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The purpose of this paper is to delineate the current state of the art of sharing economy (SE) research and practice. It provides a new framework to help managers and academics to consider this field with the right managerial and theoretical lenses.

A systematic literature on the SE was conducted, resulting in the analysis of 114 articles in the management literature. This was completed by the empirical investigations of business model and industry of 32 members of three national associations promoting SE: SE UK, Ireland and Denmark.

Papers dealing with SE themes focus on consumers’ motivations, impact on the society, market and policy, as well as the revenue model. SE businesses can be differentiated depending on whether their assets are new or re-used and the transaction is permanent or temporary. Based on this matrix, the study reveals four archetypes of SE businesses: “on-demand renters,” “lifecycle extenders,” “seller aggregators” and “ephemeral matchmakers.”

The paper outlines a significant gap between what is current focus of the academic literature and the reality of SE purposes and businesses. This provides goals for future research.

The framework and clustering of business model archetypes may help managers and entrepreneurs dealing with SE to better understand the underlying value drivers behind those business models.

There are some discrepancies between the SE themes emerging from the management literature and the business model diversity of SE companies. This research aims at helping scholars and managers to position themselves in the field.

This paper aims to provide a social network site influence (SNSI) profile of early adopters. This study explores the relationship between personality traits of early adopters of social network sites (SNS), their propensity to share information and rumors and their general SNSI.

An online survey was sent to the first users of Twitter (n = 200) and Google+ (n = 130) to assess their personality traits. Answers of each respondent were matched to their SNSI scores from Klout and PeerIndex, the industry standard for measuring SNSI.

Early adopters of SNS, in comparison to market mavens, are more likely to exert influence on one particular topic related to their profession: technology and the internet. Their levels of extraversion, openness and conscientiousness have a positive and significant impact on information sharing, and a negative impact on rumor sharing. Both, information sharing and rumor sharing have a positive and significant impact on the general SNSI of early adopters.

Firms struggle to decide whether to invest early in the life of newly created SNS as they are unsure about the characteristics of early adopters of such networks, and, more importantly, whether these sites are effective initial vectors for word-of-mouth. The findings demonstrate that early adopters’ influence (SNSI score) is on par with that of the rest of SNS users, suggesting their influence may be somewhat limited. The study also shows that the opinion leadership impact of the more influential early adopters is monomorphic in nature, being mainly confined to the related technology and internet domains.

This paper aims to uncover the drivers of consumer-brand engagement on Facebook, understood here as users’ behavioral responses in the form of clicks, likes, shares and comments. We highlight which content components, interactivity cues (calls to action [CTA]) and media richness (e.g. video, photo and text) are most effective at inducing consumers to exhibit clicking, liking, commenting and sharing behaviors toward branded content.

This study analyzes 757 Facebook-based brand posts from a media and entertainment brand over a 15-week period. It investigates the relationship between interactive cues and media richness with consumer engagement using a negative binomial model.

Results show positive relationships for both interactivity cues and media richness content components on increasing consumer-brand engagement outcomes. The findings add clarity to previous inconsistent findings in the marketing literature. CTAs enhance all four engagement behaviors. Media richness also strongly influences all engagement behaviors, with visual imagery (photos and videos) attracting the most consumer responses.

The sampled posts pertain to one brand (a radio station) and are thus concentrated within the media/entertainment industry, which limits the generalizability of findings. In addition, the authors limit their focus to Facebook but recognize that findings may differ across more visual or textual social networking sites.

The authors uncover the most effective pairings of media richness and interactivity components to trigger marketer-desired, behavioral responses. For sharing, for example, the authors show that photo-based posts are more effective on average than video-based posts. The authors also show that including an interactive call to act to encourage one type of engagement behavior has a near-universal effect in increasing all engagement behaviors.

This study takes two widely used concepts within the communications and advertising literatures – interactivity cues and media richness – and tests their relationship with engagement using real and actual users’ data available via Facebook Insights. This method is more robust than surveys or wall scrapping, as it mitigates Facebook’s algorithm effect. The results produce more consistent relationships than previous content marketing studies to date.

