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Reverse innovation has been claimed to be the new emerging paradigm on how to succeed in emerging markets before spreading to more mature ones. This study aims to investigate how the BB cream, a concept that gave birth to one of the recent most impressive worldwide breakthrough products in cosmetics, was successfully integrated into a growth-through reverse innovation strategy by a Western leading brand, Garnier, in its domestic market.

Using a single case study design that combines brand and product levels of analysis, this paper examines how reverse innovation/BB cream contributed to (re)build perceptions of brand superiority. Data were extracted from the IRI Census Database (retail panel data) and from various other market sources. Additional insights were collected through semi-structured interviews with top executives. Some data, as they remain confidential, are not included in the paper.

Reverse innovation, although counter-intuitive regarding one of its fundamental assumptions (i.e. a low-cost/low-price strategy targeting price-sensitive consumers), can be used within a niche strategy to help brands develop a radically new offer that justifies a price premium. In this regard, it has to be managed step-by-step, from appropriation to exploitation and, finally, “extinction” in a given market segment.

Evidence is scarce on how Western companies/brands can integrate reverse innovation into their growth strategies. Further investigation is required on this emerging paradigm.

The case of Garnier BB cream invites marketing managers to think differently about where to look for opportunities and how to grow in stagnant markets. Moreover, the inherent latent value of a reverse innovation can serve to trade up the brand with both volume and value benefits, despite the common claim that it is related to a volume strategy. Thus, it opens the range of possibilities to escape commoditization and price wars.

This paper demonstrated that reverse innovation is not limited to the bottom of the market. The story of the BB cream concept, which has been appropriated and valorized by the leading cosmetic brand Garnier through a niche strategy, supports this argument. In addition, instead of viewing the niche strategy as a methodological/theoretical stage within the segmentation–targeting–positioning process, this case study highlights it as a creative process linked to innovation, which helps a brand and/or company to define a new territory within its market.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of culture on the phrase expression type that affects product attitude. Moreover, to identify the mechanism by which these effects occur, the authors investigated the mediating role of processing fluency, and examined how such a mediating effect of processing fluency varies with number of alternatives.

Three experiments were conducted to verify the hypotheses presented in this study. Experiment 1 tested the effects of phrase expression type and culture on product attitude; a two-factor design (phrase expression type: explicit expression vs implicit expression) was applied, and culture was classified according to nationality. Experiment 2 tested the mediating effect of processing fluency on product attitude, using the same approach as Experiment 1. Experiment 3 tested the moderated mediating role of the number of alternatives, a between-group experimental design of 2 (phrase expression: explicit expression vs implicit expression) × 2 (number of alternatives: many vs few) was applied.

Experiment 1's results demonstrate that product attitude is more favorable when implicit expressions are used for Asians, whereas it is more favorable with explicit expressions for Westerners. Experiment 2 verifies that the interaction effect between phrase expression type and culture on product attitude is mediated by processing fluency. Experiment 3's results demonstrate that the number of alternatives moderates the mediating role of processing fluency for Westerners, but has no effect on the processing fluency for Asians.

This study provides novel insights and expands the field of study of phrase expression types by separating the ambiguous boundaries among phrase presentation types. Furthermore, this study provides practical guidelines for establishing effective advertising strategies for companies by suggesting suitable phrase expression types based on culture.

The purpose of this study is to examine the branding strategies of SMEs from NIEs, juxtaposing the different strategies used to specifically target developed and developing countries with regard to brand-building approach, type and number of brands and degree of standardization.

A case-study approach is used. In-depth interviews are conducted with 10 Korean consumer-goods SMEs exporting their own in-house brands.

Clear differences emerge between the strategies of SMEs entering developed countries and those entering developing countries, particularly regarding brand identity development, use of foreign sales subsidiaries and number and types of brands used. The authors find an interaction effect between product characteristics and host market levels of economic development, both of which influenced the degree of product standardization.

This study is the first attempt to uncover the branding strategies of NIE consumer-goods SMEs. The findings contribute to the field by extending our understanding of branding strategies used by consumer-goods SMEs from NIEs, thereby providing useful insight for other NIE enterprises when establishing branding strategies aimed at foreign markets.

Based on the conceptual model of consumer engagement in a virtual brand community, this study aims to investigate this phenomenon and gauges the validity of the model’s assumptions in the context of a Facebook fan page.

