Why Nonprofits Are Easier to Endorse on Social Media: The Roles of Warmth and Brand Symbolism

Brands often seek endorsements by consumers on social media (e.g., likes on Facebook). But is this marketing strategy feasible for all brands? To answer this question, this research investigates in seven studies the processes that underlie consumers' intention to endorse brands on social media. We suggest that consumers aim to signal their identity by endorsing brands online. Based on the Brands as Intentional Agents Framework and related research in (social) cognition and consumer behavior, we argue that consumers on social media primarily want to emphasize their warmth rather than their competence. Experimental studies 1, 2, and 3 distinguish between nonprofit and for-profit brands and show that brand warmth (and not competence) mediates the effect of brand type (nonprofit vs. for-profit) on consumers' intentions to endorse brands and branded content on social media. Experiment 4 demonstrates that this process is moderated by brand symbolism (moderated mediation). A high level of brand symbolism increases the positive effect of warmth on consumers' intention to endorse brands online, but only for for-profit brands. The fifth experiment shows that these effects are conditional upon the public vs. private distinction in consumer behavior: consumers prefer to publicly affiliate with nonprofit (vs. for-profit) brands but with regard to private affiliations, there is no difference between both types of brands. In experiment 6, the causal role of warmth (vs. competence) is further examined. Finally, we demonstrate that perceptions of brands' warmth and not competence reduce the efforts that brands need to make to achieve consumers' endorsements on their real brand pages on Facebook.     

How Consumer Ethnocentrism (CET), Ethnocentric Marketing,and Consumer Individualism Affect Ethnocentric Behavior in China

This study investigates how the value of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) and ethnocentric marketing affect consumers' purchase intentions for domestic and foreign brands in China. In predicting ethnocentric consumer behavior, past research has tended to focus on consumers' ethnocentric values rather than ethnocentric marketing stimuli. In addition, this study examines how the consumer value of individualism and collectivism (IC) affects ethnocentric choice behavior. An experimental study was conducted on 220 Chinese millennials, using fictitious advertisements. The study found that the CET value has moderate effects on consumer purchase intentions for foreign brands, while it strongly influences consumer purchases of domestic brands. In addition, the findings suggest that ethnocentric advertising may not encourage purchases of domestic brands, but can discourage foreign brand purchases. More significantly, individualistic consumers were found to show a greater preference for foreign brands and also their brand choices were less affected by the CET value and ethnocentric advertising.     

Leveraging social media-based determinants to build customer-based brand equity of a retailer

ABSTRACT

Social media is all about consumer networks and consumer relations that challenge marketers to leverage social media as a means to develop and improve their connections with consumers. Though tremendous opportunities via social media are alluring, businesses are still finding it hard to penetrate the clique of consumer interactions that are largely personal in nature. Despite the opportunities available through social media marketing activities, understanding customers and their behavior, and incorporating that information in marketing strategy formulation is critical to successful strategy implementation. This study takes a significant leap forward in this direction. Theoretically grounded in diverse fields, this study demonstrates how retailers can build customer-based brand equity using social media-based brand determinants. Using seemingly unrelated regression technique, this study examines how retailer brands can leverage consumer characteristics on social media to successfully integrate and capitalize on social media marketing activities. This research study has important implications for both marketing theory and practice.     

A Proposed Model for Consumer-Based Brand Equity Analysis on Social Media Using Data Mining and Social Network Analysis

Online social networks have expanded their “virtual borders,” making the Internet more like an environment of social interaction than a business tool. However, even before the emergence and expansion of social media, marketing professionals were interested in identifying consumers' perceptions about brands. Thus, operational models have been proposed to facilitate such a task. Those models, however, can be expensive and inconvenient, since the models use questionnaires for data collection. To help overcome this problem, this article proposes a model for brand equity analysis from the consumer perspective expressed in social networks using opinion mining techniques and social network analysis. The application of the proposed model on data collected from Twitter made it possible to analyze five brand equity dimensions: brand awareness, brand loyalty, perceived sentiment, perceived quality, and brand associations. The results reached by the application of the model show that brand equity can be analyzed from data retrieved from virtual social networks, disclosing how consumers perceive brands in such an environment, without using questionnaires, enabling different brands in different contexts. Those data can be analyzed under both objective and replicable criteria for each of the brand equity elements that make up the model.     

