Editorial

Citation

Veloutsou, C. and Guzman, F. (2017), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 225-226. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-03-2017-1442

This is the third issue of Volume 26 of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. It consists of eight contributions contributed by 24 researchers based at universities from nine different countries and three continents. There are five papers that analyse various issues related to the interaction between brands and consumers, one paper that examines the brand management system, one paper that examines product design and, finally, one paper on pricing.

The first paper by Harry Taute, Jeremy Sierra (member of the Editorial Review Board), Larry Carter and Amro Maher focuses on brand tribalism. In particular, the study investigates the indirect effect of brand tribalism on purchase intent via brand pride and brand attitude in the context of smartphones with data collected from experiments in two countries (USA and Qatar). The findings from both countries suggest that from the four brand tribalism dimensions (defence of the tribal brand, social structure, segmentary lineage and sense of community), only the defence of the tribal brand dimension influences brand pride, which in turn leads to a sequential process of brand attitude and purchase intention. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 11th Global Brand Conference of the Academy of Marketing’s SIG in Brand, Identity and Corporate Reputation that took place in Bradford in 2016.

The contribution by Gianfranco Walsh, Mario Schaarschmidt and Stefan Ivens examines corporate reputation in the context of fashion retailing, shoes and clothes. Using data collected online from 300 retail consumers in Germany, the findings support that there are both direct and indirect effects of the corporate reputation on relational outcomes (trust and commitment), while gender partially moderates the links between the study variables.

Rose Du Preez, Michael Bendixen and Russell Abratt use data collected from three service organisations based in the USA and South Africa, and examine the role of internal brand management on front-line employees’ brand citizenship behaviour, job satisfaction and brand commitment and intention to stay in the organisation. The findings of the three studies indicate that although internal brand management practices directly influence job satisfaction, brand commitment and brand citizenship behaviour, the development of citizenship behaviour is contextual. The strength of the relationships is dissimilar, while the relationships between the other variables are not always significant in the three service organisations under investigation.

The following two papers examine brand engagement. Brand engagement on Facebook pages is the focus of the paper by Wimmala Pongpaew, Mark Speece and Leela Tiangsoongnern. With data collected in Thailand from interviews with 18 users of corporate Facebook pages, their research suggests that corporate Facebook pages with high social presence functions foster customer engagement on all levels (cognitive, emotional and behavioural), enhance product knowledge and encourage return page visits, resulting in higher levels of brand trust and loyalty.

Janne Hepola, Heikki Karjaluoto and Anni Hintikka collected 1,385 responses from Finland to analyse the effect of sensory brand experience and involvement on brand equity, directly and indirectly, through brand engagement (cognitive, emotional and behavioural). Their data analysis allows them to conclude that the examined relationships are significant, with emotional engagement being the most important contributor to brand equity.

Mathieu Dunes and Bernard Pras collect data from 180 managers in France and examine the brand management system in France and its effect on subjective and objective performance. They conceptualise the brand management system as the brand management implementation, the role of brand management in hierarchical relationships and brand management in the organisational culture. Their results reveal that perceived brand performance mediates the relationship between the BMS and the objective financial performance of the firm and on each of the three BMS dimensions. There is also evidence that the sector’s orientation (product vs service-oriented) positively moderates the relationship between the brand management system and subjective brand performance. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the World Marketing Congress 2015, organised from the Academy of Marketing Science in Bari.

Taewon Suh, John Ford, Young Ryu and John Kim contribute a paper on new product development management. This work maps out the possible and potential uses of a measure for academicians and practitioners and examines simultaneous utilization of the measure in product design. The findings suggest that a pluralistic methodology can facilitate the development of a measure that incorporates the academic views with the practitioners’ design activities.

The final paper of this issue is a pricing paper. Lan Xia and Kent Monroe use data collected from three studies and 403 participants in the USA and examine the effect of targeted promotions on the perceptions of fairness, with implications to the reputation of the brand. The results indicate that non-targeted consumers find these promotions unfair with potential damage on the reputation of the brand.

For the assessment of the work that is presented in this issue, the Journal of Product and Brand Management relied on the help of 18 reviewers. These reviewers are based in ten different countries on four continents, and ten of them are members of the journal’s editorial board. They are listed below in alphabetical order:

• Achilleas Boukis, Sussex University, UK.

• Bernard Cova, Kedge Business School, France.

• Francesca Dall’Olmo Riley, Kingston University, UK.

• Devon DelVecchio, Miami University, USA.

• Laurence Dessart, Kedge Business School Bordeaux, France.

• Jodie Ferguson, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA.

• Nicholas Grigoriou, Monash University, Malaysia.

• Lief Hem, NHH, SOL, Norway.

• Oriol Iglesias, ESADE Business School, Spain.

• Colin Jevons, Monash University, Australia.

• Laurent Muzellec, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, Ireland.

• Ioanna Papasolomou, University of Nicosia, Cyprus.

• Carmen Pérez-Cabanero, University of Valencia, Spain.

• Lea Prevel Katsanis, Concordia University, Canada.

• Alexandros Skandalis, Lancaster University, Marketing, UK.

• Feng Shen, Saint Joseph’s University, USA.

• Robert Thomas, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff School of Management, UK.

• Lia Zarantonello, University of Roehampton, UK.

We would like to thank all these reviewers for helping the Journal to improve the quality of its content by providing their time and expertise.

We hope that you find reading this issue intellectually stimulating and enjoyable.