Search results

The importance of employer branding to attract talent in organizations is increasing rapidly. Brand personality traits, particularly, have been shown to explain considerable variance in employer brand attractiveness. Despite such awareness, little is known about the underlying processes of this effect. The purpose of the authors is to close the research gap by drawing on a consumer brand model of brand affect and trust as a means of explaining employer brand attractiveness.

Students interested in working in the consultancy industry completed a survey designed to evaluate consultancy employer brands. Established scales for brand personality, trust, and affect, and employer brand attractiveness were used to test the conceptual model.

The results indicate that employer brand trust and affect are both influenced by the brand personality trait sincerity. Further, employer brand affect was positively affected by the traits excitement and sophistication, while negatively affected by ruggedness. Together, employer brand affect and trust explain 71 per cent of the variance in employer brand attractiveness.

While the results show the importance of branding an organization as a sincere, exciting, and sophisticated employer, future research is needed to identify adequate marketing tools to achieve this goal, also in other industries besides the one investigated here.

This study is the first to apply a model that includes brand personality, trust, and affect to employer branding. By doing so, the variance explained in employer brand attractiveness could be increased substantially.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic process and the meaning of symbolic consumption according to the three symbolic needs (i.e. status needs, social needs, status and social needs) to understand how symbolic messages are conveyed when consumers choose a brand.

This paper develops three dynamic models, categorized according to the consumers’ needs. The conceptual framework consists of the six constructs: collectivism/individualism, brand reputation, self-congruence, brand affect, brand identification and brand loyalty. Twelve hypotheses were developed and tested. Data were collected from consumers who had experienced well-known global chain restaurant brands. The three models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

Findings highlight the important mediating role of brand affect in symbolic consumption, which previously has not been revealed empirically. Moreover, it is found that self-congruence does not mediate the relationship between brand reputation, collectivism/individualism and brand affect, despite its prominence in previous symbolic consumption studies. In the status and social needs models, brand reputation mediates between collectivism/individualism and self-congruence, brand identification, brand affect and brand loyalty.

This is the first empirical paper to investigate symbolic consumption in the context of three types of models, according to symbolic needs, in the context of restaurant consumption. The study also identifies the major components of the consumer’s symbolic needs based on the attributes of symbolic consumption. Moreover, this study reveals that when both social needs and status needs are mixed, a hierarchy exists between consumers’ symbolic needs. Finally, the study makes an important contribution to the literature by applying the concept of brand affect to symbolic consumption research and exploring the relationships between the external motivational factors and the internal elements of symbolic consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively investigate various factors associated with e-tail store brand affect.

Data were collected by conducting semi-structured depth interviews following a storytelling approach. The data were coded using the grounded theory method.

Data analysis shows that anticipated service recovery, deal attractiveness and luxury e-tail brand image predict e-tail store brand affect. These predictors play their roles under the moderating influences of specific moderators. The desirable marketing outcomes of e-tail store brand affect are e-tail branded app usage, spreading positive word of mouth and secure attachment style toward e-tailer.

The value of this study lies in developing a grounded theory based causal process model that can provide managerial insights on how to enhance e-tail brand affect.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the strength of brand associations, different brand breadths, and the similarity between a parent brand's product categories and its extension product categories influence consumers' attitudes toward brand extensions.

An experimental research design was applied to testing the set of hypotheses. A total of 384 respondents participated in the main study. This study analyzed experimental results using analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The paper finds that when a brand is extended to similar product categories, only when the association is strong (trust or affect) will consumers prefer the extension of the narrow brand to that of the broad brand. Conversely, when a brand is extended to dissimilar product categories, regardless of the brand associations (trust or affect), consumers prefer the extension of the favorable broad brand to that of the narrow brand.

For corporations that operate within a narrow brand, brand extension strategies must be based on parent brand associations (trust or affect) that are very strong. In addition, the extension must only be to extremely similar product categories. In contrast, for corporations operating a broad brand, although the chance of brand extension success is better, favorability of consumer brand association (trust or affect) must never be ignored.

The study results reemphasize the importance of brand breadth effects when launching category extensions. Also, the research provides new insight into the strength of parent brand associations when evaluating consumers' brand attitude on brand extension.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of customer-brand relationships in the international marketplace, and empirically investigates and compares the customer-brand relationship development process between Indian and Chinese markets. In detail, four out of Hofstede’s original five national culture dimensions were adopted as moderators in the process of customer-brand relationship development between two markets.

To test hypotheses, responses from 539 Indian and 400 Chinese mobile phone consumer samples were achieved, and the proposed model was estimated by using structural equations based on the partial least squares algorithm.

The results demonstrate that utilitarian value and brand affect play a significant role in building brand loyalty for Chinese consumers, while hedonic value and perceived risk contribute more in building brand loyalty for Indian consumers.

