How virtual brand community traces may increase fan engagement in brand pages

Brand pages in social media are a great way to foster consumer gathering around a brand, but it can be challenging to keep fans engaged and coming back to see updated content. Brands with millions of fans on Facebook have seen organic reach fall below 2% of their base. In this article, we describe how the creation of virtual brand communities can help brand managers increase fan engagement. We suggest the steps, conditions, advantages, and limitations involved in nurturing a brand page as an online social gathering that assumes some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community. The results of our study show that a brand page can have some of the characteristics of a virtual brand community—topical information exchange, identity communication, and establishment and internalization of cultural norms. We also show the importance of having celebrities among fans in order to foster social interactions and legitimate social practices on brand pages.     

Examining strategies for maximizing and utilizing brand prestige in the luxury cruise industry

The purpose of this research was to examine the antecedents and consequences of brand prestige in the luxury cruise industry in order to provide luxury cruise managers with practical strategies for maximizing and utilizing brand prestige. Based on the existing theoretical background, it was hypothesized that eight types of cruise experience factors influence the formation of brand prestige: food quality, service quality, staff/crew attractiveness, entertainment, ship facilities, ports of call, programs/places for children, and cabin quality. In addition, it was proposed that brand prestige can result in three managerial outcomes: well-being perception, customer brand identification, and brand loyalty. A conceptual model was developed and tested using the empirical data collected from 330 U.S. luxury cruise passengers. The results showed that all of the proposed hypotheses were statistically supported. The key theoretical/managerial implications that were derived from the analysis are presented and discussed in the last part of the article.     

Conceptualizing the brand in social media community: The five sources model

The emergence of social media is challenging the ways that marketing academics and practitioners conceptualize and manage brands. This research explores the consumers׳ specific motivations for the purpose and structure of the consumption of brands in social media community. Keeping the evolving economic relevance of social consumption in mind, the resulting conceptual model has been designed to give a better understanding of the unique branding opportunities and relationships that social media present to brand managers. The research employs a triangulated method that includes a social media-based Facebook focus group and face-to-face interviews. The findings suggest that consumers expect some very specific two-way interactions with brands and that social media may be the only way to effectively deliver these demands. This study identifies five core drivers of brand consumption in a social media community articulated in the Five Sources Model: functional, emotional, self-oriented, social and relational. These core drivers represent unique opportunities for brands to enhance their relationships with their customers and to increase the likelihood of an active and beneficial online community built around their brands. Future research implications are discussed.     

Purchasing natural personal care products in the era of fake news? The moderation effect of brand trust

Natural personal care products are gaining popularity due to their benefits in terms of health and well-being. However, consumers are wary of these products and are guided by the fake news circulating about them. Since natural product consumption offers several personal and environmental benefits, it would be worthwhile to understand consumers’ tendency to let fake news influence their consumption decisions. Accordingly, the current study examined the association of fake news and purchasing behaviour towards natural personal care products, utilising Stimulus-Organism-Behaviour-Consequence (SOBC) as the theoretical framework. The study proposed openness to change as the stimulus, perceived benefits and perceived risks as organismic internal states, purchase intentions as the behaviour, and the propensity of believing and acting on fake news as the consequence, which is further associated with system trust. The model was tested by analysing data collected from 390 existing consumers, considering the moderation effect of brand trust and controlling the effect of age and gender. The findings confirmed that openness to change is associated with perceived benefits and risks. Furthermore, perceived benefits and system trust are associated with purchase intentions, which are, in turn, associated with the propensity of believing and acting on fake news. The study presents several novel contributions to theory and practice.     

When Ethical Transgressions of Customers Have Beneficial Long-Term Effects in Retailing: An Empirical Investigation

The conventional wisdom, grounded in deontological ethics, is that retailers should extinguish unethical customer behavior. However, there exists an opposing teleological view that unethical behavior may be tolerated if its ultimate consequences are beneficial for all stakeholders. This is supported by a survey of retail managers conducted by the authors that revealed over 80% of the respondents are inclined to tolerate unethical customers whose actions have beneficial effects. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the boundaries of this teleological perspective, that is, whether ethical transgressions that appear to have negative short-term consequences for the retailer and other ethical customers can have beneficial longer-term consequences for all parties. We examine this question empirically with a longitudinal dataset, covering seventy weeks and over 48,000 accounts, from a popular Swiss online retailer. We focus on increased revenues and customer engagement as the benefit for the retailer. Our results show that customers registering multiple accounts in violation of the retailer’s policy comprise fewer than 11.5% of accounts, yet generate more than 27.6% of the retailer’s revenue. Specifically, their behavior leads to higher retailer revenues and greater engagement by other customers in the long-run. We discuss the implications of this insight for retailing managers as well as scholars.     

