Guest editorial

Citation

Melewar, T., Nguyen, B. and Merrilees, B. (2015), "Guest editorial", Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Vol. 7 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJBA-06-2015-0053

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Volume 7, Issue 3.

A growing interest exists in understanding brands, consumers and companies in Asia among academics and practitioners alike. However, to date, there are limited empirical studies in understanding brands in Asia and in a comprehensive discourse. Little is known about how brands are perceived in the Asian region, the type of research methods used to understand consumer behaviour, and how firm-level brands are operationalised successfully. Branding in Asia holds without any doubt great potential, but rather than simply being the adaptation of existing brand management theories from western countries (where most branding research takes place), what is there to gain from the Asian countries in terms of developing branding practice and theory? There are still many issues unanswered in terms of how brands, consumers and companies inter-relate and work in different Asian countries. Existing concepts and managerial implications are insufficient and often out-dated in this fast changing continent.

Exploring brands, consumers and companies in Asia-Pacific is vital for developing and managing positively perceived brands that help a company achieve higher levels of brand performance. By understanding how desirable brands are created in Asia, companies can induce a higher propensity to buy from a particular source, consequently leading to consumer patronage. For managers, a greater understanding of consumers' decision-making processes influences decisions towards efficient use of marketing resources, saving costs and increasing profits. In addition, many countries in the Asia-Pacific have become economic engine-rooms in the global market for the demand of brands, for example, with luxury products. There is now greater competition among local and transnational companies for growing markets and consumers' share-of-wallet. Hence, the scope of this special issue is on connecting brands, consumers and companies in the Asia-Pacific region. We believe that much of the new branding research will take place in this arena and that it is very timely to seek to publish more research, which critically engage with theoretical and empirical issues on branding conjointly with Asian business studies, in order to draw from as wide a range of perspectives as possible in the context of business administration. In this Special Issue, we publish six papers, which cover specific issues related to connecting brands, consumers and companies in Asia.

The first paper, by Wu, Chen and Nguyen, entitled “Luxury brand purchases and the extended self: a cross-cultural comparison of young female consumers in Taiwan and the UK”, investigates luxury brand purchases among young female consumers and their perceptions of the self when purchasing such goods. The study compares the consumption of luxury products and luxury fashion purchasing habits in Taiwan and the UK, with particular reference to the fashion sector, focusing on a strategically important emerging market segment: young consumers of luxury brands. This segment is an influential group in the luxury market due to their increasing annual consumer spending and is considered one of the largest market opportunities. Findings from the study revealed one major point of difference among many similarities: the Taiwanese buyers scored significantly higher on indicators that they were treating luxury brands as a means of developing their self-identity and communicating their social standing: an important part of maintaining “face” in Asian cultures. These findings contain important strategic implications for luxury fashion brand managers developing marketing campaigns for the promotion of their brands in the distinctive cultures of Taiwan, Mainland China and their neighbours.

The second paper, entitled “An investigation of antecedents and consequences of brand love in India”, written by Garg, Mukherjee, Biswas and Kataria, examines the factors that drive consumers' love towards a brand and the opportunities that such brand love create for a brand in India. As the authors note, the extant brand love research seems to have been solely conducted in the Western context, with few studying the topic in the Asia-Pacific region. The study empirically investigates antecedents and consequences of brand love in India, adding new knowledge to this growing area of branding. Specifically, the study proposes a conceptual model where respect, brand experience and brand reputation have been identified as factors driving brand love and affective commitment, consumer citizenship behaviour, repurchases intention, consumer forgiveness and attitude towards the extension as outcomes of brand love.

The paper, entitled “Influencing the willingness to pay for private labels: the role of branding”, by Thanasuta and Metharom, investigates the direct and indirect relationships between brands' marketing activities and consumers' willingness to pay for private labels (PLs), here in Thailand. Through the effect of perceived quality in different cultural contexts, the study provides a broader perspective by incorporating the effect of branding strategy on the above relationships. The results of a large-scale mall interception survey approach, with 819 useable respondents, demonstrate that sales promotions directly and indirectly influence consumers' willingness to pay, whereas only an indirect relationship through perceived quality exists for the similarity of PL and national-brand packaging. There are implications as to whether PLs should continue to invest in package improvement to increase their perceived quality. The authors propose that the brand must carefully choose which promotional tools to implement because such tools have both positive and negative impacts. Promotions from “other-name” brands should be emphasised because they have a stronger, more positive effect on perceived quality.

The fourth paper, entitled “Exploring luxury brand country-of-origin impact on purchasing behaviors in India: a conceptual framework”, by Schultz and Jain, explores the effects of country-of-origin (COO) on Indian consumers' current day purchasing behaviours with luxury products. The authors develop a conceptual framework that should help luxury brands formulate marketing strategies for this market. With a qualitative study, the authors found that COO affects the consumers' exploration of luxury brands and that this process is carried out digitally and primarily with friends. Luxury brand managers can insert detailed information about COO on web sites and can understand the key words used in the search engines to facilitate consumers using appropriate consideration data. In addition, the research also found that COO is compared on the basis of quality, features and innovation. This insight can be used by the brand managers to develop apps and web sites that would help the consumers to compare the COO for their products.

The paper, entitled “The impact of brand logo identification and brand logo benefit on Indonesian consumers' relationship quality”, written by Japutra, Keni and Nguyen, examines the relationships between brand logo identification and brand logo benefit on Indonesian consumers' relationship quality. The authors note that a critical part of a branding strategy is its visual stimuli and that the importance of a brand logo in the marketplace can be considered as a valuable company asset that positively affects firm performance. Using survey data from 282 participants, the study finds that brand logo benefit predicts all three relationship quality constructs, whereas brand logo identification only predicts satisfaction and trust. Out of the two, brand logo benefit is a better predictor of satisfaction, trust and commitment. The study provides a better understanding of brand logo for brand managers, especially for firms or brands that operate in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Indonesia. For these managers, the concepts of brand logo identification and overall brand logo benefit should be considered prominent in building greater customer satisfaction and trust.

The final paper, entitled “Explicating consumer segmentation and brand positioning in the Islamic financial services industry: a Malaysian perspective”, by Muhamad and Alwi, presents and organises the literature on the emerging area of consumer segmentation and brand positioning in the Islamic financial services industry (IFSI), here focusing on the Malaysian context. The study discusses how the current research on IFSI attempts to classify its consumers and provides a fresh and critical insight into the retail Islamic banking market segmentation to harness and enhance understanding, as well as provide a guideline to bank marketers for better segmentation practices. Based on Qur'anic verses and previous literature, the authors aim to propose an applicable model of market segmentation for the retail Islamic banking market in Malaysia. In moving forward, the authors take cue from the classification of people in classical doctrinal and historical literature and develop five cluster groups of consumers for the retail Islamic banking market in Malaysia, namely religious conviction, religious and economic rationality, economic rationality, ethical observant and economic rationality and ethical observant. The five cluster groups pave the way for embarking on promising and relevant future research, which is needed to substantiate and enrich the academic understanding and managerial practice of linking market segmentation and brand positioning for the Islamic banking market.

On the whole, we hope these interesting papers will encourage further discourse in this ever-interesting research field with brand management in Asia. We would like to thank the Editor of Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, for providing us with a platform for presenting the research studies.

We hope you will enjoy these papers.

Professor T.C. Melewar - Middlesex University, London, UK

Dr Bang Nguyen - East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China, and

Professor Bill Merrilees - Department of Marketing, Griffith University, Southport, Australia