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To influence consumer pre-purchase decision-making processes, such as brand selection and perceived brand experience, brands are interested in adopting hyperconnected technological stimuli, such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality, social media and tech devices. However, the understanding of different hyperconnected touchpoints remained shallow and results mixed in previous literature, despite the fact that these touchpoints span different technological interfaces/devices and may influence consumer brand selection. This paper aims to solidify the conceptual underpinnings of the role of online hyperconnected stimuli, which may influence consumer psychological reactions in terms of brand selection and experience.

This paper is conceptual and presents a discussion based on extant literature from various international publishers.

The authors revealed different technological stimuli in the online hyperconnected environment that may influence consumer online hyperconnected brand selection (OHBS), perceived online hyperconnected brand experience (OHBE), perceived well-being and behavioral intention.

The conceptual understanding of OHBS and perceived OHBE was mixed and inconsistent in previous studies. This paper brings together extant literature to establish the conceptual understanding of antecedents and outcomes of OHBS, i.e. perceived OHBE, perceived well-being and behavioral intention, and presents a cohesive conceptual framework.

Even though scholars have proposed multiple dimensions to measure corporate reputation, the relationship between these dimensions and service provider selection has received a dearth of research. Moreover, the moderating role of brand image on this relationship has hardly been considered. The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps in the literature.

The study employed a quantitative approach, collecting data from 540 retail bank customers using surveys. Results were analyzed using structural equation modelling in AMOS.

The study found out that emotional engagement, corporate performance, customer centricism and service quality directly predicted customer selection of retail banks in Ghana. The results further indicated that brand image moderates the relationship between social and ethical engagement, which was not directly significant and bank selection.

The findings of the study indicate that some of the dimensions of corporate reputation have a direct impact on bank selection by customers, and that brand image could also be used to improve social and ethical dimension of corporate reputation to ensure bank selection by retail customers. The study thus provides practical guidelines for managing corporate reputation to achieve retail bank selection in Ghana.

The paper provides support to some of the prior studies on corporate reputation in the retail banking sector. Thus, the study provides useful insights into how corporate reputation can be managed to ensure service provider selection by retail bank customers.

Despite the increased focus on brands in B2B markets, little research to date has focused on understanding the role brands play in different B2B contexts. To make a contribution in this area, the article aims to investigate whether, why and how corporate brand image plays a role in the selection of new subcontractors. This category of firms is particularly challenging to explore from a branding perspective, as their market offering is defined and designed by their customer and, further, not recognized by the customer's customer.

A qualitative interview study with respondents from nine companies (three subcontractors and six of their customers) was conducted. The interviews were semi‐structured and focused on considerations made by both buyers and sellers in sales and purchasing processes.

The study reveals that corporate brand image can be especially important when buyers need to identify new subcontractors. This process is only partly formalized, and due to limited resources and perceived risk, buyers need to rationalize the selection process. The brand's primary role is to attract interest and provide trust with regard to capacity, on‐time delivery and competence. Explicit communications, utilizing various elements such as plant orderliness, previous clients, the firm's website, etc., help build up the brand.

The paper illustrates that a corporate brand and branding perspective can be fruitfully applied in a subcontractor context. It promotes a deeper understanding of the complexity of decision making in B2B markets. The findings suggest that more conscious and proactive branding efforts could improve a subcontractor's business.

In recent years, private brands for e-commerce platforms have experienced rapid growth. However, whether these platforms developing private brands should share their demand information with others and how such information sharing affects the sales format selection of national brand manufacturers have puzzled firm managers in practice. This paper aims to investigate the information-sharing strategy for the e-commerce platform and its influence on the sales format selection in the presence of the private brand.

The authors use a game-theoretical model to examine the interaction between the information-sharing strategy and sales format selection in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a platform that operates a private brand.

The equilibrium results show that when the commission rate is low, the manufacturer favors agency selling, and the platform shares demand information with the manufacturer; when the commission rate is high, the manufacturer prefers reselling, and the platform does not share the information. This preference is affected by information forecasting accuracy; as the information forecasting accuracy increases, the manufacturer prefers to adopt agency selling, and the platform tends to share the information. Interestingly, under agency selling, sharing information with the manufacturer can increase the platform’s profit from selling the private brand and achieve a win-win situation for them. Furthermore, we show that the manufacturer can inspire the platform to share the information with himself by adopting agency selling, whereas the platform sharing the information improves the probability that the manufacturer adopts agency selling. Moreover, the manufacturer may have a first-mover advantage. In particular, the manufacturer moving first increases the likelihood that the manufacturer chooses agency selling and the platform shares the information.

This paper contributes to sales format literature by exploring the effect of information sharing strategy on sales format selection in the presence of the private brand and can help manufacturers and platforms to make suitable decisions regarding information sharing and sales format selection.

This study seeks to examine mature consumers' motives in the selection of apparel and footwear brands and reasons for patronizing department stores. Differences in brand‐choice motives are assessed among age cohort groups within the mature consumers segment as well as mature consumer segments defined by various socio‐demographic and lifestyle factors (i.e. gerontographic segmentation).

A USA nation‐wide random sample of 10,400 head of households was surveyed in regards to reasons for choosing apparel and footwear brands and department stores.

