Search results

Recent branding failures (e.g. Kodak and Krispy Kreme) have cast considerable doubt on the widely accepted contention that to develop a strong brand, firms must continuously strive to be brand oriented or innovation oriented. This study aims to examine the curvilinear and interactive effects of brand orientation and innovation orientation on brand performance.

Survey data were drawn from a sample of 181 firms operating in the consumer goods sector (i.e. fashion, consumer electronics and automobile) and tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

This study finds that the sole and exclusive focus on either brand orientation or innovation orientation is detrimental to the realisation of superior brand performance because increased levels of this focus lead to diminishing returns. Critically, this study finds that the key to achieving superior brand performance lies in the extent to which the firm integrates both brand orientation and innovation orientation.

This study extends current knowledge by showing that focusing on either brand orientation or innovation orientation in isolation is actually detrimental to the firm’s realisation of superior brand performance. The integration of brand orientation and innovation orientation is the key to achieving superior brand performance because the inherent limitations associated with each are overcome by their integration.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework of third-place value offering that explains how specific consumer groups’, senior citizens, customer-to-customer engagement in third places can develop their value experiences.

Data were collected for two studies from senior citizen clubs in Australia. Study 1 uses focus group (12) and is analysed with QSR NVivo software following content analysis. Study 2 is based on 324 surveys and is analysed with AMOS version 24 software.

Study 1 identifies eight themes based on 29 main codes to develop a framework on the value offerings of third-place value and its consumer-centric effect on seniors’ loyalty and social capital. The themes under social capital and loyalty contributed to a better understanding of how consumers engage with each other in social clubs and develop their social capital. The results of Study 2 support the conceptualisation of third-place value offering as a reflective model and confirm the model’s nomological validity in relation to seniors’ loyalty and social capital outcomes.

The only limitation of the paper is that it presents findings based on data collected in a regional place in Australia.

The findings provide three practical implications for managers to consider in relation to service places: improve consumer patronage through community engagement, improve local business practices via consumer–owner friendship and redesign spatial settings to deliver meaningful consumer experiences.

The present study has three social implications; first, it highlights the significant role of third places in bringing isolated groups of community together for regular interaction and socialisation. It also extends understanding on senior citizen customers and their consumption experiences within third places for value creation. The study also contributes to understanding how senior citizen customers develop loyalty towards third places and enhance their social capital through social engagement in the place.

This paper uses consumption experience to develop the consumer value in third places. It provides a consumer-centric focus to servicescape and incorporates recent works on third places, value, social capital and loyalty.

Organizational ambidexterity is argued to be a prerequisite for successful new product development, especially for firms operating in highly competitive emerging markets. Despite growing attention to the importance of ambidexterity, the conditions under which specific forms of ambidexterity are more or less beneficial to new product performance (NPP) remain unclear. This study aims to investigate the contingent value of two specific resource conditions that favor the pursuit of the balanced dimension versus combined dimension of ambidexterity to achieve superior NPP.

Survey data were drawn from a sample of 156 high-tech large firms operating in the Middle East and tested through a hierarchical regression analysis.

This study highlights the important role of slack resources and social networking capability in enhancing the benefits of the combined dimension of ambidexterity over the balanced dimension of ambidexterity to drive NPP.

This study extends prior research which has mainly examined organizational characteristics that facilitates organizational ambidexterity and sheds light on the specific resource conditions under which high-technology firms operating in an emerging economy should pursue balanced dimension of ambidexterity or combined dimension of ambidexterity to achieve superior NPP.

While extant research highlights the importance of both market orientation and brand orientation in brand success, it is still unclear how they actually combine to contribute to brand performance. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities, this study unpacks how, and when, brand orientation and market orientation link systematically to influence brand performance.

In testing the research hypotheses involving mediation and moderation effects, survey data were gathered from a sample of business firms in the manufacturing sector and analyzed through regression analysis.

The results suggest brand orientation manifests through market orientation to influence brand performance via the intervening mechanism of brand management capability. The results also suggest at high levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of market orientation and brand orientation is critical in facilitating brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.

This study extends current literature by providing a more detailed account of how brand orientation and market orientation systematically combine to yield superior brand performance via the mediating role of brand management capability. This study also provides further insights into how, in response to different levels of competitive intensity, the systematic combination of brand orientation and market orientation is managed to facilitate brand management capability enhancement and subsequent brand performance.

A strong brand is one that consumers know and perceive as differentiated from competing brands. Building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness is critical to ensuring brand strength and sustained competitiveness. To this end, the roles of brand management capability and brand orientation are highlighted. However, given the significance of consistency in branding, firms’ brand management capability and brand orientation alone may not be sufficient, and a mechanism that facilitates branding consistency is required. In the integrating marketing control theory with the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities (DC) theory, this study aims to examine how a firm’s brand orientation, when supported by formalisation, contributes to building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness through the intervening role of brand management capability.

In testing the hypotheses proposed in this study, survey data were drawn from a sample of firms operating in the consumer goods sector and examined through hierarchical regression analysis.

This study finds that firms are more likely to build brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness in the market when their brand orientation is supported by formalisation, because this combination (brand orientation and formalisation) facilitates branding consistency and brand management capability development.

