Positioning in political marketing: How semiotic analysis adds value to traditional survey approaches

Abstract

The 2010 British election particularly focused on the party leaders’ images – a departure in fifty years of British elections. The principal contribution of the article is to illustrate how a combined approach to assessing leadership positioning using both the traditional survey and semiotic analysis can provide insights into what image attribute dimensions end up in the minds of members of the public (actual positioning) and on what image attribute dimensions party marketers are trying to position themselves (intended positioning). Using data from the 2010 British general elections, our findings indicate that the combined methodological approach would be particularly useful for brands that need repositioning, those whose image attribute positions change dramatically over time, and those who wish to target previously unresponsive target audience segments.     

Brand‐building in the 1990s

This paper argues that now is the time to consider how one should seek to apply marketing principles and practice in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing environment. In essence, the thesis is that as it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain an objective comparative advantage over one's competitors so it will become increasingly important to position organizations as “brands” in the minds of actual and potential customers.     

Branding and design management: a brand design management model

As brands have become one of firms' most valuable assets, the search for new ways to build brands that achieve a differentiated status in the minds of customers has become of central importance for companies. If design is guided by the brand, it can serve as the cohesive factor for all elements that configure a brand experience and represent an unequivocal source of differentiation. 37 owners and/or top managers of 28 Spanish companies acclaimed for their design were interviewed in order to build a model that integrates branding and design management. The resulting model integrates the innovation process with different kinds of design, in order to build consistent brand experiences.     

Gender and Celebrity Scandals: A Cross-Cultural Examination on Celebrity Endorsement

Abstract

This research examines the effects of consumers’ culture and celebrity’s gender role on source credibility and attitude toward brand. Using culture difference theory (individualism and Confucianism) helps to explain why sex scandals can result in a greater negative impact on the response of Chinese customers than US customers. Finally, we provide a celebrity-select suggestion to mitigate the negative damage brought by the endorser’s sex scandal. Specifically, we conducted experiments by using a 2 (sex scandal vs. tax evasion) x2 (Confucianism vs. individualism) x3 (celebrity gender: male vs. female vs. transgender) between-subjects design.     

Why Consumers in Developing Countries Prefer Foreign Brands: A Study of Japanese Brands in Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Building on social-identity theory, the research develops a model for understanding of the impact of consumer identification with a nation on consumers' brand evaluations. It posits that developing-country consumers' identification with a foreign (developed) nation influences three factors—consumer-based brand equity, consumer-based country image, and consumer-based brand credibility. The research was informed by data from 400 Vietnamese consumers in relation to two Japanese brands Sony and Honda and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings show that Vietnamese (developing-country) consumers prefer Japanese (developed-country) brands over domestic brands, when these consumers identify with the developed nation.     

Quantifying the influence of customer experience on consumer share-of-category

Customer experience is an all-encompassing construct, and most companies go to considerable lengths to create memorable, extraordinary experiences. Nevertheless, customers experience offerings, companies, and their brands very differently. Using one qualitative and three quantitative studies we explore customers’ experiences from a financial perspective by measuring and quantifying the linkages between these and customers’ share-of-category. When measured by means of customers’ share-of-category, customers demonstrate significantly different purchasing intentions and behavior. In addition, customer retail service experiences that influence the share-of-category differ significantly between customers with a low and a high share-of-category. We expand our knowledge of customer experience by highlighting that different customer groups may perceive a similar retail experience differently, leading to a different purchasing behavior and influencing their respective share-of-category. This study expands existing research by providing empirical evidence of the link between the customer experience and customers’ purchasing behavior.     

Impact of Celebrity Endorsements and Brand Mascots on Consumer Buying Behavior

ABSTRACT

Celebrity and brand mascot endorsements are very popular and often-used techniques by marketers. Marketers believe that celebrity and brand mascot endorsements provide a higher degree of appeal, attention, and customer recall ability compared with when this technique is not used. Marketers also claim that a celebrity affects the credibility of claims about a product and increases the memorabilia factor of the message, which may provide a positive effect that could be generalized to the brand. Primarily this essay has been designed such that it examines various parameters related to advertisements containing celebrity and brand mascot endorsements. Data were been collected from 150 respondents through questionnaire and subjected to t test, χ² test, and difference of means test to enforce the hypotheses that celebrity endorsements have impacts on customers’ perceptions and their purchase intentions. The findings of this study provide insights for marketing and brand managers to design and market their campaigns effectively.     

