Editorial

Citation

Leventhal, R.C. (2007), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 16 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbm.2007.09616eaa.001

Editorial

The intensity with which competition is taking place amongst brands in the global marketplace today has been continually increasing. It is no longer safe to assume that if you have attained a certain share of the consumers’ “mind set” (in terms of both brand positioning and market share), that you will be able to maintain this position on an ongoing basis. Market strategies are changing, as companies seek to establish new markets that transcend geographical boundaries and cultures. It is even important to consider how the consumer as part of a company’s overall marketing effort perceives a company’s image. What might have been an easy task in years past is now more complicated and time consuming.

Simms and Trott develop a conceptual framework and offer a unique way for a firm to consider the effects of their repositioning strategies on consumer perceptions of a brand. The authors investigate the extent to which BMW has repositioned the new “Mini” Cooper, and found a substantial repositioning of the brand’s functional appeal, moving away from the car’s price as an appeal towards product build quality. The Mini’s symbolic appeal, which is based on its fun and sporty image, has largely remained in place.

Henkel, Tomczak, Heitmann and Herrmann studied the concept that brand success can be improved if each employee of a company lives up to the brand promise that is communicated through mass media campaigns. The authors also reveal that informal management and employee empowerment have a far stronger impact on the brand consistency of employee behavior than formal management instruments. In addition, it would be of great value if marketing managers spent more time explaining and discussing the targets of behavioral branding.

Muzellec and Lambkin analyze the effects of abandoning a venerable brand name (Guinness) and all of the reputation value that it embodied in favor of a new, untested name (Diageo). The authors relate that a change of corporate name does affect the perceptions of the corporation, but not the product. Image spillovers occur between the corporate and product levels. The authors’ research also revealed that consumers fail to distinguish between product and corporate brand when the two share the same name.

Wu and Yen explore how the strength of brand associations, different brand breadths, and the similarity between a parent brand’s product categories and its extension product categories influence consumers’ attitudes toward brand extensions. Their research indicates that when a brand is extended to similar product categories, only when the association is strong will consumers prefer the extension of the narrow brand to that of the broad brand. And when a brand is extended to dissimilar product categories, regardless of the brand association, consumers prefer the extension of the favorable broad brand to that of the narrow brand.

Burnett and Hutton examine the value of branding as an effective part of a company’s marketing strategy and how this concept is changing as the needs of the consumer has changed. The authors identify such changes and prescribe specific modifications that should be made to the brand and its implementation.

Included in this issue you will also find the Pricing strategy & practice section and our Book review section.

Richard C. Leventhal