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With the increasing numbers of the elderly people, the aging segment represents a potential huge market. While this trend is obvious, still little literature focuses on this group. The study thus fills up this gap. Furthermore, the study aims to examine the aging consumers' journeys from the lens of brand resonance pyramid and has its importance using context-specific theories to understand the elderly consumers.

Case study method is conducted using the in-depth interview to collect data and inductive method via MaxQda software to analyze. Two types of aging brand (i.e. age-denial and age-adaptive) are investigated (Moody and Sood, 2010). This study interviews 26 elderly consumers, among whom, 12 have experiences in sports gyms (i.e. age-denial) and 14 in hospital services (i.e. age-adaptive). The author also triangulates the results by interviewing two additional experts in these contexts.

The findings of the paper reveal that (1) brand functional benefit is important for both age-denial and age-adaptive brands while each has different dimensions. Brand experiential benefit (e.g. social, behavioral and intellectual experience) is important motivation for the age-denial brand and brand symbolic and brand psychological benefits are the emotional drivers for the age-adaptive brand. (2) Consequences of this journey include those, for example, brand satisfaction, brand loyalty, word-of-mouth and recommendation and (3) mediating mechanisms, e.g. brand sense of identification, brand psychological attachment and customization for both brand types, with exceptions of diversification and brand psychological attachment, and mutual interaction for the age-denial brand and doctor–patient relationship and consumer inertia for the age-adaptive brand. (4) The current study finds two new concepts for aging consumers, i.e. brand social experience in the age-denial brand and brand psychological benefit in the age-adaptive brand.

(1) Results of the paper are context dependent and generalization issue might occur. (2) While it is analyzed using inductive method via MaxQda software, the interviewer's subjective bias might occur. (3) Interviewees are at their different life stages, i.e. early-old vs mid-old, and thus, these contextual factors might also influence the results.

(1) The current study explores the elderly consumers' experience journeys at three stages (i.e. pre-service, during-service and pro-service/loyalty loop) for age-denial and age-adaptive brands and deepen an understanding of this aging market; (2) offers practical implications to brands targeting at the elderly consumers, particularly the age-denial and age-adaptive brands; (3) uses customer journey theory and brand resonance pyramid as the lens to understand aging consumers, and results also partly echo with the theories and (4) explores two new concepts for aging consumers, i.e. brand social experience and brand psychological benefit, thus adding new dimensions to important constructs, i.e. brand experience and brand benefit.

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors affecting the development of brand attitudes and brand behavior among children aged seven to 12.

The study involved a literature review investigating the theoretical models underlying studies of brand attitude development among children and empirical studies of brand attitude development, and an empirical study using a questionnaire administered to a sample of 221 Cypriot children.

Cypriot children are found to have high awareness of internationally famous brands. The principal influences on children's brand attitudes are older siblings, parents, and close friends. Brand attitudes are the principal influence on brand behavior (brand requesting and brand buying). Age is found to be an important factor affecting brand buying decisions, with older children more likely than younger children to buy brands.

Generalization of the results beyond the population from which the sample was drawn should be undertaken with caution. Further research in geographically and culturally close regions would extend this research.

Cognitive development is very rapid in this age group, and marketers should segment for age. Younger children are more influenced by intra-family socialization factors, older children more by extra-family socialization factors.

The study investigated the relatively under-explored pre-teen age group, and examined children across a sufficiently wide age range to encompass different stages in models of child cognitive development. The research context (a Mediterranean country) is also original.

Previous research on age-related loyalty is sparse, contradictory and suffers from methodological limitations and criticisms. This study aims to apply two methodological advances to fresh purchasing data to give a much clearer picture of age-related differences in brand loyalty.

An online brand choice survey (n = 1,862) is used to examine age-related loyalty within three low-involvement categories in New Zealand. The polarisation index (φ) is adopted as the measure of loyalty to control for confounding influences present in prior research. Results for chronological age are validated through comparison with results for measures of cognitive, biological and sociological age, as well as household life cycle.

Contrary to prior research, age-related differences in loyalty are detected in two of the three low-involvement categories studied. The third category does not show detectable loyalty for any age group. Although differences in brand loyalty are broadly present across all age measures, no alternative measure outperforms chronological age in detecting variations in age-related loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evidence that age-related brand loyalty is present in low-involvement categories. However, effects are small and easily obscured by confounding factors. More research is needed to determine how results vary by category.

Despite showing minor differences in loyalty, older consumers still purchase from a wide portfolio of brands and so should not be ignored by marketers. Future research can investigate loyalty for older consumers by adopting the method of analysing differences in polarisation (φ) for chronological age groups.

