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Many consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have increased the visibility of their corporate brand to consumers by adding a corporate logo (e.g. Unilever “U”) on the packaging of their product brands (e.g. Dove, Domestos, Lipton, Knorr) and showcasing their product-brand portfolio in additional corporate-brand advertising. This paper aims to investigate consumer needs and product-brand familiarity as moderators of the impact of such a strong form of corporate-brand endorsement on the evaluation of established CPG product brands.

Two experiments with n = 670 and n = 118 respondents compare consumer evaluations of eight (Study 2: ten) product brands of a major German (Study 2: Anglo-Dutch) CPG company with versus without corporate-brand endorsement. The authors measure (Study 2: manipulate) the importance a consumer attaches to symbolic, experiential, relational and functional needs in brand choice.

Corporate-brand endorsement improves (decreases) the evaluation of established CGP product brands among consumer segments who base their brand choice in a CPG category predominantly on functional or relational (experiential or symbolic) needs. Furthermore, it exerts a negative effect on product brands among heavy category users due to their higher product-brand familiarity.

Rather than endorsing all its product brands with the corporate brand, a CPG company should do so selectively, depending on the positioning and target audience of each product brand.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to demonstrate the importance of consumer needs and product-brand familiarity in corporate-brand endorsement.

Blockchain technology is predicted to revolutionize the tourism and hospitality industry through peer-to-peer hotel bookings with little or no involvement of intermediaries. Outstanding features of this technology are its distributed form of storing data, its collaborative way of identifying the “true state” of a system and the immutability of data. These features may lead to a perceived loss of controllability among travelers. Based on the Agentic Theory of Human Behavior, the purpose of this study is to propose that this assumed loss of control matters more to travelers with an individualistic rather than a collectivistic predisposition.

In two studies (n = 475 and n = 196) using verbal scenarios, this study manipulates the perceived controllability of a blockchain-enabled hotel booking app by varying the number of additional services linked to the app. This study tests for the interaction of controllability with individual-level measures of individualistic versus collectivistic (I-C) predisposition.

Collectivistic travelers are more willing than individualistic travelers to use blockchain technology for their hotel bookings. This effect can be mitigated by offering additional services that give individualistic travelers an enhanced sense of “being in control”.

Blockchain-enabled applications facilitating direct hotel bookings without any additional intermediary services are more readily accepted by travelers with a collectivistic mindset. Blockchain applications addressing individualistic travelers require added services that establish a sense of controllability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the interaction of I-C predisposition with perceived controllability in tourism and hospitality. Furthermore, it is the first in the technology-acceptance literature to test this interaction using individual-level measures of I-C predisposition and an experimental manipulation of perceived controllability.

预计区块链技术将通过点对点酒店预订彻底改变旅游业和酒店业, 而中介机构很少或根本不参与。该技术的突出特点是其存储数据的分布式形式、识别系统“真实状态”的协作方式以及数据的不变性。这些特征可能会导致旅行者感觉失控。基于人类行为的代理理论, 我们提出这种假设的失控对具有个人主义而非集体主义倾向的旅行者更重要。

在两项使用口头场景的研究（n = 475 和 n = 196）中, 我们通过改变与应用程序链接的附加服务的数量来操纵支持区块链的酒店预订应用程序的感知可控性。我们测试了可控性与个人主义与集体主义 (I-C) 倾向的个体水平测量的相互作用。

集体主义旅行者比个人主义旅行者更愿意使用区块链技术进行酒店预订。这种影响可以通过提供额外的服务来减轻个人主义旅行者增强了“掌控感”。

本文首次研究了旅游和酒店业中 I-C 倾向与感知可控性的相互作用。此外, 它是技术接受文献中第一个使用 I-C 倾向的个体水平测量和感知可控性的实验操作来测试这种相互作用。

研究建议具有集体主义心态的旅行者更容易接受支持区块链的应用程序, 无需任何额外的中介服务即可直接预订酒店。针对个性化旅行者的区块链应用程序需要额外的服务来建立可控感。

区块链, 、文化, 、个人主义, 、集体主义, 、自我建构, 、技术接受, 、可控性, 、人类行为的代理理论

This study aims to compare academic prescriptive models on how to choose a branding strategy on the continuum from a “branded house” to a “house of brands” with real-life branding strategies of leading companies.

Data from an executive survey, observations and desk research on 75 leading companies in Austria are analysed with multilevel weighted least squares (WLS) regression.

Branding strategies for products are determined by industry (23 per cent of variance), the overall strategy of the company (28 per cent), the remaining variance being product-level decisions deviating from both. Service and consumer durables companies lean more towards corporate branding than consumer nondurables. On the company level, synergies in advertising, e-commerce and e-CRM (customer-relationship management) increase the usage of shared brands. A higher company age leads to brand proliferation. On the product level, quality differences between products, the emphasis on and differences in experiential product positioning and, marginally, the symbolic differences between products favour individual brands.

Future research should investigate additional markets, additional drivers, small and medium-sized entreprises (SMEs) and employ additional measures.

The study informs brand-architecture audits with benchmarks from leading companies, calls for a view of brand architecture more flexible than ideal-type categories proposed in literature and cautions against management inertia, industry standards and trends in designing branding strategies.

This study is the first quantitative cross-industry multi-level study on real-life branding strategies. It also applies a new conceptualisation and measurement of branding strategy.