This article provides insight into the management of brands that are also people by unpacking the interdependencies that exist between people and brands and focusing on the qualities that make ...person-brands human rather than on the qualities that make them brands. Using the extended case method to examine 20 years of public data about the Martha Stewart brand, the authors highlight the interdependent relationship between the person and the brand—in particular, consistency and balance—and identify four aspects of the person that can upset these interdependencies: mortality, hubris, unpredictability, and social embeddedness. Mortality and hubris can cause imbalance, but with the right skills and structures, these factors can be proactively managed. Inconsistency in the meanings of the person versus the brand can derive from the person's unpredictability and social embeddedness and compromise brand value, but it may also enhance brand value by adding needed intimacy and authenticity. This two-bodied conceptualization suggests renewed management principles and contributes to branding theory through identification of the doppelgänger within, new brand strength facets, and emphasis on risk versus returns.
Purpose
Negativity towards a brand is typically conceived as a significant problem for brand managers. This paper aims to show that negativity towards a brand can represent an opportunity for ...companies when brand polarization occurs. To this end, the paper offers a new conception of the brand polarization phenomenon and reports exploratory findings on the benefits of consumers’ negativity towards brands in the context of brand polarization.
Design/methodology/approach
To develop a conception of brand polarization, the paper builds on research on polarizing brands and extends it by integrating insights from systematic literature reviews in three bodies of literature: scholarship on brand rivalry and, separately, polarization in political science and social psychology. Using qualitative data from 22 semi-structured interviews, the paper explores possible advantages of brand polarization.
Findings
This paper defines the brand polarization phenomenon and identifies multiple perspectives on brand polarization. Specifically, the findings highlight three distinct parties that can benefit from brand polarization: the polarizing brand as an independent entity; the brand team behind the polarizing brand; and the passionate consumers involved with the polarizing brand. The data reveal specific advantages of brand polarization associated with the three parties involved.
Practical implications
Managers of brands with a polarizing nature could benefit from having identified a group of lovers and a group of haters, as this could allow them to improve their focus when developing and implementing the brands’ strategies.
Originality/value
This exploratory study is the first explicitly focusing on the brand polarization phenomenon and approaches negativity towards brands as a potential opportunity.
Extensive research has investigated branding practices, processes, and consumers' reactions to brands in a globalized world. In this review, the authors aim to organize and synthesize the growing ...literature on branding, culture, and globalization from a behavioral perspective by reviewing 129 articles published over 25 years. Specifically, they explicate two perspectives found in the literature: (1) global-local branding and (2) the influence of culture on consumer and brand interactions. The authors identify conceptual gaps in the literature and discuss how new realities in the macro environment (e.g., political issues, digital transformation, environmental concerns) may affect the interaction between culture, brands, and consumers in a globalized world. This review facilitates a more impactful future research agenda in both theory and practice at the interface of branding and globalization from the perspective of behavioral outcomes.
Why are some brands more elastic than others? Prior research shows that consumers are more accepting of extensions into distant product categories for brands with prestige concepts (Rolex) than for ...brands with functional concepts (Timex). In this article, the authors examine consumers' style of thinking - analytic versus holistic thinking - to better understand the elasticity of prestige versus functional brands. For functional brands, the authors find that holistic thinkers provide more favorable responses to distant extensions than analytic thinkers; however, for prestige brands, holistic and analytic thinkers respond equally favorably. Thus, analytic thinkers are identified as the roadblocks for functional brands launching distant brand extensions. To meet this challenge, the authors offer several strategies, including (1) using a subbrand (Excer wallets by Toyota) instead of a direct brand (Toyota wallets) to reduce analytic thinking; (2) using elaborational communications, which address potentially problematic features of the extension, to reduce analytic thinking; and (3) matching extension information with the consumer's style of thinking, which increases the persuasiveness of ad messages. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Branding in a Hyperconnected World Swaminathan, Vanitha; Sorescu, Alina; Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E.M. ...
Journal of marketing,
03/2020, Volume:
84, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Technological advances have resulted in a hyperconnected world, requiring a reassessment of branding research from the perspectives of firms, consumers, and society. Brands are shifting away from ...single ownership to shared ownership, as heightened access to information and people is allowing more stakeholders to cocreate brand meanings and experiences alongside traditional brand owners and managers. Moreover, hyperconnectivity has allowed existing brands to expand their geographic reach and societal roles, while new types of branded entities (ideas, people, places, and organizational brands) are further stretching the branding space. To help establish a new branding paradigm that accounts for these changes, the authors address the following questions: (1) What are the roles and functions of brands?, (2) How is brand value (co)created?, and (3) How should brands be managed? Throughout the article, the authors also identify future research issues that require scholarly attention, with the aim of aligning branding theory and practice with the realities of a hyperconnected world.
