Why Are Themed Brandstores So Powerful? Retail Brand Ideology at American Girl Place

Although there is growing interest in themed brandstores, we still know very little about the source of these retail environments’ power to affect consumers profoundly. Utilizing an ethnographic study of American Girl Place, a culturally rich and highly successful retail environment, we find that effective retailing in these contexts is an intensely ideological affair. In our participant-observation of, and on-site interviews with, consumers at American Girl Place we find that the ideology of the brand manifests powerfully through a variety of different and distinct areas within the store: the Museum, the Library, the Café, the Salon, the Theater, and the Photo Studio. Ideological expression is central to each of these places. Tracking the influence of brand ideology through consumers’ retail experiences, we theorize about the centrality of retail place in ideological branding. Although the confluence of ideology and retailing has been referenced in prior research, this paper focuses on and systematically develops the theoretical interconnection between the two. The physical immediacy of themed brandstore experience acts as a quilting point that links together related cultural concepts into a strong retail brand ideology. The implications of this theory draw our attention to ideological and morally-bound retail brand expressions, emphasize the importance of a variety of retail formats within a single store, and provide practical guidelines for retailers eager to build successful brands of their own.     

Themed flagship brand stores in the new millennium: theory, practice, prospects

The flagship brand store is an increasingly popular venue used by marketers to build relationships with consumers. As we move further into an experience economy in the new millennium, retailers are refining the flagship brand store into new forms such as the themed retail brand store. This new form not only promotes a more engaging experience of the brand’s essence but also satisfies consumers looking for entertainment alongside their shopping. In this article, we conceptualize and explore themed flagship brand stores in terms of the mythological appeal of the narratives conveyed by their physical and symbolic structure. We utilize a field study of ESPN Zone Chicago to examine these features in a sports-themed retail brand store. Finally, we offer some projections, based on our research, of the possible transformations of the flagship brand store as the new century unfolds. We conclude that mindscape-related themes, which combine entertainment, therapeutics, and spiritual growth, are at the frontier of retail theming.     

Flagship stores for FMCG national brands: Do they improve brand cognitions and create favorable consumer reactions?

National brands have begun to engage in direct distribution, displaying the brand in its own biotope. Such operation of flagship stores is one means of forward verticalization. From samples of visitors to two flagship stores of fast-moving consumer goods brands, this study analyzes the effects of the flagship store visit on brand experience, brand equity, brand attachment, and loyalty. In the low-involvement FMCG context, flagship stores are useful for reinforcing brand experience. However, flagship store-fueled brand experience does not necessarily lead to favorable consumer reactions; its effect on future purchases is mediated by both brand equity and brand attachment.     

Brand compass: charting a course to improve firm performance

This study contributes to the internal brand management domain from a firm asset perspective. We argue brand compass is an inside-out identity-focused firm asset consisting of brand vision, brand commitment and shared brand understanding. We build a theoretical argument for examining brand compass together with two important outward focused orientations: market orientation and innovation orientation. Through structural equation modelling, within the context of retailing, the findings chart a course to improve firm performance.     

The Impact of a Flagship vs. a Brand Store on Brand Attitude,Brand Attachment and Brand Equity

How can flagships and brand stores contribute to building brands? We inquire about the relationships between store image, brand experience, brand attitude, brand attachment and brand equity using store intercepts. We find that flagships, due to the powerful brand experiences they allow, have a stronger impact on brand attitude, brand attachment and brand equity compared to brand stores. We provide retail marketers with avenues to offer increased in-store brand experiences by appealing to consumers’ emotions, senses, behaviors, and cognition.     

