How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix

Combining survey data with real-market data, this research investigates brand awareness from three perspectives. This study examines the relation between brand awareness and market outcome and explores the relation between brand awareness and brand equity. The study also investigates the effects of marketing mix elements on brand awareness. Results reveal consumers' brand usage experiences contribute to brand awareness, implying experience precedes awareness in some contexts. The results also confirm positive association between brand awareness and brand equity. Lastly, the current work demonstrates the importance of distribution and price promotion in building brand awareness in a consumer-packaged goods category.     

The Impact of Category Captainship on the Breadth and Appeal of a Retailer's Assortment

Category captainship is a collaborative channel arrangement wherein a retailer cedes control of category management decisions, such as developing a marketing strategy to grow the category and assortment selection, to one of the category's leading manufacturers. This paper studies the consequences of captainship practices on the breadth and appeal of a retailer's assortment. We consider a model where multiple manufacturers sell a product to consumers through a common retailer. In the benchmark, the retailer decides on effort to drive traffic into the category and assortment. Under captainship, the retailer delegates both of these decisions to a captain in return for target sales. The capability of the captain to stimulate demand is unknown to the retailer. We find that the breadth and/or appeal of the assortment at the retailer can increase or decrease under captainship relative to the benchmark. We identify three factors that play a role on the impact of captainship on the breadth and appeal of retailer's assortment: (i) the retailer's beliefs about the captain's capability, (ii) the captain's true capability, and (iii) product set heterogeneity. We find that the benefit to the captain sometimes comes at the expense of the non-captain manufacturers, but we also identify conditions where captainship can be beneficial for not only the retailer and the captain but also the non-captain manufacturers.     

What Drives Household Choice of Organic Products in Grocery Stores?

This paper studies how households choose organic products on a given store visit. We develop a three-stage purchase incidence/brand choice/purchase quantity model for organic products. Shared random effects parameters link the three stages of the model. We empirically quantify the effects of category variables, marketing mix, and demographic variables on the purchase of organic products using a unique household panel dataset that includes actual organic purchase data from two markets, by over 4,500 households in 25 stores for the period between January 2004 and June 2009. First, we find that the purchase of organic products is greater among the high income, college educated, and older families as well as among consumers holding high-level occupations. Second, households tend not to purchase organic products when buying in concentrated categories. Third, on average, households tend to buy organic store brands more than the organic national brands. Promotions of organic brands (feature ad and display) are less likely to drive households to buy organic brands and so does the organic brand's distribution breadth. Finally, price has an inverted U-shaped effect. We discuss the implications of these results for retailers, manufacturers and researchers.     

From data to action: How marketers can leverage AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of a revolution in business and society. AI affords companies a host of ways to better understand, predict, and engage customers. Within marketing, AI’s adoption is increasing year-on-year and in varied contexts, from providing service assistance during customer interactions to assisting in the identification of optimal promotions. But just as questions about AI remain with regard to job automation, ethics, and corporate responsibility, the marketing domain faces its own concerns about AI. With this article, we seek to consolidate the growing body of knowledge about AI in marketing. We explain how AI can enhance the marketing function across nine stages of the marketing planning process. We also provide examples of current applications of AI in marketing.     

Should Strategic Market Management Replace Strategic Management as the Planning Model for Restaurant Decision-Making?

ABSTRACT

In his book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Henry Mintzberg proposed that planning and implementation must not be two separate functions, but a continuous managerial decision-making process. One that is based first, on an astute analysis of volatile environmental market conditions, and second, on management's ability to effectively transform its offering to satisfy this moving target. This article questions the use of the concept and term strategic management in restaurants to describe what may be best termed strategic market management. Additionally, a framework within which modern restaurant planning takes place is presented.     

Market share response and competitive interaction: The impact of temporary, evolving and structural changes in prices

Managing pricing is a challenging task due to the significant impact on shares and the likelihood of strong consumer and competitor reaction. The major contributions of this paper are to assess comprehensive share response to temporary, evolving and structural changes in prices and to determine the level of market share as a function of levels of prices. For the empirical analysis, we examine two consumer product categories and find that it is valuable to distinguish among temporary, evolving and structural changes in prices, as their impact on market shares tends to differ. Further, we find that subsequent competitive reaction will influence predictions of price response. Accordingly, it is important for managers to use conjectures regarding competitive price reactions in assessing the impact of policy changes. We conclude with the strategic implications of the findings and discuss a number of opportunities for future research.     

The retailer's marketing mix and commercial performance

This paper concerns the management and organization of the marketing function within large multiple retail organizations. The elements of the retailer's marketing mix are identified and the hypothesis is developed that the breadth of control over the marketing mix by a marketing department should correlate positively with commercial performance. A postal survey of British retailers failed to demonstrate such a relationship, indicating that there is no obvious justification for a retailer to centralize most of its marketing in one large department. Instead, a positive correlation is found between there being strength in marketing in the retailer's buying department and commercial performance indicating that marketing that marketing expertise should not be concentrated into a specialist department.     

Social spending: Managing the social media mix

There is incessant demand for ‘proof’ of return on investment (ROI) for social media spending, and a significant degree of uncertainty among marketers with respect to allocating effort and budget to social media. In this article, we address these issues by identifying different ways that organizations use social media, highlighting important distinctions in these approaches and describing how to frame the spending decision for social media. Additionally, we identify dimensions that can be used to differentiate important types of social media in a social media mix, and relate this to tactical marketing execution. We also highlight the different nature of social objectives, the ‘backward’ process for meeting them, and the importance of establishing a social media ‘mission control’ as part of that process.     

External environment and the moderating role of export market orientation

This research has two main objectives. The first is to fill the knowledge gap on the role which the external environment plays in the strategic behavior of exporting companies, taking into account the psychological distances between the domestic and foreign markets. The second aim is to clarify the role that market orientation plays in export activity, since the literature review shows conflicting results. The study provides insight into these issues through hypothesis testing of a conceptual model using a sample of 212 Spanish exporting companies. The results lead to two major conclusions: (a) in turbulent environments, exporting firms adapting the marketing mix program to the needs of foreign markets obtain a better export performance in highly competitive and psychologically distant markets; (b) although market orientation has a direct and positive effect on export performance, its main role is to support strategic decision making in exporting companies. In addition, market orientation moderates the relationship between marketing mix adaptation and export performance.