This paper aims to improve understanding of data-driven marketing by examining the experiences of managers implementing big data analytics in the marketing function. Through a series of research questions, this exploratory study seeks to define what big data analytics means in marketing practice. It also seeks to uncover the challenges and identifiable stages of big data analytics implementation.

A total of 15 open-ended in-depth interviews were conducted with marketing and analytics executives in a variety of industries in Ireland and the USA. Interview transcripts were subjected to open coding and axial coding to address the research questions.

The study reveals that managers consider marketing big data analytics to be a series of tools and capabilities used to inform product innovation and marketing strategy-making processes and to defend the brand against emerging risks. Additionally, the study reveals that big data analytics implementation is championed at different organizational levels using different types of dynamic learning capabilities, contingent on the champion’s stature within the organization.

From the qualitative analysis, it is proposed that marketing departments undergo five stages of big data analytics implementation: sprouting, recognition, commitment, culture shift and data-driven marketing. Each stage identifies the key characteristics and potential pitfalls to be avoided and provides advice to marketing managers on how to implement big data analytics.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of a branded mobile application experience for children, and analyse how these experiences affect the children’s and parents’ brand perceptions.

The authors use a qualitative approach focussing on the consumer perspective. Children were asked to use two selected applications from an I-Pad tablet (“La Grande Récré” – A1 and “MonkiMi” – A2). Children and parents were subsequently interviewed.

Children primarily valued the emotional experience of the application (app). The parents appreciated their children’s cognitive experience of the mobile app. Parents are much more responsive to mobile application communication, as they perceive to have more control over this new media and value the cognitive and emotional dimension of their children experience of the app.

The study shows that branded apps can be an extremely effective way in delivering valuable brand content which positively impact brand perceptions. This initial and exploratory study calls for further extensive research in this area.

This research demonstrates the untapped potential of sponsored apps as a communication medium.

The paper indicates that mobile applications constitute a new communication channel for retailers and brand owners to interact at an emotional level with their existing or prospective customers.

This paper aims at establishing a new stream of academic study for virtual brands. It explains the concepts of protobrands and reverse product placement and explores some of the managerial and academic implications.

Starting from the most recent definition of the brand construct, the paper establishes that the brand concept may now be detached from physical embodiment. The extension of application of the branding domain to the fictional and computer‐synthesized worlds is extensively illustrated by examples of virtual brands from books, films, video games and other multi‐user virtual environments.

Evidence suggests that purely potential brands (protobrands) initiated in the virtual world may possess strong consumer‐based brand equity. The study shows that the equity of the protobrands may be leveraged in‐world (and can acquire legal protection) or through reverse product placement and the launch of the physical embodiment of the protobrand in the physical world (the HyperReal brand).

This is an initial conceptual paper on virtual and HyperReal brands. This study, which has no antecedents, highlights the need for further empirical inquiry. The reverse product placement phenomenon may result in academics and practitioners to revise the traditional models of building brands.

The paper introduces and defines virtual brands, both fictional and computer‐synthesized, HyperReal brands and the reverse product placement phenomenon.

The paper aims to analyse the effect of abandoning a venerable brand name (Guinness) and all of the reputation value that it embodied in favour of a new, untested name (Diageo). The paper seeks to examine the extent to which this affects consumers' perceptions of the product and the corporation.

Six hypotheses were tested in the study by surveying corporate and product brand images among a group of consumers (n=411) using the Davies et al. Corporate Character Scale.

The survey establishes that a change of corporate name does affect the perceptions of the corporation but not the products. It also confirms that image spillovers occur between the corporate and the product levels. Corporate image is derived from product image, and vice versa, when the two share the same name.

Although the case study approach allows the gaining of a deep insight into a phenomenon, it is at the expense of generalisability.

The study implies that consumers fail to distinguish between product and corporate brand when the two share the same name. Managers may neutralise corporate images by attributing a different brand name to the corporation.