Exploring consumers’ subjective shopping experiences in directly operated luxury brand stores

Customers’ in-store shopping experiences are critical for luxury brand success. Research on the creation of experiential value in retailing finds clear differences in the cues contributing to delightful consumer experiences depending on the retailing sector. A management perspective dominates research in luxury retailing, while research on consumers’ subjective luxury shopping experiences is scarce. This study contributes to filling the gap regarding consumers’ subjective experiences through a qualitative inquiry into shoppers’ accounts of experiences in luxury brand stores. The study finds that the major determinants of a delightful shopping experience in luxury stores are extraordinary service excellence, unique multi-sensory emotional stimulation conforming to the brand, and a feeling of personal importance and assurance. The study demonstrates the importance of a holistic individual experience in helping shoppers become immersed in the brand universe through all their senses.     

Brand personality appeal in retailing: Comparing fashion- and grocery retailing

In a mature retail market, branding can offer retailers opportunities for setting themselves apart. This study examines the construct ‘brand personality appeal’ (BPA; Freling et al., 2011) in retailing. Two consumer surveys are administered, on fashion retailing (n = 104) and grocery retailing (n = 101), focusing on (1) store personality, (2) BPA, and (3) retailer brand equity. A SmartPLS estimation shows that ‘enthusiasm’ is a personality trait that appeals to consumers regardless of the retail context, whereas ‘sophistication’ matters more in fashion retailing and ‘unpleasantness’ in grocery retailing. BPA is a significant driver of retail brand equity, regardless of the retail context.     

M(Art)Worlds: Consumer Perceptions of How Luxury Brand Stores Become Art Institutions

Through an ethnographic study of how consumers perceive and experience Louis Vuitton flagship stores, we show that luxury stores are becoming hybrid institutions, embodying elements of both art galleries and museums, within a context of exclusivity emblematic of luxury. We create the term “M(Art)World” to capture the essence of this aesthetically oriented strategy. Participants take note of the company's sleekly elegant architecture, interior design, and adroit use of lighting that are modelled after those of museums housing world-class exhibits. The store's merchandize is artisanal, often produced in collaboration with artists. Objects for sale are displayed alongside actual art, rendering both products equivalent. Employees function as curators, offering guidance and knowledge, as well as goods for sale. We analyze how luxury consumers experience and evaluate the ways in which luxury stores operate as contemporary art institutions, and extrapolate those insights into managerial implications for other retail venues.     

Brand experience anatomy in retailing: An interpretive structural modeling approach

In today's highly competitive retail environment, retailers have recognized and embraced the concept of offering experiences with the retail brand across various channels beyond new launches and lower prices. To manage the experiences associated with a retail brand, retailers need to understand the concept of brand experience in retailing and the factors that actually comprise it. Interestingly, very few studies have imparted an understanding of brand experience in retailing. This study seeks to understand the retail brand experience and model the interrelationships among retail brand experience variables using interpretive structural modeling (ISM). Retail brand experience variables used in this study have been identified from existing literature on ‘brand experience’ and from brainstorming sessions with academicians and retail industry experts. Our findings show that the variables, namely, packaging of own label brands, customer billings, order and application forms, point-of-sales (i.e., shelf talkers) and recommendation by a salesperson have a high degree of influence and exhibit low dependence. These variables require a great deal of consideration due to their strategic significance to retailers. The approach applied in this study will enhance the understanding of retailers for improving the performance through managed retail brand experience initiatives.     

Brand fidelity: Scale development and validation

The goal of this research is to develop and validate a multi-dimensional scale measure of brand fidelity. This paper reports the rigorous process of scale development, through two separate studies involving 592 US consumers. Study 1 involves scale item generation, content validation and scale purification, while Study 2 involves a two-wave data collection method, evaluating the refined brand fidelity scale within a nomological network of relationships. The results demonstrate the 20-item brand fidelity scale to have strong construct validity as a first-order reflective, second-order formative scale. The findings suggest that if consumers engage in the behaviours/cognitions (as defined within the brand fidelity scale), then consumer/brand relationships are likely to be stable and predictable; are likely to endure the ravages of time; and, importantly, are likely to remain monogamous. For practitioners, the overall brand fidelity score can be used to track brand performance over time and for industry benchmarking purposes. Additionally, the measured brand fidelity dimensions provide specific direction upon which remedial marketing action can be implemented.     