“Make me feel special”: Are hierarchical loyalty programs a panacea for all brands? The role of brand concept

Despite extant literature, the most effective structure of loyalty programs is still heavily questioned among researchers. Building on the congruence principle, we examine the moderating role of brand concept. Our findings reveal that for symbolic brand concepts, customers perceive hierarchical loyalty program structures (which classify customers into tiers according to spending levels or other purchase activities) to be more congruent; this perception increases firm loyalty intentions. However, for functional brand concepts, customers perceive hierarchical and linear loyalty programs structures as equally congruent. Also for symbolic brand concepts, program structure appears as the most important feature in ensuring perceived congruence between a program and a brand, ahead of program benefits. These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications.     

Customer engagement with tourism social media brands

In tourism, customer engagement has been found to boost loyalty, trust and brand evaluations. Customer engagement is facilitated by social media, but neither of these phenomena is well-researched in tourism. This research contributes in two ways. First, we validate the Customer Engagement with Tourism Brands (CETB) 25-item scale proposed by So, King & Sparks (2014) in a social media context, and offer an alternative three-factor 11-item version of the scale. Second, we replicate their proposed structural model, and test our alternative model, to predict the behavioural intention of loyalty from engagement, and to test customer involvement as an antecedent to engagement. Ultimately, we propose a customer engagement scale and a nomological framework for customer engagement, both of which can be applied in both tourism and non-tourism contexts. Managers of tourism brands on social to better assess the nature of customer engagement with the parsimonious 11-item scale.     

Why do firms delete brands? Insights from a qualitative study

Large consumer goods firms manage and market an assortment of brands and consistently deal with strategic challenges related to brand portfolio management, such as creating or acquiring brands, growing brand equity, managing brands in the portfolio and deleting brands. There is substantial research on several areas of brand portfolio management except in the area of brand deletion. This situation exists despite the fact that deleting weak brands has important implications for a firm and its brand portfolio. Therefore, it is critical to understand why firms delete brands from their portfolios. This research applies a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis in the context of firms that adopt a ‘house of brands’ brand architecture and presents findings guided by the strategic decision-making literature.     

Investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity in social media

The current research is concerned with identifying and testing the role of three main predictors: consumer involvement, consumer participation, and self-expressive brand on the customer brand engagement (CBE). The customer brand engagement is treated in the current study as multidimensional constructs comprising three main aspects: cognitive processing (CP), affection (AF), and activation (AC). It was also proposed a direct influence for these three aspects of CBE on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). Using online surveys, we gathered data from fans/followers of mobile phone service providers, via Facebook fan pages in Jordan. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Based on structural equation modelling analyses (SEM), it was supported that CBE aspects were largely predicted by the role of consumer involvement (INV), consumer participation (COP), and self-expressive brand (SEB). However, we find that activation impact one dimension of the CBBE dimensions, namely, brand loyalty. Further, we find that brand awareness/associations affect perceived quality but not brand loyalty. To validate the CBE scale, future studies could investigate the impact of the scale using other social media platforms for different brands. The limited amount of empirical research on CBE was the motivation behind this research. In particular, there is no study that has investigated the main predictors of CBE and its consequences over developing context by proposing and testing the association between the antecedents of CBE with the dimensions of CBE, which in turn affect the dimensions of CBBE.     

Consumer Brand Hate: Steam rolling whatever I see

This study aims to investigate negative consumer‐brand relationships by developing a “Brand Hate” concept. A hierarchical Brand Hate model is theoretically discussed in light of the psychology and consumer behavior literatures. In Study‐I the Brand Hate concept was tested with two different types of consumer brand haters, true haters, and regular haters. The study found that in the study's proposed multidimensional Brand Hate hierarchy true haters display “Boiling Brand Hate” while regular haters reveal “Seething Brand Hate.” Two additional studies were developed to examine the relationship between consumer personality traits and Brand Hate, exploring which types of consumers are more prone to feel hatred toward targeted brands. Study‐II's findings revealed a relationship between consumers who are high in personality traits of “conscientiousness” and those who Brand Hate. Study‐III's findings indicated that “self‐confident” and “competitive” consumers might also be more prone to feel hatred toward those brands that perform poorly and unethically.