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This study aims to identify integrated marketing communication (IMC) antecedents and the consequences of planned brand identity in the context of higher education, and empirically test a number of hypotheses related to the constructs of these antecedents and consequences.

A model of the IMC antecedents and consequences of planned brand identity was tested in a survey conducted among stakeholders in two London-based universities. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to gain insight into the various influences and relationships.

The study identifies and confirms key constructs in planned brand identity. IMC antecedents of planned brand identity, such as brand elements, service attributes, public relations and place/country of origin, were found to positively influence the planned brand identity consequences of awareness, image and reputation. However, websites, social media, advertising and direct marketing were not found to have significant influence.

The focus on two UK universities limits the generalisability of the findings. Future research should be conducted in other country settings to test the relationships identified in the present study. Also, future research may build on the study’s findings by investigating the attitudinal and behavioural consequences of brand identification in the higher education context.

Professionals responsible for universities’ promotional and branding activities need to evaluate the relative contributions of the IMC antecedents of planned brand identity. Brand elements such as design, colour and name, for example, should be reviewed to determine whether modifications are required in different international markets. The increasing prevalence of social media, one of the key antecedents of brand awareness, offers opportunities for universities to engage in brand co-creation by interacting with past, present and future students on relevant digital platforms. Finally, the place/country-of-origin cue is of particular relevance to institutions of higher education given the increasing numbers of students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels who are choosing to study abroad (Melewar and Akel, 2005). The attraction of the UK as a country to study in, or the appeal of individual cities such as London, should be fully integrated into universities’ IMC strategies.

The study makes two main contributions. First is the theoretical contribution by identifying the core IMC antecedents and consequences of planned brand identity for universities and from this extrapolate key directions for future research. Second it is indicated that a number of managerial implications are designed to assist in the formulation of improved professional practice.

The study investigated the effect of marketing communications’ dimensions on brand loyalty in the banking sector.

The study adopted the quantitative research approach which relied on the explanatory design due to the nature of the hypotheses tested. The convenience sampling technique was used to pull 377 customers of a branch of a commercial bank in Ghana. Furthermore, the PLS-SEM technique was deployed to assess the measurement model and test the research hypotheses.

Results show that the following dimensions of marketing communications are significant predictors of brand loyalty: direct marketing, public relations and sales promotion. The exception is advertising, which had an inverse relation with brand loyalty.

The results provide significant pointers to banks’ management that they should deploy a variety of marketing communication channels other than intensive advertising to reach and persuade customers.

The study illustrates the latest effort to extensively provide insights into how commercial banks could leverage marketing communication tools to sustain loyalty in an emerging economy that is intensively competitive.

This study aims to investigate city branding as a post-pandemic COVID-19 outcome factor on brand satisfaction, brand experience, perceived risk and revisit intention. In addition, this research contributes to the discussion of post-COVID-19 city branding that needs to be considered in the development of future tourism marketing.

A quantitative approach was used with PLS-SEM statistical analysis and a 263-tourist sample. The study was conducted on tourists from Malang Regency in Indonesia by distributing questionnaires modified from previous studies in a similar context.

The results of this study found that there were significant influences of city brand personality on brand experience, brand satisfaction, brand experience on perceived risk, brand satisfaction on revisit intention and perceived risk on revisit intention. This study also presents the mediating role.

The study was only conducted on a small regency in Indonesia, and therefore the results cannot be generalized for other cities over the world.

The proposed study model suggests that stakeholders must seek to socialize services to potential tourists, so that tourists can understand the description of tourism activities that can be enjoyed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the way they travel in the future.

Understanding the determinant factors of city branding post-COVID-19 was valuable for developing marketing strategies to cope with intense competition among the city.

This study emphasizes the determinants of COVID-19 perceived risk and revisit intentions as explained in the tourism marketing literature by considering the role of brand satisfaction, brand experience and city brand personality which significantly contribute to build the city competitiveness. Therefore, various creative strategies should be implemented to promote the city as well as escalate tourist visits without ignoring the pandemic’s risks.

This study aims to increase the understanding of the emergence of a values-based (VB) premium private label (PL) brand reputation within a multiple-tier PL brand portfolio in retailing.