Brand morphing across Wal-Mart customer segments

The premise of segmentation theory is that different segments each have a discrete customer profile and behavioral characteristics. At a conceptual level, the recent branding literature recognizes that different sub-cultures or segments could experience different meanings of an organization's brand. However, few quantitative studies address the issue. The current paper combines branding and segmentation theory and offers a new perspective on whether all segments have the same brand meaning. A leading discount retailer, Wal-Mart, is the focus of this Canadian-based investigation. Two segments of Wal-Mart customers are the basis of the study — one segment preferring Wal-Mart and one less attached. The research quantifies the two networks of brand meaning that the two segments associate with the Wal-Mart (corporate) brand. Empirically, brand morphing of the corporate brand occurs, with different brand meanings across the two segments.     

Creating Global Brand Names: The Use of Sound Symbolism

ABSTRACT

Creating meaningful brand names for international markets can be particularly challenging because translation may distort intended meaning. To mitigate this issue, marketers can imbue meaning into a brand name with sound symbolism, which refers to the direct linkage between sound and meaning. The aim of this article is to examine whether sound symbolism effects are maintained after translating a brand name from English to Hindi. Results of an empirical study with Hindi-speaking subjects indicate that the sound–meaning relationship can persist after translation. A primary contribution is that sound symbolism can help create global brand names with consistent meaning across languages.     

How can Indian small-scale fashion retailers survive COVID-19 disruption?-A Brand Portfolio Optimization Perspective

Fast fashion trends have led to an enormous local brand proliferation in India. Brand proliferation has further led to an overchoice effect among the Indian consumers due to which, they are now increasingly less satisfied with their apparel purchases. These factors have created immense stress on the small fashion retailers (SFR) which are currently responsible for about 80% of retailing in India. In the pre-COVID times, SFR's followed the practice of overstocking many brands for capturing the maximum market and then clearing the inventory at the end of the season through heavy discounting. This strategy became ineffective after the COVID-19 disruption. SFR's must now optimize their brand portfolio to minimize the overchoice effect and maximize the inventory turnover ratio. To this effect, we propose an efficient fuzzy probability-based brand portfolio optimization model, which relies on primary data analysis to classify brands in groups of substitutes. Brands with maximum market share from each group must be included in the portfolio. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model through a case study on SFR. Our results show that the inventory turnover ratio was increased from 2 to 4. We further show that our grouping strategy can be used to identify competitive brands for a local band.     

品牌原产地困惑对于消费者喜爱与购买本土品牌和境外品牌的影响

以消费者行为理论和品牌原产地效应的研究文献为基础，通过对调查数据进行统计分析，本文提出与检验了品牌原产地困惑对于中国消费者喜爱与购买本土品牌和境外品牌的影响作用。结论如下：第一，在中国现有环境下，消费者越是误认为一个本土品牌是境外品牌，就倾向于越喜欢这个品牌；越是误认为一个境外品牌是本土品牌，就倾向于越不喜欢这个品牌。第二，本土品牌知名度对于本土品牌原产地困惑和消费者喜好本土品牌之间的正相关关系有负向的调节作用；不过，境外品牌知名度的调节作用则不明显。第三，品牌原产地困惑对于中国消费者购买本土品牌有负向影响，对中国消费者购买境外品牌则无显著影响。     

Managing a Global Retail Brand in Different Markets: Meta-Analyses of Customer Responses to Service Encounters

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers’ satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842 satisfaction equations describing customers’ encounters with a global retailer operating 400 stores in 32 countries. The results show how customers weigh their perceptions of service encounters differently depending on brand, store, and consumer factors. In markets where customers believe the retailer has high holistic brand quality, they place less weight on experience clues within the store. In markets where customers believe the retailer’s service brand promise, they place more weight on in-store experience clues. In markets where the retailer promises utilitarian value, customers weigh functional experience clues more heavily. In markets with an online purchasing channel, the effect of experience clues common to offline and online store environments is magnified, and unique clues are diminished. In addition, customers heavily weigh experience clues that fit their goals. In general, retail success factors include high brand quality (which makes customers more forgiving), a service brand promise that is mirrored in the store image (which makes customers attend to the experience clues aligned with them), and the careful monitoring and managing of retail touchpoints (to customize experience clues to each market). In this way, retailers can use customer-based strategies to effectively design and manage their global retail brand in different markets.     