The interactions between L’Oréal Paris Brazil and the members of its virtual community were collected for three months using a netnographic approach. The data of these interactions were evaluated using content analysis techniques.

The dimensions, processes and sub-processes of the conceptual model of consumer engagement, as proposed in the literature, were confirmed. Furthermore, the results reinforce the perspective that simple participation or involvement does not presume engagement, which reflects a complex psychological state dependent on the context and requiring previous and subsequent processes to manifest.

The findings were based on an examination of a high-end beauty product brand’s Facebook page. Nevertheless, these findings are not necessarily limited to high-end context consumers. Larger scale research (i.e. involving wider product categories) could endorse the underlying theoretical model of engagement.

The study contributes to understanding the dynamics of how brands build relationships with consumers through social media and confirms the dynamics of the engagement concept and its role as a tool to increase brand value and competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the field by bridging the knowledge gap concerning consumer engagement in a social media context with practical and empirical evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how one company built and sustained market leadership by implementing a market‐oriented business strategy involving defensive and offensive management.

With an historical approach, this article examines how L'Oréal's Consumer Products Division increased its dominance in its domestic cosmetics industry. Data were extracted from the IRI Census Database (retail panel data). Some data, as they remain confidential, were not included in the paper.

The transition from an offensive to a defensive management style (and vice versa) is part of the dialectic in relations between the company and its environment, including consumers (demand), competitors (their behaviour in the market) and market conditions (growth, stability, decline) in an extended sense (see Kohli and Jaworski).

The joint management of offensive and defensive market‐oriented strategies leads to enhanced competitive positioning and increased market share of a portfolio of brands and products.

The trade‐off between offensive and defensive management, involving whether managers are influenced by or influence the structure and the behaviour of market players, depends on their mental disposition toward challenges in increasingly competitive mass markets.

Prior discussions of offensive and defensive management approaches have remained mainly theoretical. Through the illustration of the undisputable leader of the cosmetics sector, this study offers a practical example that can help companies reconsider how they differentiate themselves from competitors with respect to market conditions. This case offers an initial investigation of offensive and defensive management.

Globally, consumer’s inclination towards functional foods had noticed due to their greater health consciousness coupled with enhanced health-care cost. The fact that probiotics could promote a healthier gut microbiome led projection of probiotic foods as functional foods and had emerged as an important dietary strategy for improved human health. It had established that ice cream was a better carrier for probiotics than fermented milked due to greater stability of probiotics in ice cream matrix. Global demand for ice cream boomed and probiotic ice cream could have been one of the most demanded functional foods. The purpose of this paper was to review the technological aspects and factors affecting probiotic viability and to standardize methodology to produce functional probiotic ice cream.

Attempt was made to search the literature (review and researched papers) to identify diverse factors affecting the probiotic viability and major technological challenge faced during formulation of probiotic ice cream. Keywords used for data searched included dairy-based functional foods, ice cream variants, probiotic ice cream, factors affecting probiotic viability and health benefits of probiotic ice cream.

Retention of probiotic viability at a level of >10⁶ cfu/ml is a prerequisite for functional probiotic ice creams. Functional probiotic ice cream could have been produced with the modification of basic mix and modulating technological parameters during processing and freezing. Functionality can be further enhanced with the inclusion of certain nutraceutical components such as prebiotics, antioxidant, phenolic compounds and dietary fibres. Based upon reviewed literature, suggested method for the manufacture of functional probiotic ice cream involved freezing of a probiotic ice cream mix obtained by blending 10% probiotic fermented milk with 90% non-fermented plain ice cream mix for higher probiotic viability. Probiotic ice cream with functional features, comparable with traditional ice cream in terms of technological and sensory properties could be produced and can crop up as a novel functional food.

Probiotic ice cream with functional features may attract food manufacturers to cater health-conscious consumers.

Though the concern over pro-environmental behavior is growing, there is a lack of a valid scale to measure pro-environmental behavior in nutricosmetics context. Nutricosmetics products are believed to boost health and fitness and thus gained worldwide popularity. Many consumers in recent days are purchasing nutricosmetics products because of its positive impact toward human health and less harm toward the environment. However, to date, there is no valid instrument to measure this construct. To fill this gap in the existing literature, this study aims to develop a valid and reliable scale to measure pro-environmental behavior in nutricosmetics purchase (PEB-NP).