Entertainment Marketing and Experiential Consumption

The placement of brand references within mainstream entertainment (called here ‘entertainment marketing’) is a rapidly evolving marketing communications field in its scale and sophistication. Much previous research in the field has conceptualized entertainment marketing as promotion and focused on measuring consumer attitudes, purchase intentions and brand recall in response to brand exposure. This conceptual paper suggests that there is also a need for understanding the quality of consumer engagement with brands in the context of mediated entertainment. The paper draws on phenomenological/existential research traditions in order to begin to theorize the role that entertainment marketing techniques may play in facilitating consumer self‐concepts and identity formation through brand exposure within dramatic portrayals of characters and lifestyles.     

新品牌规避消费者预期效应的产品营销路径探索

产品营销关乎企业生存与发展,面临众多大品牌的激烈竞争,对于一个新品牌来说,如何规避消费者对新品牌的不信任预期,使自己企业的产品受到更多消费者的青睐,是一个普遍存在的问题.因为知觉恒常性和知觉定势的存在,消费者在购买产品之前就会形成自己的预期,改变消费者的预期会对产品营销带来非常巨大的作用.改变消费者的预期可以通过消费者...     

A brand preference and repurchase intention model: the role of consumer experience

Consumer brand preference is an essential step towards understanding consumer choice behaviour, and has therefore always received great attention from marketers. However, the study of brand preference has been limited to traditional marketing focusing on functional attributes to maximise utility. But now the shift to experiential marketing broadens the role of the brand from a bundle of attributes to experiences. Technological advancements have helped to increase the similarities between brand attributes and product commoditisation. Consequently, consumers cannot shape their preferences among brands using rational attributes only. They seek out brands that create experiences; that intrigue them in a sensorial, emotional and creative way. This study seeks to develop a model that provides an understanding of how brand knowledge and brand experience determine brand preference and to investigate its impact on brand repurchase intention. Accordingly, exploratory focus group discussions are employed followed by a survey of mobile phone users in Egypt. The findings provide insights into the relative importance of consumer perceptions on different brand knowledge factors in shaping brand preferences. It also demonstrates the significance of consumers’ experiential responses towards brands in developing their brand preferences that in turn influence brand repurchase intention. The model therefore offers managers a new perspective for building strong brands able to gain consumer preferences.     

Managing Successful Brands: An Empirical Study which Compares the Corporate Cultures of Companies Managing the World's Top 100 Brands with Those Managing Outsider Brands.

Corporate culture can be a significant, strategic factor in the successful management of brands. Through a comparative research survey into the World's Top 100 brand companies and those outside this category (Outsider brand companies), this article explores whether the corporate cultures of the Top 100 brand companies are different from those of Outsider brand companies.

Most of the significant differences were found in the consumer goods sector, traditionally associated with strong brands. Top 100 managers were found to be more at ease with themselves and their companies than managers of Outsider brands. They were also better able to handle conflict through corporate cultures which emphasised open discussion, (even argument). Significantly, the research found that the corporate cultures of Top 100 brand companies were perceived as 'stronger' than those of Outsider brands, and, though not necessarily a success factor in itself, when linked to values, beliefs and behaviours such as those identified in this paper, were associated with successful brands.     

Long Live Creative Media Choice

Building on associative learning theory, we hypothesize that a creative media choice (i.e., creatively choosing a novel medium to implicitly communicate the message) produces more persisting brand associations than ad placement in a traditional medium. Furthermore, we argue that it could serve as a cue that spontaneously reminds consumers of the brand, and may transfer new associations onto the brand, even after the brand is no longer featured in it. We test the effects of a creative media choice versus ad placement in a traditional medium (previously only tested on fictitious brands with scenarios), employing real brands and incidental exposure to real media in two experiments. The results support the hypotheses.     

