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Companies spend millions on training their sales representatives. Thousands of textbooks have been published; thousands of training videos have been recorded. Hundreds of good pieces of advice and tips for sales representatives have been presented along with hundreds of sales methods and techniques. Probably the largest number of indicators and measures are applied in sales and distribution. On the one hand, this is a result of the fact that sales provide revenue and profit to a company; on the other hand, the concept of management by objectives turns out to be most effective in regional sales teams with reference to sales representatives and methods of performance evaluation. As a result, a whole array of indices has been created which enable the evaluation of sales representatives’ work and make it possible to manage goods distribution in a better way.

The indices presented in this chapter are rooted in the consumer market and are applied most often to this type of market (particularly in relation to fast-moving consumer goods at the level of retail trade). Nevertheless, many of them can be used on other markets (services, means of production) and at other trade levels (wholesale).

Although the values of many indices presented herein are usually calculated by market research agencies and delivered to companies in the form of synthetic results, we have placed the emphasis on the ability to determine them independently, both in descriptive and exemplifying terms. We consider it important to understand the genesis of indices and build the ability to interpret them on that basis. What is significant is that the indices can be interpreted differently; the same index may provide a different assessment of a product’s, brand or company’s position in the market depending on the parameters taken into account. Therefore, we strive to show a certain way of thinking rather than give ready-made recipes and cite ‘proven’ principles. Sales and distribution are dynamic phenomena, and limiting them within the framework of ‘one proper’ interpretation would be an intellectual abuse.

This study aims to examine how perceptions of the globalness or localness of a brand affect the purchase intentions of consumers through the building of consumer–brand identification (CBI). This paper also explores the moderating effect of brand positioning (underdog vs top dog) on the relationship between perceived brand globalness or localness (PBG or PBL) and purchase intention.

The proposed hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies. Data were collected through a set of structured questionnaires and analyzed using PROCESS modelling and analysis of variance.

The results show that CBI mediates the effect of PBG/PBL on purchase intentions. Moreover, the findings of Study 2 reveal that participants show greater purchase intention for PBL than for PBG in response to underdog positioning. However, in top dog positioning, the difference in purchase intention for PBL compared to PBG is attenuated.

This research investigates how CBI influences purchase intentions of consumers in regards to a brand’s perceived globalness or localness, which adds to the growing body of international branding research. This paper also addresses the effects of interaction between brand localness (globalness) and underdog (top dog) brand positioning on purchase intentions. Finally, this study concludes with a discussion of practical actions that international brand managers can take to enhance the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of luxury buyers' awareness of a luxury brand's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities together with its individual brand-related sustainable dimensions (in terms of economic, societal and environmental) and luxury values on purchase intention for luxury products and, as a result, highlight the potential implications of these relationships for the luxury industry.

A luxury purchase intention model, which assumes an impact from traditional luxury values and CSR, was indicated based on the authors' previous qualitative research and corresponding literature review. To validate the model by proving that the suggested relationships are statistically significant, (1,100) luxury customers over the age of 18 were approached, and (253) valid responses were entered and analyzed using SEM to confirm the indicated theoretical model's hypothesized causal relations.

The findings suggest a positive and significant relationship between buyers’ awareness of a specific luxury brand's CSR-related activities and their purchase intention; however, certain demographics and gender both moderate this relationship. The moderating role of general attitudes toward CSR and sustainability on this relationship was not confirmed. Furthermore, awareness of the brand's CSR positively mediates the relationship between both the societal/environmental and economic parts of the brand-related individual sustainable dimension and purchase intention.

The results of this study are based on actual purchases of branded luxury items and validate the authors' indicative model based on earlier qualitative research by claiming a significant relationship between the purchase intention for a brand and awareness of its CSR activities amongst luxury shoppers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify potential competitive relationships among brands by analyzing the dynamic clicking behavior of consumers.

Consumer sequential online click data, collected from JD.com, is used to analyze the dynamic competitive relationship between brands. It is found that the competition intensity across categories of products can differ considerably. Consumers exhibit big differences in purchasing time of durable-like goods, that is, the purchasing probability of such products changes considerably over time. The local polynomial regression model (LPRM) is used to analyze the relationship between brand competition of durable-like goods and the purchasing probability of a particular brand.