To develop and validate the PEB-NP scale, a sequential process is followed which includes item generation, item selection, item purification and item validation. Relevant literature was reviewed and qualitative interviews were carried out to generate the items. Next, experts’ opinion was sought to select the items. Two studies were conducted (N = 150, N = 448) to explore the factor structure and to validate the scale. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to purify the scale, whereas confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using SmartPLS (version 3) was used to validate the scale.

Based on EFA output, 14 items were retained which were then validated using CFA. The results revealed that, PEB-NP is a hierarchical multi-dimensional construct. The dimensions are “environmental aesthetics,” “conservation behavior (reduce and recycle)” and “health consciousness.” The findings from CFA confirmed the EFA results and established that pro-environmental behavior is a third-order factor model in which conservation dimension is consisted of two sub-dimensions, namely, “reduce” and “recycle” behavior.

The newly developed scale will enable the marketers and policymakers to segment their consumers based on this scale to better strategize the marketing efforts in fulfilling their needs. Not only this, the PEB-NP scale will benefit marketers in understanding the behavioral pattern and purchase preference of the pro-environmental consumers with regard to the nutricosmetics consumption. This research also provides suggestions for future researchers in the pro-environmental behavior and nutricosmetics fields.

This study is a pioneer study to develop and validate the PEB scale in the context of nutricosmetics purchase.

This paper aims to systematically review male cosmetics consumption (CC) literature and, given the dearth of research about the topic, especially on Western emerging country contexts, to shed light on the paradoxical behaviour concerning male grooming by empirically assessing the impact of some psychological and demographic antecedents of consumption.

Six hypotheses derived from a systematic review of the literature were tested through structured equation modelling (SEM), based on data of 476 Brazilian men.

The results empirically sustain the positive influence of vanity and masculinity in grooming product consumption, with partial mediation of vanity between masculinity and consumption. Counterintuitively, it also confirms the negative influence of income. Age and marital status are not statistically relevant.

Practitioners should invest in marketing actions focusing on low-income men, who showed genuine interest in grooming products, promoting them as powerful tools to improve appearance and social recognition. Additionally, educational and wellness-related campaigns could be effective.

Beyond profitability, economic growth and men’s well-being, the results might affect the whole society through male cosmetics' contribution to blending gender paradigms.

This study focuses on an economically relevant segment that defies the status quo. It is the first to systematically demonstrate the state of the art of male CC knowledge and to illuminate the role of psychological and demographic variables in influencing CC, enriching the literature on appearance, gender and consumption.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the viability of probiotics, physicochemical and sensory properties of reduced fat synbiotic ice cream.

The treatments were as follows: control was made by the addition of Lactobacillus salivarius NBIMCC 1589 and Lactobacillus crispatus NBIMCC 2451 (1:1). The treatments (T1, T2 and T3) were made with the addition of L. salivarius NBIMCC 1589 and L. crispatus NBIMCC 2451 (1:1) + 2% oat flour, 2% inulin and 4% oat flour + inulin (1:1). Physiochemical parameters (pH, moisture, fat, protein, fibre, ash, overrun, first dripping time and melting rate) were determined.

The ice cream with inulin and oat flour had lower moisture content, which was recorded 70.41, 69.88 and 68.82% for T1, T2 and T3, respectively. While the protein, fat and ash content of treated samples increased. The highest acidity (0.43%) was recorded in T3. The overrun increased by around 43% in T3 compared with control. The viable counts of probiotics were significantly (p = 0.05) decreased by two or three log cycles. Finally, T3 received the highest sensory score, which could be due to the combination between oat flour and inulin.

A novel ice cream was produced using a combination of inulin and oat flour, which enhanced the viability of added probiotics. Reduced fat synbiotic ice cream was a good carrier for probiotics, which facilitates the production of healthy dairy products.

The Report of the Royal College of Physicians (London) and the British Cardiac Society issued in April last was the product of a joint working party, whose aim was to formulate the best possible advice which can at present be given to medical practitioners towards the prevention of coronary heart disease. It caused quite a stir, particularly its dietary recommendations, and the mass media made the most of it, more from inferences drawn from the measures recommended than from the report itself. Now that the sensation of it has gone and the dust has begun to settle, we can see the Report contains nothing that is new; it tells us what we have long known. Like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, except that there are three of them, at least for the moment, the causative factors of the rising incidence of coronary heart disease, built into our affluent society, have been working their way at the heart of man for a good many years now.