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This study aims to develop a moderated mediation model that enables the examination of the direct relationship between brand orientation (BO) and export performance, the mediating effects of external and internal branding capabilities on the BO-export performance link, and the moderating influence of institutional environment, i.e. regulatory turbulence and policy support.

A time-lag primary data was collected from two-wave survey of 684 cross-industry exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using an online-email based survey technique, and the research model was validated using ordinary least squares regression analysis in SPSSV.27 and Hayes’ PROCESS macroV.2.13.

Regression findings indicate that the relationship between BO and export performance is not direct, but rather mediated by means of both external and internal branding capabilities. It further helps to uncover the dual role of institutional environment, with regulatory turbulence weakening and policy support strengthening the indirect influences of BO on export performance via external and internal branding capabilities.

This study advances branding literature by conceptualizing and empirically testing the role of BO associated with internal and external branding capabilities and, subsequently, with export performance.

The research findings indicate that brand-oriented SMEs must actively engage in the development of branding capabilities to improve their export performance.

While brand creation is essential for the success and growth of SMEs competing in the worldwide marketplaces, there is a dearth of research explaining the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions through which BO influences export performance.

During a brand crisis, consumers construct attributions to understand the cause of the crisis and to assign blame, with attributions of blame to firms consequently lowering brand attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to explore attributions of blame in performance- versus values-related brand crisis. Do consumers assign different levels of blame to values- versus performance-related brand crises?

The authors conducted three experimental studies, plus one pilot study, with American, British and Australian participants in which they manipulated the type of brand crisis as values- or performance-related to determine the extent to which consumers attribute blame to the firm and the effects of those attributions on consumers’ brand attitudes.

Findings indicated that consumers assign more blame to firms for a values-related brand crisis than for a performance-related brand crisis.

The findings of this study explain how consumers are harsher towards firms that violate some moral or social standards than those that exhibit product defects.

For branding and public relations officials, finding greater internal attribution for values-related brand crises offers implications for how and what information about such crises ought to be conveyed to manage consumer response and brand reputation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the findings are the first to explore attributions in blame toward values- and performance-related brand crises.

The purpose of this study is to revisit brand performance metrics (BPMs) (brand affinity, brand content and knowledge, brand image, brand ethics and brand value) and evaluate the moderated mediation effect of relationship quality (mediator) and relationship duration (moderator) in brand performance and customer loyalty relationship in an Indian banking context.

The research model was tested in the Indian banking sector. The primary data was collected from the 1,000 account holders of five Indian public and private banks. The data was analysed and validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modelling and the Hayes process were used for testing the hypotheses.

The study results established BPMs as a four-dimensional structure comprising brand affinity, brand content and knowledge, brand image, brand ethics and brand value. The BPMs significantly positively impact relational quality (RQ) and customer loyalty. Further results also prove the existence of moderated mediation effect on BPMs and customer loyalty link and portray that the impact of BPMs on customer loyalty is mediated by the RQ and influenced by relationship duration.

The study is confined to the Indian banking sector. It did not examine the dimension-wise impact of brand performance indicators on RQ and customer loyalty. Future research is required to explore their influence in banking and other sectors.

The study findings suggest that to enhance brand performance, banks need to follow excellence in every conduct, take immediate actions against inappropriate behaviour, consistently update their relevant and valuable contents (news, videos, white papers, e-books, case studies, FAQ’s, photos, etc.) on their websites and also introduce loyalty schemes to reimburse customers’ interests with some substantial benefits such as rebates, discounts, annual gifts and extraordinary or additional services. These strategies can pave the way for enhancing long-term quality relationships between customers and their service providers and increasing customer loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is a maiden attempt to assess the effect of BPMs on customer loyalty in the presence of RQ and at the value of relationship duration/length. Besides, the study results also prove the existence of moderated mediation effect and portray that the impact of customer equity and relational benefits on customer loyalty is influenced by relationship duration and mediated by RQ.

Human brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.

Secondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.

Impression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.

Consumer perception of corporate brand equity has primarily focused on product brand dimensions, neglecting considerations at the firm analysis level. Assessing corporate brands requires different criteria relevant to the competitiveness of companies, such as their prominence, management and meeting society’s demands. In this sense, this study aims to develop and validate a scale of corporate brand equity founded on consumer perceptions, transcending industry boundaries and comparing its relationship with companies' market share.

The authors used an integrative approach to clarify the construct’s domain, building on previous measures. They took several steps to select appropriate items, refine the measure, validate it through reliability tests and convergent and discriminant analyses, test the validity of the second-order formative structure of corporate brand equity and assess associations between first-order factors, the second-order factor and market share.

The model identifies three first-order dimensions of corporate brands (presence, outstanding management and responsible) that shape the second-order factor (corporate brand equity). They are directly related, but not proportionally, to market share, contributing to the general and joint assessment of the company’s competitive performance considering the consumer.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to develop a comprehensive measurement model of corporate brand equity that considers the firm level of analysis, combines metrics from previous research on corporate brand evaluation criteria and includes consumer perceptions of the company’s competitiveness, unifying branding theory with the theory of the marketing firm.

The employer brand is a crucial intangible asset for companies as it enhances the employer–employee relationship, leading to improved employee performance and overall company outcomes. This paper aims to investigate the contribution of the employer brand to the financial results of companies in southern Europe.

The sample consists of 266 companies operating in southern European countries during the year 2020. Secondary data on employer brand attributes, assessed from the perspective of current employees, were collected from the Glassdoor platform. Financial indicators were obtained from the companies' annual financial reports. The research hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

The results of the regression analysis support the notion that the employer brand contributes to profitability indicators and management effectiveness indicators of southern European companies. However, the study did not find evidence supporting the contribution of the employer brand to market indicators and financial structure indicators of the observed companies.