The moderating effect of self-esteem on consumer responses to global positioning in advertising

The study investigates consumers' responses to global positioning in advertising from the perspective of self. It is suggested that consumers' attitudes toward the brand advertised through global positioning are influenced by their ideal selves and cosmopolitan orientations and these influences are moderated by one's self-esteem level. Study 1 shows that attitudes toward the globally positioned brand are more positive for those with ideal selves that are more congruent with personal traits associated with globally positioned brands, but only for those with high self-esteem. Interview results from study 2 suggest that low self-esteem informants make use of the global brands associated with ‘Western’ as a means of signaling their social selves in order to obtain social approval and that high self-esteem informants attend to ad content, whether the ad employs global or local positioning.     

Status of brands in children’s consumption: What letters to Santa posted on La Poste website tell us

The purpose of the research is to identify different consumption styles based on a large collection of letters to Santa written by some children and/or their families and submitted to the French Post website (La Poste). One of our main interests focuses on the presence and weight of brands and licenses in children’s wish lists. We have had access to all the anonymous posts sent to Santa Claus through La Poste’s website during the 2013 and 2014 Christmas holidays. We analyzed the nature of the wish lists as shown in the 43,000‐post database using several textual data analysis techniques. Extensive heterogeneity was found among children’s and families’ postures regarding that specific ritual. The different types of emails reflect the meaning families associate with Christmas time but also their different consumption styles or attitudes toward consumption: reasoned, educational, hedonistic, or materialistic, for example. When focusing on brands and licenses, we can also observe significant differences in the way families and children include them in their consumption decisions. Brands could have a very different weight in Christmas wish lists and their natures reflect different value transmission modes. The French market for Christmas children brands is rather stable and focuses on a few top leading global brands such as Playmobil, Barbie, or Lego. At least one of the ten leading brands is mentioned in half of evaluated Christmas wish lists. The analysis confirms that brands are very clearly gendered and associated with the children’s ages. Peak time for brand desire is alleged to be reached between the age of 7 and 9. To our knowledge, our research is the first to analyze a large sample of spontaneous data to capture children’s consumption styles and attitudes toward brands. Because of our classification, a first typology of parental consumption styles has also been identified.     

Consumers’ Behavioral Intentions Toward Self-Service Technology in the Emerging Markets

ABSTRACT

Self-service technologies (SSTs) allow customers to offer their own service encounters via the interaction of electronic service interfaces or machines rather than by interacting with a firm's service personnel. This lack of personal interaction generates doubts and queries in the minds of the people, especially those unaware or less aware of these technology-based services. Such a situation is quite prevalent in the developing nations (like India), where still a large number of people are apprehensive about using the latest technologies. In this regard, the present study aims to develop an integrated model designed to predict and explain the various factors that influence customers’ behavioral intentions to use or not to use one particular SST (i.e., ATM services). The study finds that bank customers are less innovative and less optimistic to try out new technologies. Usefulness of the technology helps in developing positive attitude toward the technology, which in turn affects customers' intentions to use that technology.     

Transformation and Rebirth of Chinese Brands: A Case From the Hotel Industry

ABSTRACT

Chinese domestic brands have developed rapidly in recent years, and yet few of them have entered global competition as product or service brands brands with exceptions such as Huawei. In addition, the evolution of Chinese brands has hardly been understood or introduced properly by international business educators. In this article, we identify the development patterns of Chinese domestic brands by using a local hotel brand as an example. Particularly, we examine and discuss how a Chinese brand can be established with specific positioning, brand image, and product offering, as well as how the brand can grow by vertical and horizontal extensions based on balancing market opportunities and the brand’s own capabilities. Moreover, we expect this research to facilitate the understanding of Chinese brands among international business education.     

Consumer brand engagement and its social side on brand-hosted social media: how do they contribute to brand loyalty?

