Editorial

Citation

Leventhal, R.C. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 21 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbm.2012.09621daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Product & Brand Management, Volume 21, Issue 4

In the realm of the brand, what has to be considered is how the consumer perceives, accepts and continues to favor a particular brand. The ability to get a better understanding of what is involved in consumer acceptance (or disapproval) of a brand is of paramount importance to a company’s efforts at creating a successful branding strategy. This cuts across all products and services and is a most important element of a marketing strategy that transcends the entire international marketplace.

Bravo, Montaner and Pina focus on the corporate brand image as it relates to the banking sector of the marketplace. The authors analyze how the associations of financial brands are generated and the way such associations influence consumer behavior. By applying a well-developed (marketing) communication strategy, a financial institution may be able to neutralize the effects of negative non-firm information.

Ozcan and Sheinin engage in a study that attempts to better comprehend how consumers understand and judge multi-attribute products that are perceived as either more or less complete in terms of feature coverage in a category. Complete products are used to reduce the need of developing and managing expansive and expensive line-extension portfolios. The authors’ research allow brand managers to have a better understanding of how consumers judge more and less complete products, and under which circumstances more complete products are preferred.

Rhee and Johnson assess how adolescent’s favorite apparel brand was related to congruency between brand image and three components of self-concept (actual, ideal and social). Predictors of the grand-self concept congruency relationship were also examined.

The authors posit that focusing on congruency between brand and self-concept is an important strategy in specifically targeting adolescents and to apparel products. Adolescent consumers, like adults, identify a preference for apparel brands that can link to some aspect of self.

Mann and Kohli seek to assess the impact of brand acquisition announcement on the wealth of the acquiring company’s shareholders in India. In addition, announcement returns have been assessed and compared across fast moving consumer goods versus pharmaceutical brand acquisitions and domestic versus cross border brand buyouts. The authors relate that value creation is not universal, rather it is sector specific and country specific thus yielding higher wealth gains for the fast moving consumer goods sector brand buyouts than the pharma ones and for the domestic brand acquisitions than the foreign ones.

Krisnan, Kellaris and Aurand examine the concept that auditory branding is the association of non-verbal, auditory identity for a brand. Sonic logos, or “sogos”, are a key element of sonic branding. The authors seek to examine the systematic influence of an objective property, the number of tones in a “sogo”, on a consumers’ willingness to pay for the associated brand. Although “sogos” are important and costly branding devices, their creation depends upon on intuition rather those objective parameters. The author’s findings demonstrate that number of tones in a “sogo” systematically influences willingness to pay for the associated brand-a direct economic practical implication.

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Richard C. Leventhal