This study is one of the first empirical investigations to assess the role of the employer brand as a human capital tool for enhancing the financial performance of companies in southern Europe. The study examines employer brand attributes from the perspective of current employees, who actively participate in shaping the employer brand and the company's image. In contrast to prior research, this study incorporates a more extensive set of financial indicators, categorized into four groups: profitability indicators, management effectiveness indicators, market indicators and financial structure indicators.

There has been a lot of research on how to set marketing budgets, but the overlooked aspect was how allocating funds influences business performance in a multi-goal context. This study aims to examine the relationship between business performance, the process of allocating funds to multiple goals and the interaction among the goals.

Ratio data were generated through “a constant sum scale” from a sample of 362 managers from the B2C sector, besides data on after-tax revenue for two years. The data file was created. Then, a factor analysis was performed on the data. Furthermore, an econometric model with interaction terms was fitted to the data.

The results show that allocating funds to multiple marketing goals – demand generation, customer experience, brand image, marketing competency and purchase intention – influences business performance. Furthermore, a goal’s impact on business performance is higher when coupled with other goals than in isolation.

The findings of the study should assist managers in increasing revenue while spending less on marketing and shifting funds from less efficient goals and pairs of goals to highly efficient ones.

By extending the relevant theory on the relationship between the process of marketing fund allocation, multiple goals and business performance, this study contributes to the literature on marketing.

This study aims to investigate the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate sustainable performance (CSP) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by looking into the significance of mediating factors, namely, brand image (BI) and brand loyalty (BL), within the context of an emerging economy.

The authors conduct an extensive literature study on the subjects of CSR, BI and BL to assess their influence on the sustainable performance of SMEs in an emerging market. The study adopts a quantitative methodology. A total of 438 answers were obtained from a sample size of 513. The data of the SMEs in Vietnam was analyzed using the smart partial least squares structural equation modeling software, specifically version 3.3.2.

The results of the authors demonstrate notable and favorable correlations between CSR and CSP, CSR and BI and CSR and BL. Importantly, the findings contribute to existing knowledge by looking into the mediating influence of BI and BL in the relationship between CSR and CSP.

According to the authors’ understanding, a number of research have investigated the correlation between CSR and CSP within the realm of SMEs. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of scholarly research examining the mediating function of BI and BL in this association. The study’s findings have important implications for entrepreneurs and senior management in effectively guiding their enterprises and improving their business strategies with an emphasis on sustainability in emerging markets. The outcome of this study has the potential to significantly contribute to SMEs in Vietnam as well as other emerging countries.

This study aims to empirically validate the holistic consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) framework and establishment of the cross-over effect using consumer preferences for wine “regions.”

The authors utilize a sample of 275 regular wine purchasers in Australia, who were aged above 30 years old and had consumed regional wine in the last 3 months through an online consumer panel survey.

By testing competing CBBE models, the main research model was found to have the greatest predictive ability, due to its inclusion of both the rational and emotional paths and the cross-over effect between consumer brand judgment and brand feeling. This paper indicates that consumers enhance brand equity and develop a strong ongoing relationship with regional wine brands by simultaneously engaging in both mental behavior paths, where, in the meantime, rational processing has a cross-over effect on emotional processing.

This study expands the brand management literature by answering the future research on the CBBE model identified by Hall et al. (2021). Moreover, it establishes the underexplored cross-over effect within the CBBE literature. Furthermore, it adds to the marketing and wine-marketing literature by extending the concept of the brand to other attributes in consumer choice, such as a wine region as outlined by Giacomarra et al. (2020). Thus, this study advances the existing branding knowledge in a practical sense, which enables regional wine marketers and wine retailers to undertake promotional and product development strategies accordingly.

Despite competition and supply-chain disruptions during Covid-19 pandemic (2019–2021), one grocery retailer consistently thrived and was ranked top. The sources of the sustained performances needed examination. Guided by self-congruity theory and integrating three models, the authors examined how much the retailer's brand performances (brand loyalty, equity, preference and repurchase intentions) were emanating from brand personalities and marketing offerings. The mediating roles of brand loyalty and equity were tested.

Cross-sectional data was collected from 480 frequent customers using an online questionnaire posted on the researchers' social media pages. Factor analysis was conducted to identify the dimension that best describes the grocery retailer. Partial least square–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test a conceptual model.

Factor analysis results show that brand sincerity (28.582% variance-explained; M = 4.1) was top (factor 1), followed by excitement (20.336% variance-explained; M = 3.9) and then trustworthiness (18.854% variance-explained; M = 3.87). PLS-SEM results revealed that two brand personalities (brand excitement and trustworthiness) and marketing offerings (price, place, product, promotion) impacted loyalty found to be a strong driver of brand equity. Repurchase intention and brand preference were influenced by brand equity. Brand loyalty mediated most of the relationships between brand personality dimensions, marketing offerings and brand equity. Brand equity also significantly mediated the relationships between brand loyalty, preference and repurchase intentions. The integrated model produced high explanatory powers with brand equity (67.8%), brand preference (71.7%), brand loyalty (63.2%) and repurchase intentions (54.2%).

The study extends a brand personality-loyalty model through integrating two other models that provided marketing offerings and brand equity outcomes. It demonstrates that a stream of profitable customers' responses awaits a retailer who holds both brand and customer mindsets by building admired brand personalities while providing desired marketing offerings.