do facilitate purchase of the brand in a second category. We analyze one year of household purchasing data for approximately 60,000 US households to understand the level of cross-category purchasing brand extensions achieve. We investigate 98 extensions across 30 CPG category pairings. This study finds: • Purchasing a brand in one category makes a consumer, on average, 2.4 times as likely to purchase the same brand in a second category compared to a consumer who purchased a different brand in the original category. • Extensions in complementary categories achieve the highest levels of cross-category sharing. • Extensions in categories which are substitutable, or have high, moderate or low levels of similarity to the original product category all achieve cross-category purchasing higher than what is expected for two unrelated brands. The overall finding provides empirical support for the theory of brand equity, specifically that usage & familiarity with a brand name in one category facilitates purchase of that brand in other categories.

Many firms adopt an ingredient branding strategy when introducing new products, whereby a host brand integrates a branded ingredient. Research suggests that perceived fit between the host and ingredient brands should influence the success of such brand partnerships. Not all firms, however, may be able to find appropriately fitting branded ingredients, such as luxury brands which may find it nearly impossible to partner with other luxury brands and therefore need to consider non-luxury partners. The current research examines consumer responses to a real-world ingredient partnership between a luxury host brand (TAG Heuer) and non-luxury ingredients (Intel and Google), who have come together to produce a new product (a luxury smartwatch). Results of a study find that fit between the brand partners (based on both brand image and product category) positively influences purchase intentions with consumer's perceptions of a brand's luxury nature moderating observed effects. The research provides implications for product strategy and marketing of luxury brands.

The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedent factors of consumers' purchase intention and willingness to pay for sportswear brands. Also, the study examines the moderating role of not only the luxury status of sportswear brands (i.e., luxury vs. regular brands) but also the types of luxury brands in particular (i.e., brand extension vs. co-branding). The findings indicate greater impacts of symbolic benefits on purchase intention and the willingness to pay for the luxury brands than for the regular brands; the opposite pattern was observed for the hedonic and utilitarian benefits. As to the comparison within the luxury sportswear brands, the impacts of symbolic benefits on the two dependent variables were greater for the luxury sportswear based on brand extension, as compared to the luxury brand based on co-branding; the opposite pattern of relationships was observed for the hedonic and utilitarian benefits. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, along with future research directions.

International audience; Scant evidence is available on of how social media marketing activities influence brand equity creation and consumers' behavior towards a brand. This research explores these relationships by analyzing pioneering brands in the luxury sector (Burberry, Dior, Gucci, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton). Based on a survey of 845 luxury brand consumers (Chinese, French, Indian, and Italian), who follow the five brands studied on social media, the study develops a structural equation model that helps to address gaps in prior social media branding literature. Specifically, the study demonstrates the links between social media marketing efforts and their consequences (brand preference, price premium, and loyalty). The study measures brands' social media marketing efforts as a holistic concept that incorporates five aspects (entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth). Another contribution of the study is that it finds that SMMEs have a significant positive effect on brand equity and on the two main dimensions of brand equity: brand awareness and brand image.

Focusing on digital marketing brand managers have to focus on current and future customer demands and need to find new ways of penetrating into the lives of consumers, offering the ‘right’ advertisement at the ‘right’ time. In order to promote the e-commerce or the brand image of the company, the marketing strategy has moved to digital marketing. Branding can be defined as an outgoing process, where the outputs are a brand and a brand identity for differentiating products, services, divisions, companies, industries, or target groups. Branding is an output-generating process, with a brand and brand identity for differentiating products, services, and corporations, as outputs. Brands are critical marketing and communication assets, and it is important to invest time in researching, developing, and implementing a brand. In this study a four level brand management dashboard was developed focusing on the dimensions stakeholder, market, media sources and internal dimension. The dashboard was then implemented in a company operating the telecommunications market, having one master brand and several sub brands. Objectives of the project were to deliver better brand briefs, establish a clear internal communication hierarchy, get a greater visibility of projects in the pipeline. Indicators to evaluate brand effectiveness and the whole strategic brand management process after the brand performance dashboard has been implemented are the accuracy of branded materials, on time delivery, preservation of brand values and equity. The evaluation of the strategic brand management process with the dashboard applied and the new set of indicators implemented gives after one year in use the following results: values for already implemented indicators, such as brand development index, close rate and brand equity improved in the 1 year study period. Newly implemented indicators, such as brand penetration index, master brand influence rate, stakeholder value, sub brand sales rate, brand cross index, customer index, employee index and market penetration index, have all values within the pre-defined ranges. The developed brand performance dashboard offers an opportunity to analyze brands, brand dimensions and the brand environment in a structured way.