This study indicated that the cultural difference affects both on brand trust formation and on the relationship between brand trust/affect and brand loyalty, implying that more customized brand management strategies should be adopted.

Global brand values must be communicated for each culture appropriately. It is desirable that the identified match, utilitarian value-Chinese customers and hedonic value-Indian customers, be consistently presented to each cultural market in a more integrative manner.

This study identified that the route from the development of value proposition to building up brand trust and brand affect is a critical step toward achieving brand loyalty in Indian and Chinese markets.

The goal of the paper is to examine the affect transfer process of the brand extension by developing a conceptual framework that integrates two factors important to this process: the expectancy and relevancy of brand extensions.

Two experimental studies with a sample of 250 respondents provide empirical support that both expectancy and relevancy positively influence the affect transfer process.

The study first tests both factors at the product level as well as at the product attribute level. The two factors enhance the affect transfer process in different manners. Expectancy facilitates the transfer from the parent product category to the extension, whereas relevancy enhances the transfer from the brand associations to the extension product. The greatest affect transfer occurs when both factors are present.

The study proposes a theoretical framework that for the first time integrates the two main streams of literature in brand extensions. The proposed framework explains the affect transfer process in brand extensions, and helps understand consumers' attitude towards brand extension products.

This paper aims to examine the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism, animosity and cosmopolitanism on the effects of sponsorships on brand affect and brand trust, using latent growth modelling (LGM) to disentangle the static and dynamic components of brand affect and brand trust.

An online panel of UK participants reported their perceptions of a French sponsor at three successive points (before, during and at the end of the 2012 London Olympics). Of the 903 respondents at T1, 694 remained at T2 (76.8 per cent) and 577 (63.9 per cent) remained at T3. Another 302 respondents only at T3 controlled for potential mere measurement effects. The data were analysed using LGM techniques.

Due to sponsorship effects, brand affect and brand trust increased linearly over time. However, consumer ethnocentrism and animosity negatively moderated these increases. Cosmopolitanism enhanced brand affect but not brand trust.

As market globalisation exposes foreign firms to potential backlash from consumer nationalistic orientations towards their products, sponsorship strategies must consider the interplay between these nationalistic sentiments and sponsorship effects. While foreign sponsors are typically preoccupied with determining the fit between their brand and a local event, they must also consider individual-level nationalistic sentiments. The success of companies in foreign markets depends on creating favourable country-directed consumer attitudes.

Beyond demonstrating the application of LGM to individual-level longitudinal analyses, this study extends sponsorship research by considering a previously unexplored area with key academic and managerial contributions, namely, the role of consumer nationalism in sponsorship effects. The strategic uses and outcomes of international sponsorship must be considered in conjunction with consumers’ perceptions of foreign brands from a nationalistic perspective.

This study aims to examine ethical practices in the banking sector by testing the relationships between customer perceptions of ethicality and brand attributes like affect, image and equity.

Drawing on the social exchange theory, the authors advance the consumer’s perspective in explaining brand equity in the banking sector. Following the survey technique, the authors used the Hayes’ Macro Process in analysing the data collected from 148 bank customers in New Zealand.

The findings suggest that customers’ perception of ethicality, brand image and affect are significantly associated with brand equity. Also, brand image and affect significantly mediate the relationship between customer’s perception of ethicality and brand equity.

The main limitation of this study is the use of survey and cross-sectional methods. Future research may adopt mixed-method techniques to provide insightful information on how these variables influence brand equity.

The study demonstrates the mechanisms that facilitate brand equity and contributes to theory by analysing the factors of brand equity in the banking sector, which has been less investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the customer's risk aversion and its relationship with brand loyalty and to test empirically whether this relationship is mediated by brand trust and brand affect.

A randomly selected sample of Austrian mobile phone users was drawn. Their risk aversion, two forms of loyalty (attitudinal and repurchase loyalty), brand trust and brand affect have been measured with existing and tested scales. The hypothesized model has been tested using PLS (Partial least squares).

Customer's risk aversion is significantly related to the two forms of loyalty (attitudinal loyalty and brand loyalty). When brand affect and brand trust are introduced into the model, the previously highly significant relationship between domain‐specific risk aversion and attitudinal loyalty becomes insignificant and the risk aversion‐repurchase relationship becomes much weaker, while risk aversion strongly influences brand trust and brand affect.

The findings are limited to mobile phone users. The generalisation of the results could be extended by broadening the list of products, for example with other durable products and services in which brand affect and brand trust may be even more important in developing brand loyalty.

This paper explains why certain customers have more trust and experience more affect than others and how this is related to loyalty. Hence, marketers can increase brand loyalty by targeting more risk aversive customers.

From a theoretical point of view the results of this study illuminate the relationship between enduring individual differences and important brand related constructs. From a practical point of view, they explain why certain customers have more trust and experience more affect than others. It is hypothesized and demonstrated empirically that risk aversion is also related to loyalty via brand trust and brand affect.