•Brand awareness-quality inference affects negatively the consumer-SB identification.•The more aware consumers are of a brand the greater the perceived risk in the SBs.•Perceived risk is a decisive ...factor of the drivers of SB identification.•Differences in the modelling proposed are shown for quality consciousness.•Investment in brand awareness is necessary to expand customer base of SBs.
Store brands (SBs) have currently become consolidated in the food market, have achieved an objective quality similar to that of manufacturer brands and a competitive price. However, food retailers have invested little in communication about these brands, considering it enough to use proximity to the consumer and economies of scope derived from the presence of their own brands throughout the establishment. This paper explores the consequences of this communication strategy about SBs on the functional risk perceived by consumers for these brands and the consumer’s identification with them. We propose a theoretical model, contrast it empirically for food products, and perform a multigroup analysis of quality conscious and non-quality conscious consumers. The results obtained reveal a negative effect of the inference brand awareness–brand quality on the consumer’s identification with the SB as a result of the greater functional risk perceived for these brands. This effect is substantially greater in quality conscious consumers, a key segment for retailers since it constitutes the target of their premium SBs. The results show retailers that investment in communication of SBs is absolutely necessary to dismiss SB functional risk and expand customer base by appealing to quality conscious consumers. The investigation has significant implications for the retailer’s strategy for marketing SBs in food products.
Pioneering conceptual and empirical work ascribe a trust advantage to family firms compared with their nonfamily analogies. But it remains unknown if this trust advantage persists with varying ...degrees of consumers’ brand familiarity. Furthermore, the underlying cognitive mechanisms in the minds of consumers that trigger the trust advantage remain unexplored. Using mixed methods, four studies indicate that family firms’ trust advantage does prevail in the context of real and familiar brands, and the strength of consumers’ perception of an organization as a human being (i.e., humanization) explains higher levels of benevolence and trust attributed to family firms.
Up, Up, and Away Wang, Yajin; John, Deborah Roedder
Journal of marketing research,
02/2019, Volume:
56, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Researchers have found that consumers abandon and avoid products when they feel threatened by the presence of dissimilar groups who also use the product. In this article, the authors propose a ...different strategy for responding to dissimilar users, upgrading to a brand's more exclusive products. Results from six studies show that upgrading is a preferred strategy for consumers with strong self–brand connections, who are unlikely to avoid or abandon the brand because their self-identity is tied to the brand. Among these consumers, the act of upgrading to a brand's more exclusive products is driven by their feelings of self-threat when exposed to dissimilar users, which triggers a desire to attain a higher-status position among brand users that is fulfilled by upgrading. The authors also identify moderators of the upgrading effect for consumers with strong self–brand connections. These consumers' increased interest in upgrading is dampened when a brand's exclusive products are made more readily available and when a brand has already conferred higher status to them through a customer status tier program.
Grocery retailers have begun to target price conscious consumers with a new type of budget brand, called discount venture brands. These brands are exclusive to the retailer. Sharing the same price ...point as economy private-label brands, the aim of discount venture brands is to attract customers with an overall look-and-feel that is not explicitly premium, yet is more attractive than that of conventional budget brands. Drawing on the self-congruity literature, the authors explore two questions: (1) whether customers perceive discount venture brands to offer greater value-for-money than conventional budget brands; and (2) whether such perceptions translate to customer impressions about the retailer brand? Results from a scenario-based experiment involving 505 participants suggest that, in comparison with conventional budget brands, discount venture brands may be less conducive to engendering favorable value-for-money perceptions; in short, discount venture brands may be less effective than conventional budget brands. This finding can be explained with a concept called self-congruity. Overall, we show that self-congruity acts as an indirect-only mediator of the path between the type of a brand and value-for-money perceptions of the brand. Particular findings are that self-congruity has a positive effect on value-for-money perceptions associated with conventional budget brands, discount venture brands, and the retailers selling those brands. However, for consumers with a preference for brands with a budget price point, self-congruity appears to be higher for conventional budget brands than discount venture brands; and this difference in self-congruity is more pronounced when shopping for others than when shopping for oneself.
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