In weaving together the theoretical perspectives of marketing control, RBV and DC, this study extends current knowledge by showing that brand management capability and brand orientation alone are insufficient for building brands with high levels of awareness and uniqueness. Instead, maximising their performance effects requires the support of formalisation.

The goal of this paper is to investigate how market sensing (market orientation) and customer linking capabilities (service branding and customer empowerment capabilities) enable firms to achieve superiority in customer satisfaction.

To achieve this goal, a conceptual model was developed, specifying the mediating role of branding and customer empowerment capabilities in the relationship between market orientation and customer satisfaction. The model was tested using partial least squares, on 266 responses obtained via an online survey conducted amongst executives of services firms in Australia.

The findings show that possessing a strong service branding capability and co‐opting customer involvement through customer empowerment in the marketing effort is essential for services firms to realize the potential value of market orientation. This is important if the firm wants to translate the understanding gained from market intelligence (via market orientation as the “know‐what” capability) into superior customer satisfaction.

Through interaction activities that centre on utilizing market intelligence and shared sense of brand meaning, customer empowerment practices help institutionalize market orientation and service firms branding capability.

This study offers a greater understanding of the underlying processes (i.e. service branding and customer empowerment capabilities) which market orientation works through to contribute to customer satisfaction.

This study aims to investigate the role of team problem-solving creativity in new product development (NPD) in the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) in business-to-business firms. This study synthesizes perspectives from NPD, creativity and leadership to examine how work-related factors such as NPD managers’ role ambiguity and individual-related factors such as CEO’s ambidextrous leadership style interact to determine team problem-solving creativity and its effect on new product performance (NPP).

The hypotheses are tested using data from a multi-informant survey of 274 middle-level managers within 137 local BoP manufacturing firms in a sub-Saharan African country.

The results show that an NPD team’s ability to solve problems creatively determines NPP in BoP markets. The findings also show that NPD managers’ role ambiguity has a negative effect on team problem-solving creativity. However, a CEO’s ambidextrous leadership neutralizes the negative impact of role ambiguity on problem-solving creativity.

This study combines three distinct streams of literature, including NPD, creativity and leadership, to explore the antecedents and outcomes of problem-solving creativity. Drawing on creativity and leadership theories, this study reports that the success of creative idea exchanges depends heavily on a supportive environment for NPD team members and minimizing the NPD manager’s role ambiguity.

As the importance of brands is realised, so too is the importance of research in this area. However, to date, a number of branding models have been developed that lack empirical testing, are derived from the perspective of brand practitioners, and pay little attention to the branding of services. This study seeks consumer‐based information via qualitative methods regarding brand dimensions that hold meaning to consumers for both branded products and branded services. The results indicate a number of key dimensions to be such as core product/service, experience with brand, image of user, important to consumers for both goods and services. Dimensions such as feelings, and self‐image congruence, were found to be important only in terms of branded products, while word‐of‐mouth, servicescape, and employees, held importance with respect to branded services. The results provide a platform upon which future research can be built.

This study seeks to extend the existing literature on value creation by specifically focusing on service brand value creation (SBVC) and the role of brand marketing.

The authors first develop a model of SBVC and simultaneously investigate SBVC from the firm perspective (service brand value offering – SBVO) and from the customer perspective (service brand perceive value‐in use – SBPVI). Subsequently, they investigate the effects of SBVO on SBPVI and integrate the moderation role of service brand marketing capability (SBMC) on the relationship between SBVO‐SBPVI outcomes. SBVO is viewed as the firms' interpretation of and responsiveness to customer requirements via the delivery of superior performance the value offering through the service brand and SBPVI customers' perceived value from the firms' service brand. The contributions of SBVC to customer‐based performance outcomes are then investigated. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of the senior managers of service firms in Cambodia and their customers. A survey was used to gather data via a drop‐and‐collect approach.

Results indicated that SBVO is positively related to SBPVI and SBPVI is positively related to customer‐based performance. Noticeably, the results revealed that SBMC enhances the positive relationship between the firm SBVO and the customers SBPVI.

The paper extends the previous literature on value creation to capture SBVC. More significantly, the premise of the theoretical framework provides a breakthrough in the current SBVC literature which has so far neglected to take into account the dyadic approach (firm‐customer) in understanding value creation and more specifically SBVC. The model is expanded by looking at the contingency role of SBMC in communicating value to customers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine fashion clothing consumption in relation to status consumption and perceptions of fashion clothing brand status (BS) in transition economies.

A survey was designed and administered in China to a sample of 460 young adults aged between 18 and 24.

The results indicate that individuals’ status consciousness (SC) has an impact on fashion clothing brand preference (BP) and perceptions of the brand's status. Also, individuals’ BP and perceived BS were found to mediate the relationship between individuals’ SC and their willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for a specific brand of fashion clothing.

The originality of this study rests on a detailed examination of SC and status perceptions in the context of branded fashion clothing (western vs Asian brands) in China, where individuals’ wealth, status-consciousness and brand-consciousness are growing. Equally, it provides knowledge for academics about the development of status consumption in an emerging economy. Importantly, from a theory perspective this study is the first to examine the intervening roles of perceived BS and BP in the relationship between SC and WTP a price premium for fashion clothing brands. Further, studying this evolving market provides insights for practitioners into the design of marketing strategies for their brands. The findings may assist practitioners to address drivers of perception of their brands, especially for Asian brands competing against western brands.