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The purpose of this quantitative study is to identify disclosure strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting to support strategic thinking around transparency in the fashion industry. This research has two specific research objectives: to capture progress towards greater transparency across sustainability reporting areas, across fashion brands and years, and to identify strategic approaches for transparency in sustainability reporting by revealing common patterns in business disclosure.

The authors cross-sectionally analyzed secondary data using four consecutive Fashion Transparency Indices (2017–2020). Brands' strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting were examined through the stakeholder theory lens.

Findings confirm the presence of four approaches to disclosure: measurable, ambiguous, policy-only and secretive strategy. The disclosure was disproportionally distributed between 30% brands as transparency leaders and 70% brands as transparency laggards. The most transparent brands were not necessarily those rated highest by the index but those whose progress toward transparency was traceable over the years.

The study has overcome the limitation of the verifiability approach, supporting the requirement for diachronic and strategic disclosure assessments.

As most brands hesitantly disclose sustainability information, stakeholders cannot know whether business policies equate to more than a corporate wish list. If there is no inspection for mandatory business disclosure, and if there is no penalty for disclosure violations, some fashion retailers will continue to generate profits while operating in an uncompliant and “opaque” manner.

The framing of disclosure strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting is the first scholarly effort to investigate diachronically sustainability disclosure among a big sample of major fashion brands.

This study aims to understand how the institutional and populational characteristics of a Brazilian city, that is, size, gross domestic product (GDP), life expectancy, education, violence and amount of workers benefiting from PAT (Workers’ Food Program) bias the agglomeration of fast-food companies.

The research involved 7,653 units distributed among 270 brands of fast-food chains (9 foreign and 261 Brazilian) operating in 542 Brazilian cities in 2015 and institutional and populational characteristics information about them. It calculated the Herfindahl index and implemented mixed inflated beta models.

The study found out that the agglomeration of establishments is mainly associated with the city’s income per capita, education, GDP and with some differences regarding the origin of the company, Brazilian or foreign.

The limitations of the study are the availability of Brazilian cities' data and information about the fast-food companies, such as governance-related information and general infrastructure. The study was cross-sectional, which does not analyze the business installation speed.

This work provides data collection and analyzes which factors may contribute to the knowledge of the Brazilian fast-food market. It stands out that foreign companies do not seem to contemplate city violence. The proposed models can serve as an investors’ foundation to start, expand business and predict the number of establishments in a city.

The study highlights the relation between the cities’ institutional and populational characteristics and the aggregation of fast-food chains in Brazilian cities, using index commonly applied in industrial agglomeration.

In recent years, the world food market has undergone an accelerated process of concentration and consolidation. These intensive processes increase the competitive advantage of operating activities on the global market and are the result of numerous changes in the period of new economy. What is the meaning of brand management and how is it dealt with in practice? What is the importance of positioning in the light of brand image and identity? Which are the ways to measure the brand strength with the aid of the brand potential index (BPI) and to identify the characteristics (key drivers) which have the greatest influence on brand strength? All these are questions for which this paper seeks to provide answers.

The answers to the research questions were gained using the GFK target positioning research with which a brand analysis of high‐volume products was carried out in the light of its key characteristics: brand as a product, opportunities and risks involved in the brand on the market, competition analysis, analysis of brand's personality, target group analysis (market segmentation), and marketing cluster analysis.

Based on the case study, the paper demonstrates the applicability of the research in the process of brand evaluation, determining the positioning and communication guidelines on the example of food products brands.

The paper is important in identifying the sources of brand value.

While the brand equity associated with tangible goods has received a great deal of attention in the literature, a basic understanding of the nature of brand equity for services has yet to emerge. Most of what is known about brand equity for services is based on theoretical or anecdotal evidence. In addition, the presumed differences in brand equity associated with search‐dominant, experience‐dominant, and credence‐dominant services has yet to be empirically examined. The objectives of this study are threefold: to empirically test whether brand equity is more important for services than for tangible goods, to test whether the presumed differences in brand equity for search‐, experience‐, and credence‐dominant services can be confirmed in an empirical examination, and to assess whether consumer knowledge of a product category has an effect on the importance of brand equity across product types. Contrary to suppositions in the literature, the results indicate that brand equity is more important for tangible goods than for services. In addition, the results do not support the presumed differences between service types as brand equity for search‐dominant services is more important than for both experience‐ and credence‐dominant services. The same pattern of results is achieved when consumer knowledge of each product category is included as a covariate.

The purpose of this study is to offer a “brand equity model” that will help football organizations to manage their appeal.