Celebrities as human brands: An inquiry on stakeholder-actor co-creation of brand identities

This paper examines the co-creation of human brands exemplified by celebrities in a stakeholder-actor approach. Combining theoretical frameworks of brand identity co-creation and stakeholder paradigms, demonstrates how human brand identities co-create by multiple stakeholder-actors who have resources and incentives in the activities that make up an enterprise of a human brand, including the celebrities themselves, consumer-fans, and business entities. By utilizing observational, archival netnographic data from popular social media platforms, four exemplars of celebrity identities demonstrate the co-creation of human brands. Findings illustrate key stakeholder-actors' participation in the co-creation process as well as sociocultural codes, including social construction and negotiation of identities, parasocialization, influence projection, legitimization, and utilization of human brand identities. These human brand identity dynamics advance a stakeholder-actor paradigm of brand co-creation that adapts to the predominant consumer culture and human ideals that surround the celebrity. Results inform implications and future research on celebrity brand marketing management and co-creation.     

Role of the Internet Site in the Promotion Management of Sports Teams and Franchise Brands

This study examines the role that a website plays in the development of fan allegiance and as a promotion management tool for a sports team and brand. Research indicates that the combination of sports, media (television in particular), and sponsorships when employed in an integrated manner, can develop consumer connection to brands. This study suggests that the Internet is also an important part of an integration strategy of sports, media, and promotion. By working with a new team in the AIFA indoor football league, the researchers were able to determine what helped make fans allegiant to the team before the franchise's inaugural game. The results show that even before the team played its inaugural home contest, fans had become allegiant to the franchise brand and team by using the team internet site. These results indicate that an internet site can serve as a strong promotional tool in an integrated marketing plan of sports, media, and promotion to move fans toward brand loyalty and toward primary goals of the firm, including increased sales.     

The role of brand schemas,information transparency,and source of message on apparel brands' social responsibility communication

In today's complex business environment, apparel brands are communicating about their socially responsible (SR) practices through marketing messages to create a niche for themselves and show their SR efforts. However, SR aspects of products are difficult to verify by consumers. To help brands effectively communicate their SR efforts, this study assessed how consumers process an apparel brand's SR messages based on their prior experiences with that brand (brand schemas). Information transparency on messages and source of messages were tested as external cues to influence consumers' brand schemas and SR message evaluations in a mixed method repeated measures online experiment using a national US consumer sample. Results from regression-based conditional process analyses indicated that increased congruity of consumers' schemas to the fact that brands are SR led to more favorable attitude toward brands' SR messages. Also, presence of high information transparency on SR messages influenced consumers' schemas positively, and in turn, they evaluated messages more favorably. However, consumers were not influenced by whether messages were made by brands or third-party organizations. The study results show the importance of brand schemas and information transparency on apparel brand communications, helping both apparel brands and educators create effective SR-related marketing strategies.     

Working consumers: Co-creation of brand identity,consumer identity and brand community identity

The creation of identity, in terms of both consumer identity and brand identity, is a core topic in marketing theory. Based on participant ethnography of Yes Edinburgh North & Leith, part of Yes Scotland, the national referendum campaign supporting Scottish independence, this paper explores identity co-creation among three entities: the brand, the individual consumer, and the brand community. The findings suggest that the interactions among these entities co-create their identity, primarily through the actions of highly motivated working consumers. This paper identifies the main dialectic relationships and shows how the effects move beyond the dyads to affect the other entities, including the symbols used in the process of co-creation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for brands, individual consumers, and brand communities.     

Olfactory priming on consumer categorization,recall, and choice

Consumer choices are mostly regulated by pleasurable experiences that arise outside of the individuals' awareness in response to sensory attributes. This research examines the unconscious mechanism underlying consumers' behavior in response to odors applying the priming approach. Five experiments show that individuals' responses to odors involve two mechanisms, one affective (affective priming) and one associative (semantic priming) that impact consumers' categorization, recall, and choice. We found that when individuals perceive an odor as pleasant, their memory for odor-congruent brand logos (Experiment 1), and categorization of odor-congruent visual objects (Experiment 2) is improved. Unpleasant odors, instead, improve the categorization of odor-congruent visual objects only when they are made salient (Experiments 3 and 4). A pleasant odor diffused in the environment also drives consumers toward odor-congruent choices (Experiment 5), providing evidence that the incidental exposure to odors may induce affective and semantic associations with unrelated objects and behaviors. We also demonstrate that olfactory cues might be more effective than other modality (visual) stimuli to drive consumer responses. An implication for marketing is that odors employed in retail settings not only may induce an experience of pleasure but also promote specific consumer responses, such as categorization, recall, and choice.     