Creating Brand Names With Meaning: The Use of Sound Symbolism

The staggering level and rate of growth of brands being introduced to the marketplace suggests a heightened need to understand how to create effective new brand names. Limited academic research, however, has been conducted in this area. This paper investigates the use of linguistics, specifically sound symbolism, in order to create brand names with inherent meaning. Results of two studies indicate that the sound of a brand name can communicate information about the product, e.g. its size, speed, strength, weight, etc. Brand name sounds can convey product-related information either in the presence or absence of supporting marketing communications.     

Uppercase Premium Effect: The Role of Brand Letter Case in Brand Premiumness

Researchers have recently begun investigating how visual elements affect brand positioning. However, little is known about the effect of brand typeface features on brand premiumness. This paper proposes and verifies that letter case affects consumers’ perceived brand premiumness. Eight experiments, including one eye-tracking experiment, reveal that consumers perceive brands that use all uppercase letters (“uppercase brands”) as more premium than those that use all lowercase letters (“lowercase brands”). We refer to this effect as the “uppercase premium effect.” This effect is induced by the perceived conspicuousness of uppercase brands, a process which in turn is moderated by the product's social visibility. The effect is reversed for consumers who prefer subtle signals (“inconspicuous consumers”) because these consumers are likely to perceive a conspicuous uppercase brand as gaudy. Whereas status-motivated consumers are more likely to choose uppercase brands due to the increased premiumness perceptions, the increment in such perceptions does not further influence the purchase decisions of consumers indifferent to expressing status. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and offer suggestions for further research.     

An Investigation of Attitude Toward the Brand,Commitment, and True Brand Loyalty in a Cross-Cultural Context

Abstract

This study utilized data from two geographically separated cultures to investigate relationships involving antecedents to true brand loyalty. A relationship between the consumer's attitude toward the brand and a measure of expressed commitment was found to explain a significant percentage of the variance in commitment. A relationship between commitment and true brand loyalty also was found significant. Both relationships vary somewhat by product and culture. No evidence was found, however, suggesting that they could not be considered generalizable. The underlying components of brand attitude were found to vary by product and country. The culturally related differences-espe-cially those pertaining to the composition and meaning of the underlying components-have interesting managerial implications.     

Shaping Retail Brand Personality Perceptions by Bodily Experiences

Customer experiences play an important role in retail brand management. This research investigates how bodily experiences in retail environments influence customers’ perceptions of retail brand personalities. Based on research on human personality perception, we propose that bodily experiences transfer metaphoric meaning to customers’ brand perceptions. In a field experiment and a lab experiment we manipulated participants’ bodily experiences (feeling of hardness and temperature) and consistently found a metaphor-specific transfer of experiences to retail brand personality perceptions (on the dimensions “ruggedness” and “warmth”). A third study reveals the mechanism behind the effect and demonstrates concept activation elicited by bodily experiences in customers’ minds.     

Brand switching in clothing: the role of variety‐seeking drive and product category‐level characteristics

The study explores the impact of internal factors such as variety‐seeking drive, loyalty, involvement, perceived risk, pleasure and similarity perceptions on brand‐switching propensity in clothing purchases using multiple regression. The model derived shows that five internal factors including involvement, perceived risk, loyalty and variety‐seeking drive have an impact on brand switching propensity. The findings highlight that highly involved and loyal consumers are likely to show brand‐switching propensities in their clothing purchases, thus buying from a repertoire of brands and stores. These findings imply that retailers should ensure that their clothing brands or stores are among those in the multi‐brand repertoire of the consumer.