The statistical results of collective behaviors show that there is a 90/10 rule for the category durable-like goods, implying that ten percent of the brands account for 90 percent market share in terms of both clicking and purchasing behavior. The dynamic brand cognitive process of impulsive consumers displays an inverted V shape, while cautious consumers display a double V shaped cognitive process. The dynamic consumers’ cognition illustrates that when the brands capture a half of the click volume, the brands’ competitiveness reaches to its peak and makes no significant different from brands accounting for 100 percent of the click volume in terms of the purchasing probability.

There are some limitations to the research, including the limitations imposed by the data set. One of the most serious problems in the data set is that the collected click-stream is desensitized severely, restricting the richness of the conclusions of this study. Second, the data set consists of many other consumer behavioral data, but only the consumer’s clicking behavior is analyzed in this study. Therefore, in future research, the parameters brand browsing by consumers and the time of browsing in each brand should be added as indicators of brand competitive intensity.

The authors study brand competitiveness by analyzing the relationship between the click rate and the purchase likelihood of individual brands for durable-like products. When the brand competitiveness is less than 50 percent, consumers tend to seek a variety of new brands, and their purchase likelihood is positively correlated with the brand competitiveness. Once consumers learn about a particular brand excessively among all other brands at a period of time, the purchase likelihood of its products decreases due to the thinner consumer’s short-term loyalty the brand. Till the brand competitiveness runs up to 100 percent, consumers are most likely to purchase a brand and its product. That indicates brand competitiveness maintain 50 percent of the whole market is most efficient to be profitable, and the performance of costing more to improve the brand competitiveness might make no difference.

There are many studies on brand competition, but most of these research works analyze the brand’s marketing strategy from the perspective of the company. The limitation of this research is that the data are historical and failure to reflect time-variant competition. Some researchers have studied brand competition through consumer behavior, but the shortcoming of these studies is that it does not consider sequentiality of consumer behavior as this study does. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature by using consumers’ sequential clicking behavior and expands the perspective of brand competition research from the angle of consumers. Simultaneously, this paper uses the LPRM to analyze the relationship between consumer clicking behavior and brand competition for the first time, and expands the methodology accordingly.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors important to the product choice stage of the decision‐making process for the men's branded underwear consumer.

A qualitative approach to data collection and interpretation was used. Individual in‐depth interviews were conducted with fifteen participants who had purchased men's branded underwear within six months prior to the study. Eight males and seven females, aged 23‐55, were given a voucher to purchase men's underwear at a designated US department store and asked to bring their purchases to the interview. A semi‐structured interview schedule was followed which posed open‐ended questions about purchasing men's branded underwear in general and specifically with regard to the use of the voucher. Interviews were audio recorded with participant's consent and lasted approximately 45‐60 min.

A thematic interpretation of the interview data led to the development of three emergent thematic areas used to explore issues that surfaced within and across responses. Factors important to participants' decision‐making are discussed relative to their product choices. A typology of consumer profiles was developed from the data based on involvement level, brand loyalty, gender, evaluative criteria and silhouette preference.

Limitations of the study include a focus on perceptions of US consumers located in a large urban area and a focus on the department store channel. Implications of participants' experiences for marketing men's branded underwear are considered.

This study provides insight into factors important to US consumers when purchasing men's branded underwear.

This paper offers an examination of consumer decision‐making relative to men's branded underwear, an understudied product category. Findings provide an in‐depth understanding of the consumer's perspective, an understanding that is essential to successful product development and brand positioning.

In the age of digital media, customers have access to vast digital information sources, within and outside a company's direct control. Yet managers lack a metric to capture customers' cross-media exposure and its ramifications for individual customer journeys. To solve this issue, this article introduces media entropy as a new metric for assessing cross-media exposure on the individual customer level and illustrates its effect on consumers' purchase decisions.

Building on information and signalling theory, this study proposes the entropy of company-controlled and peer-driven media sources as a measure of cross-media exposure. A probit model analyses individual-level customer journey data across more than 25,000 digital and traditional media touchpoints.

Cross-media exposure, measured as the entropy of information sources in a customer journey, drives purchase decisions. The positive effect is particularly pronounced for (1) digital (online) versus traditional (offline) media environments, (2) customers who currently do not own the brand and (3) brands that customers perceive as weak.