The results show that older consumers not only differ from their younger counterparts but are also heterogeneous when it comes to reasons for choosing specific brands and department stores. Specifically, price reductions and special sales drive the majority of mature consumers' brand selection, while advice or requests of spouse or other relatives and recommendations of salespeople are important factors in brand selection. Ease of returning products or getting refunds and frequency of items on sale are the main drivers of department store patronization.

Marketing managers should consider preference differences in age and gerontographic segments when creating marketing strategies to serve mature consumers.

Typically, mature consumers are aggregated into a single age segment (e.g. over 55). This study examines mature consumer reasons for selecting apparel and footwear brands and department stores based not just on age, but also on individual characteristics, specifically, gerontographic characteristics. Suggestions for marketing strategies designed to appeal to gerontographic segments are provided.

This paper seeks to identify the functional and symbolic attributes of product and brand selection that are of importance to 18‐24 consumers across food and toiletries products.

The investigation used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The initial quantitative study (268 respondents) aimed to identify in order of importance (using ANOVA) the variables that drive purchase behaviour across the four product categories of soap, coffee, breakfast cereal and toothpaste.

The study identified the key importance of sensory (e.g. taste, scent) attributes in the selection of the specific products studied. These sensory attributes may define the brand positioning of the products.

This paper has implications for new product development.

Identifies the functional and symbolic attributes of product and brand selection that are of importance to 18‐24 consumers across food and toiletries products.

The information‐processing activity of consumers' selection of a bank is examined. Questionnaire data are collected from a sample of consumers to determine the way they categorise banks and the effect demographic differences have on this process. The results support the existence of a “foggy” set as distinct from a “hold” set of bank brands in the consumers' perception, and show the ways these and other decision sets vary with age, language, education and income.

The purpose of this paper is to design a model for selecting brand names on the basis of the perceptions of enterprises.

First, the proposed model adopts the modified Delphi method to identify suitable criteria for evaluating a brand name. Next, the model applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to determine the relative weights of evaluation criteria, then ranks the alternatives and selects the brand name. Finally, the model adopts sensitivity analysis to examine how other evaluative criteria would change with any changes in the weightings of the evaluation criteria.

The analytical results indicated that enterprises rank criteria in terms of importance as follows: emotional appeal, linguistics appeal, marketing appeal and legal appeal. In addition, the example of a renowned Taiwanese beverage company is used to demonstrate the process of brand name selection based on this model.

The proposed model helps enterprises effectively select a brand name, making it highly applicable in academia and commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the decision-making process used by luxury fashion retail buyers in Greece in order to assess the applicability of Sheth's (1981) model to the selection of brands and collections by retail buyers in luxury fashion resellers.

The study takes an interpretive approach, utilising participant observation and semi-structured interviews with retail buyers in five luxury fashion reseller companies in Greece, which boasts the world's highest proportion of luxury fashion consumers. Qualitative data were analysed thematically according to the theoretical constructs in Sheth's (1981) model of merchandise buyer behaviour.

Brand reputation, quality, appropriateness for the market and exclusive distribution were the most important criteria for supplier selection. For evaluating merchandise, the most important criteria were design, style, fashionability and quality. The most relevant influencer of decision making in supplier selection was the competitive structure in terms of the power balance between retailer and brand. For merchandise selection, the most relevant influencing factors were retailer size, management mentality, product positioning and type of decision (re-buy or new task).

Due to the exploratory nature of the study and its focus on the context of a particular geographical marketplace, the findings may not be generalised to other countries.

This paper provides an insight into the decision-making practice of retail buyers in Greek luxury fashion retailers, where the buying task involves balancing the retailer's commercial interests with a more cultural role in terms of shaping fashion trends and generating PR and publicity for the retailer. The task is further complicated by the power imbalance between retailer and brand, enabling brands to impose limitations on the buyer's decision. Additionally, the combined influence of shortening product life cycles, increasing product variety and the emergence of a new and younger luxury fashion consumer requires a shift from intuitive to scientific, data-driven decision making.

The motivations behind co-branding alliances, the differences in performance between the paired brands and the emergence of “spillover effects” have been pillars of the marketing research agenda for almost three decades. We observe an extensive number of studies on co-branding alliances, combined with multiple theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches informing extant literature. The purpose of this paper is to summarize of the state of the art of this research.

The authors offer a systematic literature review of 190 papers on co-branding alliances. The authors portray a picture of the theories informing co-branding research and build a conceptual framework that summarizes the concepts and variables used in this literature. Finally, 11 interviews with managers and consultants of European firms help to reveal potential problems in practice and needs that are not captured by previous studies.

The authors develop a map of theories used to investigate co-branding alliances and build a conceptual framework linking motivations, co-branding alliance implementation and outputs. Finally, the authors propose a structured research agenda.

The main implication relies on the structured research agenda.

Practical implications include the identification of the variables and dimensions involved in a brand alliance to exploit the strengths and moderate the weaknesses of a brand.

This paper highlights how co-branding is embedded in different contexts and dimensions regarding both firms and consumers. The two maps presented in this study underscore the interdependence among such dimensions. The authors interview marketing experts to validate the conceptual framework and to help us extract the managerial implications that stem from it.