By building on the research on PLs, brand image, brand reputation and consumer values, this study creates a conceptual foundation for the emergence of VB PL brand reputation within a multiple-tier brand portfolio among consumers and examines the emergence of such reputation empirically using interpretive exploratory qualitative laddering interviews in the context of fast-moving consumer goods.

The findings of this study illustrate that the VB reputations of the premium PL product brand and the PL brand store intertwine, ultimately relating to two terminal values: pleasure and doing good. These reputations differ remarkably from the VB reputations of the economy PL brand and the umbrella brand of the retail chain (not doing good and financial security).

This study explains the emergence of VB brand reputation within a multiple-tier brand portfolio and introduces the use of the laddering technique in such research.

This study reminds brand managers to carefully design the relevant brand strategy for brands and their relationships under a brand umbrella.

Although much is known about PL brands and brand reputation, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study might be the first to increase the understanding of how a VB premium PL brand reputation emerges and accumulates from brand images within a multiple-tier brand portfolio.

This study aims to draw on cue utilization and irradiation theories to: determine the extent to which country-of-origin image and its sub-dimensions exert an aggregate and relative influence on consumer brand evaluations; and identify the contextual and methodological factors that account for between-study variance in the focal relationship.

A random-effects model was used to examine 166 empirical articles encompassing 499,563 observations, and 282 effect sizes from 1984 to 2020 using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software.

Results show that country-of-origin image has a positive, moderate effect on consumer brand evaluations. Moreover, findings reveal that each dimension of country-of-origin image – general country image, general product country image, specific product country image and partitioned country image – significantly influences consumer brand evaluation, but the effect of general product country image is the largest. What’s more, the aggregate impacts of country-of-origin image on consumer brand evaluation – brand commitment, brand-specific associations and general brand impressions – show that the effect on brand commitment is the largest. Finally, findings show that contextual factors (brand source, product sector, culture [individualism vs collectivism], brand origin continents and respondents’ continent) and methodological factors (cues, sampling unit, publication year and sample size) significantly account for between-study variance.

This study provides the first meta-analytic review of the relationship between country-of-origin image and consumer brand evaluation to help clarify mixed findings and balance out the literature, which has only seen quantitative reviews on product evaluation and purchase decisions.

The purpose of this study is to place the antecedents and consequences of brand hate in the context of negative consumer–brand relationship in the telecommunication industry. It provides a response to the existing gap in the research on brand hate in consumer behavior in service brands.

A survey-based data was modeled after theory that aims to apply concepts to the telecommunications industry. With a solid model grounded and context-adapted, a mediation analysis of the role of brand hate in negative antecedents and consequences toward brands was performed.

Brand hate was found to mediate all the negative relationships proposed, while showing to be especially significant in mediating negative word of mouth. This model appropriately fits the services' marketing brand and revealed new insights into the function of brand hate in negative relationships that are specific to service marketing consumer brands.

Branding theory may benefit from deeper insights into the negative side of consumer–brand relationships. A broader illustration of its constituents in different industries and the recovery of the management approach to these circumstances bring innovation and a richer understanding, specially to the role of brand hate in the mediation context as seen in the literature (Hegner et al., 2017; Zarantonello et al., 2016)

Managerial implications include assessing brands in analyzing and relating to different emotions and concepts from customers, allowing to prioritize and mapping the customer relationship touchpoints.

The present study presents a first insight of brand hate in the context of the service industry of telecommunications in southern Europe while testing brand hate as a mediator involving negative predictors leading to negative outcomes in consumer–brand relationships.

This paper examines in detail how the use of storytelling with parallax technology can influence the user experience (UX) in online shops as well as brand- and behavior-relevant variables. Furthermore, this study analyzes the causal relationships between UX, brand attitudes and brand-related behavioral intentions in terms of purchase intention and price premiums. Explicit and implicit paths of human information processing are considered.

A sample of 266 respondents completed a web-based experiment under two conditions (text-based vs parallax storytelling online shop). An existing and operational online shop was used. The causal relationships were assessed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). To measure implicit information processing, a single category implicit association test was applied.

By applying the storytelling technique with parallax scrolling, the online shop increased visitors' UX on explicit and implicit information processing levels and increased the online shop's overall perceived attractiveness. Storytelling with parallax motion enables an efficient transmission of brand-related associations to consumers' minds, enhances their explicit and implicit brand attitudes and increases their willingness to pay a higher price. Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence on the effects of UX on brand-related measures by applying PLS-SEM and thus reveals a causal chain of effects from UX on online shop attractiveness, brand attitude and behavioral intentions. Again, explicit and implicit perceptions were considered.