ABSTRACT

Social media offer brands new opportunities to interact with their customers. This paper focuses on consumer brand engagement (CBE) and its social facet in the context of brand-hosted social media. It highlights that CBE (consumer–brand interactions encompassing cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions) and brand-based consumer–consumer interactions (social brand engagement (SBE)) lead to brand loyalty intentions. Brand customers were surveyed about their favourite brands on Facebook. Results indicate that self-brand connections and SBE are two drivers of CBE, and that CBE is the key element in inducing brand loyalty. In addition, configural analysis shows that high brand loyalty can be achieved through several combinations of social and CBE with various levels of cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement.     

The brand personality dimensions of business-to-business firms: a content analysis of employer reviews on social media

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand personalities that employees are creating of their employer brands, in particular business-to-business (B-to-B) brands, when describing these brands on social media. We examine how the brand personalities, based on written online reviews, differ between high- and low-ranked, and high- and low-rated brands.

Methodology/Approach: 6,300 written employee reviews from a social media platform, Glassdoor, are used for content analysis in DICTION, to determine the brand personality dimensions they communicate (J. L). An independent B-to-B brand ranking data source, Brandwatch, is used as a reference to various brands’ level of ranking, while an ANOVA test is used to determine whether there is a difference in the brand personality trait means when comparing high and low-ranked, and high- and low-rated brands.

Findings: Our findings suggest that a strong social media presence does not equate to a strong employer brand personality perception among employees, since there are no significant differences between B-to-B firms based on their rankings.

Research Implications: Extant literature has mostly explored the impact of either critical reviews or favourable customer ratings and reviews on company performance, with very little research focusing on the B-to-B context. In addition, research employing DICTION for the purposes of content analysis of reviews is sparse. The methodology used in this study could thus be employed to further compare and contrast the reviews from a single company, dividing top and low starred reviews to compare discrepancies.

Practical Implications: The results of this study show how online shared employee experiences of employer brands contribute to the formation of a distinct employer brand personality. From a managerial viewpoint, engaging with current and past employees and being cognizant of the online narratives that they share on social media, may be an early indicator of where the firm is lacking (or showing strength) in its’ employee engagement. This would offer a way for firms to both understand their employer brand personality as well as gauge how they compare to top employers in a specific sector or industry.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The study attempts to grow the literature of employee brand engagement in a B-to-B context, by recognizing the important role that employees play in engaging with their employer brand online. Two main contributions are offered. The first contribution relates to the finding that employees perceive highly-rated B-to-B brands as being more competent, exciting, sincere and sophisticated than low-rated B-to-B brands. Second, the methodology used in this study proves to be a novel and accurate way of comparing employee reviews and perceived employer brand personality, with the employer-created intended brand image.     

The effects of competitive context on consumer response to price changes

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to understand how a brand’s price level, relative to its competitors, will affect consumers’ responses to price changes of the brand. The study uses experiments to examine brand choice responses to price increases and decreases across contexts differing in competitor brands and their respective prices. These experiments are conducted with six consumer goods categories. The research identifies three key factors that affect the size of responses to brand price changes – (1) passing a competitor brand’s price, (2) narrowing versus widening the price gaps with competitors, and (3) whether competitors are predominantly higher or lower priced brands.     

Building loyalty in e-commerce: Impact of business and customer characteristics

Abstract

Understanding, building, and predicting customer loyalty in e-commerce are critical activities for long-run profitability. Successfully carrying out these activities is challenging due to the complex mix of both business organization and customer factors that may influence and drive e-loyalty. We demonstrate that business factors, such as credibility, e-satisfaction and site knowledge, and customer factors, such as inertia, innovativeness, and aggressiveness, influence e-loyalty. Our analyses show that business credibility is affected by the reputation of the e-business and its congruence with the customers’ self-image; e-satisfaction by the customers’ value perception, care, and choice; and site knowledge by customer experience, involvement, and expertise. Business factors account for about 75% of the explained variation in e-loyalty and customer factors for the rest. Understanding the controllable business and uncontrollable customer factors that drive customer loyalty should enable e-commerce retailers to continually assess these factors and make appropriate changes in marketing strategy.     