Previous contradictory findings and methodological concerns about measurement of age-related loyalty are resolved through use of the polarisation index (φ) as a measure of loyalty and by confirmation that chronological age performs as well as any other age measure.

Scholars have repeatedly concluded that heritage is a significant value driver for luxury brands (Riley et al., 2004; Fionda and Moore, 2009; Wuestefeld et al., 2012; DeFanti et al., 2014; Ardelet et al., 2015; Dion and Borraz, 2015; Dion and Mazzalovo, 2016). However, little is known on how consumers of different age group make sense of heritage luxury. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how consumers of different age groups make sense of heritage luxury brands (HLBs).

To achieve this, semi-structured, one-on-one, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 21 consumers of HLBs who fell into one of three age groups: Emerging adults (18 to 25 years), middle-aged adults (33 to 40 years) and older adults (67 to 74 years old).

The findings of this paper explored the different perceptions of the dimension of heritage in relation to luxury among consumers of different age groups. This paper focuses on the pioneering contributions of Urde, Greyser and Balmer (2007) in defining the dimensions of heritage brands. Although the dimensions of heritage brands defined by Urde et al. (2007) were useful as a starting point, differing perceptions among consumers of different age groups emerged which need to be considered. Findings of this study showed that consumers of all three age groups revealed three characteristics of HLBs. These are timelessness, quality craftsmanship and prestige. The durability and lasting appeal of HLBs was attributed to their high-quality craftsmanship. Quality craftsmanship, recognizability and price contributed to the perceived prestige value of HLBs. It was apparent throughout this study that HLB items helped participants feel connected to others, including their mothers or more remote forebears, their contemporaries and their descendants.

The author aims to understand the interplay between heritage and luxury, to understand how luxury brand consumers of different age groups are influenced by the heritage dimension. The relation between luxury and heritage becomes particularly intriguing when we consider how it affects the perceptions of consumers of different age groups.

This paper aims to study whether age impacts the responses to different communication cues in terms of brand recall, attitude toward advertisement, attitude toward brand and purchase intention, and which age groups respond more favorably to a given cue.

An experimental research was conducted across a sample of 1,050 respondents in Delhi to test variance in consumer attitudes across “tweenagers”, teenagers, youth, young adults and adults, when exposed to different communication cues for dummy brands of biscuits and mobile handsets.

Significant variances were observed in consumer attitudes across the five age groups. However, the variation pattern differs across the two product categories. The caricature cue worked well for biscuits across most age groups. For mobile handsets, the picture cue was very effective for the two younger age groups but not as much for others. The product information cue was highly effective for adults.

The study provides insights on making communication for brands targeted at more than one age group. If adults are a part of the marketers’ age group, some amount of product information is highly desirable, just as bright pictures/caricatures are necessary for tweenagers. For teenagers, who exhibit high variance vis-a-vis other age groups, communication needs to be customized. For brands where both children and adults are part of the target audience, common appeals can easily be identified, as they had similar responses in all but one case.

The framework proposed in this research fills a gap in the existing literature by establishing that age impacts attitude formation in response to communication cues and gives insights for marketing communication.

Despite growing attention to the heritage dimension of luxury brands, little research has been undertaken on how motivation may influence the consumption behavior of heritage luxury brand consumers. This study aims to provide insight into the complex interplay between consumers’ age and purchase motivations of heritage luxury brands.

Through the analysis of interview data with consumers of different age groups, this study takes a closer look at the consumer motivation underlying the consumption behavior of three different consumer age groups: late adolescents (16–25 years old), middle-aged adults (33–40 years) and older adults (67–74 years old).

This study delivered additional insights to the literature, especially in the areas of knowing how consumers are motivated when heritage is incorporated as a distinct dimension. The findings revealed that consumers themselves identify purchase drivers based on their perception of a brand’s investment values as “monetary appreciation,” “potential to become vintage” and “inheritance value.” Age differences also emerged in how participants discussed these themes and how they related to attitude functions, such as social-adjustive, utilitarian and hedonic.

Luxury brand managers should carefully consider age differences when planning their marketing initiatives. An awareness of consumers’ heritage luxury brand motivations of different ages will help practitioners better position their market offerings. The findings suggest that practitioners must recognize that there are likely to be differences in how different age group consumers respond to marketing initiatives and that consumer’s age is likely to play a key role in shaping the attitude of consumers. For older adult consumers, the optimal market offering would emphasize the inheritance value of heritage luxury brands. To that end, reinforcing attributes of nostalgia through the use of original logos, brand stories and classic designs is likely to be effective in targeting this age group. When targeting adolescents, heritage luxury brand managers need to take account of the changing consumption behavior of this age group, including their need to switch brands and adapt to their social surrounding. To provoke the purchase behavior of late-adolescent consumers, it seems that heritage luxury brand managers should draw on their image of social status enhancers.