The proposed metric of cross-media exposure can help managers understand customers' information structures in pre-purchase phases. Assessing the consequences of customers' cross-media exposure is especially relevant for service companies that seek to support customers' information search efforts. Marketing agencies, consultancies and platform providers also need actionable customer journey metrics, particularly in early stages of the journey.

Service managers and marketers can integrate the media entropy metric into their marketing dashboards and use it to steer their investments in different media types. Researchers can include the metric in empirical models to explore customers' omni-channel journeys.

This study aims to understand the market structure and explore the applicability of recognised generalisations to a European wine retail market. The study considers whether brands in European wine retailing follow the established double jeopardy and duplication of purchase laws, with the aim of investigating their limits so as to identify where market partitions are evident.

The researchers conducted a cross-purchasing analysis within the wine category over a 12-month period, using a customer panel of n = 25,000 across a chain of independent retail stores in an English-speaking European country. Analysis was conducted across purchases of the top 20 wine brands.

Consumer wine repurchase results confirmed a double jeopardy pattern. These consumers’ wine repurchasing behaviour from other top-20 wine brands could have generally been predicted in line with the duplication of purchase law. However, a small number of exceptions to these patterns were identified, suggesting the existence of market partitions.

In this study, market partitions were evident for selected brands, a wine region and a common grape variety, Sauvignon blanc. Such exceptions illustrate that consumer purchase patterns can deviate from predictions, for a small number of brands in a consumer goods category than would be expected given duplication of purchase law norms. Such anomalies to empirical generalisations help demonstrate boundary conditions and lead further research on the market conditions required for such anomalies to be evident. Implications suggest that further research should be conducted on the product features creating market partitions.

The findings suggest that regional wines can appeal to a more clearly partitioned customer group within the clientele, but that substitution is noted among brands within regions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use a large sample consumer database to determine the generalisability of two well-established empirical generalisations: the double jeopardy and duplication of purchase laws, to the wine retail market. Knowing these are applicable to the wine retail markets allows wine producers and retailers to predict expected repurchase and cross-purchasing norms.

The study aims to investigate the impact of brand nostalgia, self-brand connections and parent brand trust on brand extension purchase intention. Additionally, the research examines the moderating effect of brand attachment on the link between brand nostalgia and intention to purchase brand extensions, as well as the relationship between self-brand connections and intention to purchase brand extensions.

The study collected data from 458 respondents in India using a cross-sectional survey research methodology. The collected data were analysed in two stages in SPSS, using structural equation modelling and the process macro bootstrapping method.

The study’s results indicate that although brand nostalgia and self-brand linkages exert a favourable impact on intention to purchase brand extensions, this effect is not significant when it comes to brand trust. Brand attachment acts as a moderator between brand nostalgia and the intention to purchase brand extensions. Additionally, brand attachment acts as a moderator between self-brand connections and the intention to purchase brand extensions.

The study adds to the consumer–brand relationship and brand extension literature by proposing and empirically testing a comprehensive model that determines the role of brand nostalgia in the formation of self-brand connections with the brand, trust in the parent brand and, finally, the intention to purchase brand extensions. Additionally, it examines if consumers’ attachment to the parent brand increases or decreases their intention to purchase brand extensions.

Consumer brand nostalgia may be leveraged while introducing brand extensions into the market. What is more, managers could use brand attachment to enhance the impact of brand nostalgia for favourable brand expansion assessments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to examine the influence of brand nostalgia and self-brand connections on the intention to purchase brand extensions. Besides, it tests the moderating impact of brand attachment on the relationship between brand nostalgia and intention to purchase brand extensions.

Brand loyalty is investigated by examining actual past behavior and its impact on future behavioral intentions: in terms of expectation to purchase the same/another brand from the same/another retailer, as well as willingness to recommend the purchased brand and retailer from which it was purchased. Findings indicate that while not without its flaws, purchase expectations/intentions data remain a valid research metric. Furthermore, it would appear as if the brand/consumer interface offers greater predictive ability than the retail/consumer interface. Lastly, willingness to recommend does not seem to be influenced by past behavior, but the higher the respondent’s expectation to purchase a brand, the higher will be their willingness to recommend that brand. The same applies to retailer recommendation. Limitations are discussed, and directions for future research suggested.