The paper seeks to fill the conceptual vacuum in which decisions to adopt a new corporate name and rearrange the brand architecture seem to be made.

Companies changing their brand names are frequently reported in the business press but this phenomenon has as yet received little academic attention. This paper sets out to understand the drivers of the corporate rebranding phenomenon and to analyse the impact of such strategies on corporate brand equity.

A cross‐sectional sample of 166 rebranded companies provides descriptive data on the context in which rebranding occurs. Two case studies provide further detail on how the process of rebranding is managed.

The data show that a decision to rebrand is most often provoked by structural changes, particularly mergers and acquisitions, which have a fundamental effect on the corporation's identity and core strategy. They also suggest that a change in marketing aesthetics affects brand equity less than other factors such as employees' behaviour.

The paper proposes a conceptual model to integrate various dimensions of corporate rebranding. Analysing the rebranding phenomenon by assessing the leverage of brand equity from one level of the brand hierarchy to the other constitutes an interesting route for further research.

Managers are reminded that corporate rebranding needs to be managed holistically and supported by all stakeholders, with particular attention given to employees' reactions.

This paper is of value to anybody seeking to understand the rebranding phenomenon, including academics and business managers.

This paper aims to examine how international banking groups manage their branding in the context of successive mergers and acquisitions. It seeks to review of a number of case histories in order to show that banking companies tend to evolve a multi‐tiered system for absorbing and rebranding acquisitions and it also seeks to present a general framework to guide future research and practice.

The banking industry has been undergoing major consolidation in recent years, with a number of global players emerging through successive mergers and acquisitions. These transactions vary in scale and location, from major mergers of large, equal‐sized international entities to acquisitions of smaller, local businesses in various countries all around the world. This paper brings together the literature on mergers and acquisitions, which mostly comes from economics and finance, with the marketing literature on branding and rebranding, to create a framework to help us to understand the management challenge of rebranding bank brands in this context. Citigroup and Crédit Agricole are used as a preliminary test of this framework.

This analysis suggests that the branding problem varies according to the size and international status of the acquisitive bank. Very large banks with international brands such as Citigroup tend to follow a branded house strategy where they impose their master brand on all acquisitions resulting in a further enhancement of scale and brand strength. However, this general strategy conceals a more complex, multi‐tiered approach with different types and sizes of acquisitions being rebranded in different ways. Regional players such as Crédit Agricole tend to opt for a house of brands strategy where their acquired companies retain their own name and brand franchise in local markets.

The framework presented here is entirely new and requires further testing. The evidence supplied here is interesting but preliminary and requires further validation.

Most banking companies nowadays become involved in mergers and acquisitions at some stage, and face the task of realigning their brands in the aftermath of these transactions. This paper provides a systematic framework backed up by empirical evidence to help them to make these decisions.

The paper addresses a critically important strategic issue that has not been addressed in any detail in the marketing literature. The paper provides preliminary research evidence and a framework to suggest hypotheses for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach at defining a retail channel strategy applied to young consumers.

The authors use a qualitative study that adopts the consumer perspective and employed an investiga-tive channel-scan approach based on two scenarios applied to 12 retailers selling childrenswear. The authors studied 139 flows between all the channels and explored the retailers’ child orientation.

The paper revealed that the channel configuration and integration of retailers showed a di-versity of approach leading us to distinguish eight different retail channel strategies. It also appears that there is limited evidence of a specific selling channels designed for children by retailers in selling products aimed at the child market.

This study contributes to the retail marking literature by showing evidence of child orienta-tion in channel management. Nevertheless, the results show the need for future research to understand the causes and effects of channel child orientation and the way it contributes to the retail channel strategy.

The findings have practical implications for retailers by providing a framework to help them in their decision-making regarding retail channel strategy. It also sheds new light on the con-tribution from young consumers in retail channel strategy.

The contribution of this paper is to explore the combined perspective of configuration and integration of the channel-to-market as part of the retail channel strategy. The paper also provides evidence of child orientation in retail channel strategy when retailers selling prod-ucts for children are concerned.