In this study, a gap in the literature is addressed by focusing on an overlooked demographic variable as it relates to motivations toward heritage luxury. To the author’s best knowledge, this is the first study of its kind simultaneously considering heritage and luxury brand dimensions by exploring the motivations of consumers of different age groups.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors influencing young children’s (aged three to five years) understanding of brand symbolism.

Multiple hierarchical regression was used to analyse the relationships between age, gender and environmental factors, including family and the media, on the development of brand symbolism in pre-school children based on 56 children and parent dyad interviews.

Results confirmed the primary influence of age, television exposure and parental communication style on three to five-year-old children’s understanding of brand symbolism. The study demonstrates that the tendency to infer symbolic user attributes and non-product-related associations with brands starts as early as two years, and increases with age throughout the pre-school years. Children exposed to more television and less critical parental consumer socialisation strategies are more likely to prefer branded products, believe that brands are better quality and that they make people happy and popular.

Identifying the factors that influence the development of symbolic brand associations in pre-school children provides an important contribution to public policy discussions on the impact of marketing to young children.

The paper extends existing research by considering, for the first time, the role of environmental factors in pre-schooler’s understanding of brand symbolism. The results provide a more informed basis for discussion about the impact of marketing messages on very young children and the environmental factors that may lead to a more critical engagement with brands.

This paper aims to test one of the symbolic influences of the employee on brand associations and by doing so demonstrate why the stereotyping of employees should be added to the research agenda for corporate branding.

The research is a quantitative study of the employees (n=424) and customers (n=964) in 28 branches of four fashion retailers providing data to model the influence of employee age on the associations customers make with such corporate brands.

Theory suggests two competing employee age‐related stereotypes influence the associations customers hold of a corporate brand. Using a measure of brand personality, the authors confirm that the older the average age of employees the more competent the corporate brand appears but the less enterprising. The overall effect on customer satisfaction is negative. The average age of employees and customers in the branches studied also correlate positively. The symbolism of the employee to the customer, in this instance due to their age, can be important in creating associations with the corporate brand.

Discrimination in employment due to an employee's characteristics is illegal in most circumstances. However the authors' findings show employers need to recognize the potential influence on their corporate brand imagery (and consequently customer satisfaction) due to employee stereotyping by customers and the symbolic as well as the functional role that employees can have in marketing a corporate brand.

While prior research argues that employees influence a corporate brand by how they behave, less is known about any symbolic effects due to their stereotyping by customers. The symbolism to customers of brand elements such as packaging has been researched but, thus far, the symbolism of employees, the employee stereotype effect, has been largely but wrongly ignored.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate children’s perception of a product’s physical attribute (size) when presented with brand elements (brand name and brand logo) manipulated using sound and shape symbolism principles (brand name sounds and brand logo shape), across children of different developmental ages.

The relationship between sounds and shapes was examined in a pilot study. A 2 × 2 experiment was then undertaken to examine the effect of brand name characteristics (front vowel sound versus back vowel sound) and brand logo design (angular versus curved) on children’s (from 5 to 12 years) product-related judgments.

Older children use non-semantic brand stimuli as a means to infer physical product attributes. Specifically, only older children are able to perceive a product to be smaller (larger) when the product is paired with a brand name containing a front (back) vowel sound or an angular (curved) brand logo (single symbolic cue). We illustrate that brand logo-related shape symbolism effects are weaker and appear later in age when compared with brand name-related sound symbolism effects. Further, younger children are able to infer product attribute meaning when exposed to two symbolic cues (that is, brand name and brand logo).

When selecting an inventive brand element, consideration should be given to the relationship between the vowel sounds contained in a brand’s name and product attributes, and also the shape of the brand’s logo and product attributes.

This is the first experiment undertaken to examine the combination of brand name- and brand logo-related symbolism effects in the context of children. We demonstrate that age-based bounds may be overcome through the provision of multiple symbolic cues.

Although there has been some research into young consumers, for instance their approaches to product categorization; their decision‐making strategies; and their role in family decision making, considerable work remains to be done to understand how young consumers develop brand loyalty, brand preference and reliance. This paper reports the initial findings from an exploratory study of over 200 young consumers (aged 7‐10) which examined perceptions of branded fashion clothing; and the impact of social influences on young consumers’ evaluations of branded fashion products. The findings indicate that product/brand imagery is clearly established among young consumers, particularly for branded fashion sportswear; and the results suggest that research design must take account of both age and gender differences when choosing methods for eliciting data from young consumers.