Published literature demonstrates that when a single well-known reputable brand is allied with a previously unknown focal brand, perceived quality evaluations of the latter will be more positive. Whether or not the corporate brand improves consumer evaluations of a cobranded product is a topic of interest to marketers. This is true because marketing managers must make decisions regarding investments in building both their corporate and product brands. The authors propose and empirically verify that the corporate brand's role as a parent of its product brands helps determine the extent of the corporate brand's influence on the consumer's evaluation of the focal brand in a brand alliance. Specifically, the corporate brand will be more diagnostic for customer evaluations of a cobranded product when its brand portfolio is more consistent in terms of the customer's attitude toward the brands that comprise the portfolio.

This study examines the relationships between brand evidence, brand hearsay, brand distinctiveness, and brand citizenship behavior. The study identifies the crucial factors of brand evidence and brand hearsay they induce customer brand distinctiveness perception. It also investigates whether brand distinctiveness influences brand citizenship behavior. A self-administered survey was conducted with visitors (n=226) to the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (BEXCO) in South Korea. The results demonstrate that five components of brand evidence and two components of brand hearsay have significant influence on brand distinctiveness, while one component of brand hearsay, namely publicity, has no significant influence on brand distinctiveness. In addition, brand distinctiveness has a substantial influence on brand citizenship behavior. The results of this study contribute insights into the effect of each component of brand evidence and brand hearsay on brand citizenship behavior mediated by brand distinctiveness.

Prior research on the impact of marketing activities such as Super Bowl advertising on firm value has produced mixed results. Drawing on the marketing productivity chain, this study introduces hitherto neglected customer-based brand equity effects as indicator for investors' expectations about future customer equity effects (i.e., expected future cash flow deviations) and find that customer-based brand equity mediates the relationship between Super Bowl advertising and abnormal stock returns. Using event study methodology, the authors analyze a sample of 62 ads for which data is available on both measures that represent brand equity and stock price from the Super Bowls from 2008 to 2012. This study finds that Super Bowl ads can be worth the large investment, but only if they enhance customer-based brand equity. The reverse also holds in that a negative impact on stock return is expected when a Super Bowl ad reduces customer-based brand equity. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests a ceiling effect, that is, for brands with high pre-Super Bowl brand equity the relationship between change in customer-based brand equity and stock return is significantly smaller.

Contemporary research on consumer–brand bonds has moved beyond founding notions of loyalty and commitment and the marriage metaphor that encompasses them to explore diversity in brand relationships and the rules that govern them. Research shows that strong, positive relationships are less frequent than anticipated and that all brand relationships carry risks — for consumers and for brands. On the brand side of the relationship equation, anthropomorphism has emerged as a key condition for processes governing human interactions to transfer to brands. On the person side, attachment styles affect brand relationships through compensatory, self-signaling, and assimilative mechanisms. Future research informs pointed critiques about brand relationships and the dynamics that govern their development.

Brands have received much research attention from consumer psychologists, as brands serve as the embodiment of a firm within the lives of consumers. This work has relied upon a variety of well-established psychological theories (e.g., Big Five human personality dimensions, associative network theory, attachment theory, self-concept) to explore the strong influence that brands can have on consumers. Recent research has focused particular attention on how consumers respond to brand name linguistics, luxury brands, brand extensions, and on the application of psychological theories to brands. Variability in these trends suggests the need for a research agenda to guide brand research by consumer psychologists.