The proposed model utilizes structural equation modelling analysis to test the hypothesized marketing brand equity (MBE) model. The empirical part of the research stems from a large survey of 1,300 Israeli football fans.

As expected, knowledge about the team, the team’s image and its perceived personality significantly predicted positive attitudes toward the team. This in turn predicted commitment, which predicted recommendation, which predicted intentions. The linear regression to extract the seven parameters weights was highly significant (F = 163.5, p < 0.001) and explained 52 per cent (R² = 0.518) of the depended variable “price premium”.

The new MBE model suggested here provides a relative index of brand equity for football club organizations that enables them to competitively compare the marketing equity of their club to that of their rivals. The MBE model also shows that commitment is a central component in the football club’s brand equity model. The current MBE model is the only model that provides a weight for each of the components. Each respective weight represents the internal contribution of each component to the final brand equity index. These weights indicate where an effort should be made to improve the equity of the brand.

Football teams may also need to focus on the constructs underlying the commitment (Shuv-Ami, 2012) of fans to their football club organization, that is, the team performance and satisfaction stemming from the fans’ experience with their team and the feelings of loyalty and involvement that represent the degree of fan engagement with the team. Although football teams do what they can to improve performance, much can be done in marketing to improve the other constructs and, thus, fan commitment. Improving the experience of fans, both on and off the field, regardless of whether the team is winning or losing, builds fan engagement.

The current research suggests two new brand equity models for football club organizations. One is a comprehensive theoretical model that combines and expands current conceptual brand equity models (Keller, 1993, 2008; Aaker, 1991, 1996; Keller and Lehmann, 2006); the other is an empirical model that makes it practical to measure the marketing strength or the brand equity of football clubs. The new empirical MBE suggested here provides a relative index of brand equity for football club organization that enable them to compare competitively the marketing equity of their club to that of their rivals. The MBE model also shows, for the first time, that commitment is a central component in the football club brand equity model. The current MBE is the only model that provides a weight for each of its component.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of cities develop strategies. The discourse of strategic management has become an obligatory point of passage for many city managers. This paper starts by posing an ostensibly simple question: why do cities need strategies? The commonsensical answer to the question is: because cities compete with each other. This paper aims to problematise the seemingly natural link between cities, competition and strategy. It also aims to explore the role that calculative practices play in creating city league tables that, in turn, function as the a priori condition that generates competition between cities.

This paper is interdisciplinary and draws on the related disciplines of accounting, organization theory and strategy. The argument unfolds in four steps: first, it briefly provides some theoretical background for analysis and relates it back to strategizing and accounting as a calculative practice; second, it scrutinizes league tables as an a priori of competition; third, it discusses the implications of the argument for city management and critical accounting; finally, it concludes with a discussion of the power effects of those calculative practices that shape strategizing in cities through the production of competition.

This paper argues that city strategizing is best understood as a set of complex responses to a new competitive arena, one rendered visible through calculative practices, manifested through city rankings. The paper makes five key contributions: one, league tables reduce qualities to a quantifiable form; two, league tables create an order amongst an heterogeneous ensemble of entities; three, league tables stimulate the very competition they claim to reflect; four, once competition is accepted, individual players need a strategy to play the game; and five, league tables have important power effects that may result in unintended consequences.

The paper contributes to understanding how calculative practices relate to strategy; it explores the organizational environment in which city managers strategize; in addition, it discusses the problem of civic schizophrenia.

The paper seeks to open up an agenda for studying city management, strategy and accounting.

The present chapter aims to assess how digital transformation impacts current trends in city branding, to analyze the role of digital communication in the branding of selected cities, and to compare the level of exploitation of digital communication for city branding between European and Slovak cities. We conducted empirical research in several phases, and the overall sample consists of 155 cities in Europe and Slovakia. The results of our research showed that European and Slovak cities use to some extent all the investigated tools of digital marketing communication in city branding with a dominant position of social media, both in terms of exploitation and importance for city branding in European and Slovak cities. European cities score significantly better than Slovak cities in all elements of the City Brand Hexagon, as well as in the overall city brand index. Therefore, city branding strategies in the best European cities can serve as a good practice example or inspiration for Slovak cities. Cities with lower rankings and scores on city branding should focus on strengthening their city branding or strengthening their digital communication. The possible trajectory is also the concerted strategy for the branding of the city and its digital communication.