Bridging the online offline gap: Assessing the impact of brands’ social network content quality on brand awareness and purchase intention

Social media is shaping the way companies and brands engage and interact with consumers, particularly Millennials. In light of this growing trend, this study aims to understand the influence of content quality and brand interactivity within social media on consumers' brand awareness and purchase intentions by proposing an empirical model which is tested using structural equation modeling. The study also explores whether the relation between social media stimuli and offline purchase intention is mediated by hedonic motivation, consumer engagement and brand awareness. Results reveal that the quality of content provided by brands on social media and company-users' interactivity are of major importance to Millennials. They increase the hedonic motive derived by these users from social media, strengthen their online engagement and intensify their brand awareness. This heightened online consumer engagement coupled with an increased online consumer brand awareness leads to an increase in the purchase intention of these brands offline. Consequently, companies are encouraged to invest in producing high-quality content on their social media pages, deploy all possible strategies to enhance brand users’ interactivity given the important role these variables play in entertaining, engaging users online, building brand awareness and influencing their offline purchase intentions.     

The Effects of Credible Online Reviews on Brand Equity Dimensions and Its Consequence on Consumer Behavior

Consumers are using social media platform to gain and share knowledge on brands. In the virtual environment, consumers are exposed to various online reviews on brands that leave an impression of brands on the minds of the consumers. The present study combines Yale attitude change model and attribution theory to examine the effects of credible online reviews on brand equity dimensions. The present study views, through the lens of Yale attitude change model, the various factors that affect credibility evaluation of online reviews. Further, attribution theory is used as the theoretical backbone to analyze the effects of credible online reviews on brand equity dimensions and finally on purchase intention. This study uses structural equations modeling (SEM) to investigate the impact of online credible reviews on customer based brand equity (CBBE) dimensions and its consequence on consumer behavior (purchase intention). Results indicate that source and review quality are the most important factors that affect consumer's credibility evaluation of a review. Online credible reviews have more significant impact on brand awareness, perceived value and organizational associations and thus leads to consumer's purchase intention in the context of consumer electronic products in India.     

The uninvited brand

Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But as more branding activity moves to the Web, marketers are confronted with the stark realization that social media was made for people, not for brands. In this article, we explore the emergent cultural landscape of open source branding, and identify marketing strategies directed at the hunt for consumer engagement on the People's Web. These strategies present a paradox, for to gain coveted resonance, the brand must relinquish control. We discuss how Web-based power struggles between marketers and consumer brand authors challenge accepted branding truths and paradigms: where short-term brands can trump long-term icons; where marketing looks more like public relations; where brand building gives way to brand protection; and brand value is driven by risk, not returns.     

Brand consistency and coherency at the London 2012 Olympic Games

Abstract

As brand management and brand perceptions attract more attention in both academia and in practice, examining the link or lack thereof between brand identity and image is becoming increasingly important. The existence of brand consistency and coherency is examined in this research, which aimed to evaluate whether the pre- or post-event brand image of the Olympic Games or the London 2012 Games, in the domestic UK population and media, were aligned with the brand identities of these objects. Online surveys and media content analysis revealed that both brands have yet to achieve consistency or coherency within these two key stakeholder groups, even though the brand image of the 2012 Games improved following the event. What this study suggests is that unless the brand owner takes key stakeholders’ perceptions into consideration, a coherent and consistent brand identity does not necessarily equate to these being a feature of the brand image, with the connection between perceptions requiring additional attention.     

Social media resources and capabilities as strategic determinants of social media performance

Recent research reveals meaningful uses of digital marketing instruments, though without addressing internal, organizational antecedents of a firm’s social media performance. Drawing on resource-based theory and the concept of dynamic capabilities, this article identifies social media–specific resources and dynamic capabilities that can enhance social media performance. It also offers theoretically supported and validated scales to measure them. The authors empirically investigate their performance effects using different kinds of data pertaining to consumer brands, gathered from manager surveys, brands’ financial statements, Facebook fans, Instagram followers, YouTube subscribers, and brand image measures. The proposed social media resources and capabilities improve social media performance directly and brand perception indirectly. In particular, the impact of the social media strategy and measurement is moderated by firm size. A profile deviation analysis further reveals that the social media capabilities gap between top-performing versus other brands explains significant variance in social media performance. The advantages of developing social media capabilities early on also persist in the long-term, with substantial relevance for managers.