Science and practice are increasingly emphasizing that storytelling emotionalizes content, which facilitates effective communication and builds strong relationships with customers. Little evidence exists about its efficient implementation in an online shopping context and in fulfilling hedonic and pragmatic needs throughout the online journey. This study provides novel insights into managing online shoppers' UX, brand-related perceptions and behavioral intentions with the optimal use of techniques to implement storytelling. Furthermore, this is one of the first studies to holistically consider the human perception of online shops by drawing on theories and methods of psychology, marketing, consumer behavior, brand research and consumer neuroscience and considering explicit and implicit information processing in terms of hedonic and pragmatic UX and brand-related measures.

This paper aims to explore the impact of brand authenticity dimensions (i.e. aesthetic, symbolism, heritage, originality, quality commitment and virtue) on consumer engagement in the context of social media. This study answers to the need of scholars to understand consumer behaviour towards family and non-family firms’ brand authenticity constructs and for practitioners to find the correct levers to increase consumer engagement.

Top 10 European family firms with a retrievable Facebook (FB) page from the Global Family Business Index have been selected. Then, the study analysed family firms’ social media consumer engagement versus their non-family business direct competitors on a sample of 21.664 FB posts over a four-year period, leveraging multi-group analysis.

The results outline that three out of six brand authenticity dimensions posted on FB are statistically arousing more interactions respect to non-authenticity-related contents when posted by family firms. However, there are no statistically significant findings when brand authenticity content is posted by the non-family competitors.

This research is helpful for practitioners and entrepreneurs who might want to strengthen their social media brand strategies. With this regard, the study provides insights on which elements of brand authenticity are perceived by consumers as more engaging and which levers to use when communicating the familiness of the company.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies crosscutting the family business and brand authenticity literature streams to conduct an empirical analysis based on official FB data with a data set of over 20,000 observations. Moreover, this study assesses that not every dimension of the brand authenticity construct is relevant in the context of social media and that its effectiveness depends on the firms’ familiness.

The study aims to examine female sexuality in marketing communications and how it shapes the millennial buying decisions in the fashion industry. The focus of the study is to connect fashion industry and marketing communication to understand how female sexuality influence buying behaviours and decisions of the millennial.

The study was underpinned by the dimensions of skin colour, brand image and market share in sexual appealing marketing communication, and the millennial in the study comprises youths between the age of 21and 40 years and demographically defined by Wells and Guber (1966) as bachelors, Full nests 1 and 2. Multistage stage sampling was used with a structured questionnaire.

Findings show that youths, 2019 buying decisions and behaviours are strategically influenced by different manifestations of female sexuality in the context of the study and equally affect market share and patronage.

The study shows what shapes the marketing communication strategies of the rising fashion industry but is limited to the millennial buying decisions and not the larger fashion industry consumers.

The needs for fashion industry to understand the influence of increasing use of female sexuality in marketing communication on male and female consumers and the effects on their respective buying behaviours is strategic to the industry as shown in the study.

Female sexuality in marketing communication is strategic to fashion industry in today's market among youths.

The millennial constitutes a larger percentage of the developing economy market with rising income thus the need to understand their buying behaviours in the fashion industry

This paper aims to distil the management challenge pertaining to B2B SME branding strategy, communication and constraint in the emerging market context of Chinese manufacturing.

Complemented by 19 interviews, this paper adopted a novel methodological approach – netnographic analysis – to investigate a selection of Chinese manufacturing SMEs.

Findings revealed three managerial approaches to B2B brand management: conservative, flexible and integrated-exploratory.

Understanding the three approaches offers managerial implications for Chinese manufacturer SMEs to redesign their branding practice. Informed with a better understanding of the available option, they will be able to achieve high value-added production through branding to gain competitiveness. This study sheds light on B2B SME branding from an emerging market perspective, an area that has been largely neglected in the existing literature.

Findings make a novel contribution to B2B SME brand management literature by clarifying practical management issues pertinent to Chinese emerging market manufacturers in particular, and offering widely generalizable lessons for B2B brand management research.