Informed by the resource-based and resource-advantage theories, this study, a comparative study, aims to examine the core dimensions of nation brands – culture, tourism, exports, foreign direct investment, migration and governance – from the company-based brand equity perspective in a sample of 48 countries clustered into three groups (strong, moderate and weak nation brands) from 2011 to 2019 to identify the most critical predictors of nation brand strength in each cluster.

A clustering technique was applied to the modified Country Brand Index to cluster the included countries into strong, moderate and weak nation brands. The authors were then able to analyze each cluster in an effort to explore the relative importance of the predictor variables and determine if that importance varied across the clusters.

This approach revealed novel findings of great importance to policymakers and academics. The results indicate the resources that contribute the most to nation brand equity in each cluster. Such information can guide policymakers in effectively leveraging these strategic resources. First, the cultural dimension was a more critical predictor concerning countries with moderate and weak nation brands than countries with strong brands. Second, tourism exhibited the highest predictive importance concerning all the clusters. For academics, these findings help foster a better understanding of the determinants of nation brand strength, as aligned with the resource-based and resource-advantage theories.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature concerning nation brand management, particularly the stream related to nation brand equity monetization.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to determine if pharmaceutical companies can be grouped based on their espoused values, and second, to examine the relationship between these values and company reputation.

A descriptive study design is used with two separate analyses: cluster analysis for grouping the companies; and descriptive data analysis for determining cluster differences.

The findings suggest that there are three value clusters: competent, community and interpersonal, with the community group showing the highest relative reputation, and the interpersonal cluster as the lowest. Brand portfolio composition appears to positively contribute to reputation. The effect of portfolio specialization is based on a company’s closeness to its therapeutic community, which may be influenced by the outward characteristics of its values.

Future research should examine the longitudinal effects of values on reputation combined with case studies.

Regardless of cluster classification, all firms should develop strong ties with their therapeutic communities using both personal and digital/omnichannel strategies.

A company’s values are becoming an important consideration for all customers and stakeholders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically examine the activities of leading pharmaceutical firms to link a specific value cluster to company reputation.

The aim of this paper is to show how a bank's brand value is quantitatively assessed using the Interbrand methodology, taking into account the specifics of the banking market. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to review the ways in which brands contribute to the higher market value of banks by strengthening intellectual capital (IC), as reflected in increased levels of competitiveness and the reputation that the bank maintains in the minds of customers.

This paper applies the Interbrand methodology, which indicates that the assessment of brand value implies the determination of economic profit as the difference between the net operating profit after tax and the cost of capital. The brand profit is then calculated as the product of the economic profit and the index of the brand role. Brand value is obtained as the product of the brand's profit and the discount rate of the brand. In order to further test the results obtained through the application of the Interbrand methodology, linear regression was applied to the panel data in order to provide more efficient econometric estimates of the model parameters.

This research has shown that the Interbrand methodology's empirical foundations lie in the Montenegrin banking market, but also that, out of all of the analyzed parameters, the greatest significance is obtained from the profit of the brand, which influences the value of bank brands.

This research is related to the service sector–in this case, financial services – meaning that it is necessary to adjust the calculation of the weighted average cost of capital. Although the banking sector is a very competitive market, a limitation exists in the fact that the research was conducted only in Montenegro. In other words, in order to achieve a more detailed analysis, this methodology should be applied to more countries, such as those within the Western Balkans, as they have a relatively similar level of development.

A main contribution of this paper is that the assessment of the banks' brand value could be useful to future investors. Therefore, the improvement of the financial sector–in this case, banks–as institutions that hold a dominant position in the financial market in Montenegro, is a particularly important issue. It is important to point out that the research conducted could serve as a means by which to bridge the gap between theory and practice, since the methodology of the consulting company Interbrand has been optimized and adjusted to the Montenegrin banking market.

On considering the fact that most countries of the Western Balkans are at a similar level of development, the authors can conclude that, with the help of this adapted form of methodology, this research can be applied to assess banks' brand value in neighboring countries.

This paper serves as the basis for further research as the analysis of banking institutions that comprise both marketing and financial aspects, i.e. the application of the Interbrand methodology, was not conducted in Montenegro. Also, this paper overcomes the literal gap between theory and practice as there is little research thus far involving the application of the Interbrand methodology to the field of finance; especially in the field of banking. The authors point out the specifics of the banking sector as a key explanation for this. This is why it is necessary to make certain adjustments to the methodology. The research has positive implications for banks' internal and external stakeholders. The originality of this research is reflected in the fact that the Interbrand methodology has been optimized in order to assess the brand of banks, taking into account the specificity of the analyzed market. Brand is analyzed as a component of IC: another factor that exemplifies the value of this research.