Antecedents of Belief in Global Citizenship: A Two-Country Empirical Investigation

ABSTRACT

This research contributes to the existing literature by investigating the antecedents of belief in global citizenship. Previous literature in global brand management has provided strong evidence of the importance of perceived quality and social prestige of global brands in influencing consumers’ evaluations of global brands. Accordingly, the authors’ model focuses on the perceived quality and social prestige of global brands as antecedents of consumers’ belief in global citizenship. In addition, they examine the direct and indirect effects of consumer ethnocentricity and cultural openness on consumers’ belief in global citizenship. They empirically examine this framework within a rich cross-cultural context using samples from the United States and India (developed and developing countries). The proposed model suggests that perceived quality and social prestige of global brands are mediators of the relationship between ethnocentricity and cultural openness and consumers’ belief in global citizenship. They followed Gerbing and Anderson's two-step approach to develop a measurement model with an acceptable fit to the data and then conducted a structural model to test the hypothesized relationships. The authors conducted χ² difference tests to examine the structure of their hypothesized relationships across the United States and India. The results support partial mediation for perceived quality and social prestige of global brands on the relationship between ethnocentricity and cultural openness and consumers’ belief in global citizenship. Furthermore, they demonstrate some interesting differences in the relationships in the model across the two samples.     

Customers’ everyday understanding of ‘value’ from a second-order cybernetic perspective

ABSTRACT

Value is in the centre of service and marketing. However, what does value mean to customers? The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of value from a customers’ perspective using a second-order cybernetics approach. We found that the word ‘value’ is recursively linked to 13 different ‘meanings’ indicating a variety of understandings of the term ‘value’. Furthermore, the findings support service-dominant logic where customers integrate their own resources (skills and knowledge) in the value co-creation process. Future research has to be aware of the different meanings, which are associated with value. Marketing managers need to understand, on the one hand, that value has a different meaning to their customer and on the other hand, what value means to their specific target groups.     

Formation of Reputation in Business Markets

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study adopts a relational perspective on reputation. We investigate how relationship characteristics impact a customer’s judgment of supplier reputation. We include characteristics at both the interfirm and interpersonal levels, and we additionally link these characteristics to interfirm trust in order to explore similarities and differences between reputation and interfirm trust.

Methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among firms in the Norwegian offshore oil and gas industry. We assessed the measurement model and tested the hypotheses by applying LISREL.

Findings: The results show that the customer’s dependence on the supplier, common knowledge, and interpersonal trust are positively related to reputation, while opportunism is negatively related to reputation. Reputation is positively linked to interfirm trust, and both reputation and interfirm trust impact the customer’s satisfaction with the supplier.

Research implications: This study sheds light on the role of relational mechanisms in reputation formation. It suggests that reputation primarily consists of cognitive components, while interfirm trust consists of more affective components. Reputation is an important factor in developing interfirm trust.

Practical implications: This study underscores the importance of a firm’s core relationships to customers for developing its reputation. Managers need to carefully develop their relationships to customers in such a way that these relationships are consistent with and confirm the reputation they want to build.

Originality/value: The study supports the view that relational characteristics play important roles in the formation of reputation in business markets.     

Dodo Lé Là: how consumers promote a local iconic brand in postcolonial creole culture

ABSTRACT

This videography shows how consumers in the Reunion Island (France) promote a local Dodo beer towards an iconic status through their identity work. An alternative approach to Holt’s theorising on iconic brands is taken on two levels. First, the videography contributes by offering a non-American, postcolonial and creole aspect of a brand myth-making, as well as the ‘promotion’ of the brand by the local consumers and multi-ethnic community. Second, the consumers’ voice in citing the brand is examined (Nakassis, 2012. American Anthropologist, 114(4), 624–638.). Based on the findings, the citing of the brand happens in two different ways: when including it into personalised identity narratives and when producing new brand tokens, thus nurturing the brand ontology further.     

Evaluating brand extensions,fit perceptions and post-extension brand image: does size matter?

Abstract

This study contributes to the scant literature considering brand extensions in a competitive context and investigates whether the correlation between consumers’ beliefs about a brand’s attributes and the number of its buyers described in previous research occurs with regard to fit perceptions of brand extensions, extension evaluation and post-extension brand image. In a scenario experiment with real brands and fictitious extensions, members of a commercial UK panel evaluated high and low-fit extensions and post-extension brand images of competing brands of pet food. The relative size of each brand in terms of the number of its buyers was used as a benchmark in the analysis. For all extensions, results reveal a positive correlation between post-extension brand images, extension evaluations, fit perceptions and the number of brand buyers. Results have implications for interpreting consumers’ perceptions of fit, evaluation of extensions and post-extension brand images of competing brands.