Search results

The importance of employer branding to attract talent in organizations is increasing rapidly. Brand personality traits, particularly, have been shown to explain considerable variance in employer brand attractiveness. Despite such awareness, little is known about the underlying processes of this effect. The purpose of the authors is to close the research gap by drawing on a consumer brand model of brand affect and trust as a means of explaining employer brand attractiveness.

Students interested in working in the consultancy industry completed a survey designed to evaluate consultancy employer brands. Established scales for brand personality, trust, and affect, and employer brand attractiveness were used to test the conceptual model.

The results indicate that employer brand trust and affect are both influenced by the brand personality trait sincerity. Further, employer brand affect was positively affected by the traits excitement and sophistication, while negatively affected by ruggedness. Together, employer brand affect and trust explain 71 per cent of the variance in employer brand attractiveness.

While the results show the importance of branding an organization as a sincere, exciting, and sophisticated employer, future research is needed to identify adequate marketing tools to achieve this goal, also in other industries besides the one investigated here.

This study is the first to apply a model that includes brand personality, trust, and affect to employer branding. By doing so, the variance explained in employer brand attractiveness could be increased substantially.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the strength of brand associations, different brand breadths, and the similarity between a parent brand's product categories and its extension product categories influence consumers' attitudes toward brand extensions.

An experimental research design was applied to testing the set of hypotheses. A total of 384 respondents participated in the main study. This study analyzed experimental results using analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The paper finds that when a brand is extended to similar product categories, only when the association is strong (trust or affect) will consumers prefer the extension of the narrow brand to that of the broad brand. Conversely, when a brand is extended to dissimilar product categories, regardless of the brand associations (trust or affect), consumers prefer the extension of the favorable broad brand to that of the narrow brand.

For corporations that operate within a narrow brand, brand extension strategies must be based on parent brand associations (trust or affect) that are very strong. In addition, the extension must only be to extremely similar product categories. In contrast, for corporations operating a broad brand, although the chance of brand extension success is better, favorability of consumer brand association (trust or affect) must never be ignored.

The study results reemphasize the importance of brand breadth effects when launching category extensions. Also, the research provides new insight into the strength of parent brand associations when evaluating consumers' brand attitude on brand extension.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of customer-brand relationships in the international marketplace, and empirically investigates and compares the customer-brand relationship development process between Indian and Chinese markets. In detail, four out of Hofstede’s original five national culture dimensions were adopted as moderators in the process of customer-brand relationship development between two markets.

To test hypotheses, responses from 539 Indian and 400 Chinese mobile phone consumer samples were achieved, and the proposed model was estimated by using structural equations based on the partial least squares algorithm.

The results demonstrate that utilitarian value and brand affect play a significant role in building brand loyalty for Chinese consumers, while hedonic value and perceived risk contribute more in building brand loyalty for Indian consumers.

This study indicated that the cultural difference affects both on brand trust formation and on the relationship between brand trust/affect and brand loyalty, implying that more customized brand management strategies should be adopted.

Global brand values must be communicated for each culture appropriately. It is desirable that the identified match, utilitarian value-Chinese customers and hedonic value-Indian customers, be consistently presented to each cultural market in a more integrative manner.

This study identified that the route from the development of value proposition to building up brand trust and brand affect is a critical step toward achieving brand loyalty in Indian and Chinese markets.

This paper aims to examine the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism, animosity and cosmopolitanism on the effects of sponsorships on brand affect and brand trust, using latent growth modelling (LGM) to disentangle the static and dynamic components of brand affect and brand trust.

An online panel of UK participants reported their perceptions of a French sponsor at three successive points (before, during and at the end of the 2012 London Olympics). Of the 903 respondents at T1, 694 remained at T2 (76.8 per cent) and 577 (63.9 per cent) remained at T3. Another 302 respondents only at T3 controlled for potential mere measurement effects. The data were analysed using LGM techniques.

Due to sponsorship effects, brand affect and brand trust increased linearly over time. However, consumer ethnocentrism and animosity negatively moderated these increases. Cosmopolitanism enhanced brand affect but not brand trust.

As market globalisation exposes foreign firms to potential backlash from consumer nationalistic orientations towards their products, sponsorship strategies must consider the interplay between these nationalistic sentiments and sponsorship effects. While foreign sponsors are typically preoccupied with determining the fit between their brand and a local event, they must also consider individual-level nationalistic sentiments. The success of companies in foreign markets depends on creating favourable country-directed consumer attitudes.

Beyond demonstrating the application of LGM to individual-level longitudinal analyses, this study extends sponsorship research by considering a previously unexplored area with key academic and managerial contributions, namely, the role of consumer nationalism in sponsorship effects. The strategic uses and outcomes of international sponsorship must be considered in conjunction with consumers’ perceptions of foreign brands from a nationalistic perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the customer's risk aversion and its relationship with brand loyalty and to test empirically whether this relationship is mediated by brand trust and brand affect.

A randomly selected sample of Austrian mobile phone users was drawn. Their risk aversion, two forms of loyalty (attitudinal and repurchase loyalty), brand trust and brand affect have been measured with existing and tested scales. The hypothesized model has been tested using PLS (Partial least squares).

Customer's risk aversion is significantly related to the two forms of loyalty (attitudinal loyalty and brand loyalty). When brand affect and brand trust are introduced into the model, the previously highly significant relationship between domain‐specific risk aversion and attitudinal loyalty becomes insignificant and the risk aversion‐repurchase relationship becomes much weaker, while risk aversion strongly influences brand trust and brand affect.

The findings are limited to mobile phone users. The generalisation of the results could be extended by broadening the list of products, for example with other durable products and services in which brand affect and brand trust may be even more important in developing brand loyalty.

This paper explains why certain customers have more trust and experience more affect than others and how this is related to loyalty. Hence, marketers can increase brand loyalty by targeting more risk aversive customers.

From a theoretical point of view the results of this study illuminate the relationship between enduring individual differences and important brand related constructs. From a practical point of view, they explain why certain customers have more trust and experience more affect than others. It is hypothesized and demonstrated empirically that risk aversion is also related to loyalty via brand trust and brand affect.

This paper aims to extend the understanding of how global brands can positively influence brand trust by introducing two new mediating variables – brand affect and brand innovativeness, and testing the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism in these relationships.

In total, 250 participants completed self-administered online questionnaires in a cross-sectional study in France. Moderated mediation and floodlight analysis were performed.

Brand globalness is positively related to brand affect and this, in turn, is positively related to brand trust. The relationship between brand globalness and brand affect is weaker for ethnocentrist consumers. Brand globalness is positively related to brand innovativeness and this, in turn, is positively related to brand trust. The relationship between brand globalness and brand innovativeness is weaker for ethnocentrist consumers.

A limited number of fast-food brands was analyzed. Future studies should replicate the research model using different product categories to generalize the findings.

This study offers new opportunities for managers concerned by the optimization of their global brands management. First, the results demonstrate the interest of managers to increase the emotional and affective aspects of their global brands to make them more trustable. Second, brand managers should also emphasize the innovative aspects of their global brand. Indeed, it is essential for practitioners not only to propose frequently new and innovative products to consumers but also to follow the latest trends in their market. The more managers provide new, useful solutions to fulfill consumers’ needs, the more consumers will trust those global brands.

The mediating role of brand affect and brand innovativeness in the relationship between brand globalness and brand trust gives new insights on an established relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship among risk aversion, brand trust, brand affect, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty for low involvement day-to-day use of personal care products.

To achieve the above-stated objective, a theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling. Before undertaking the analysis, preliminary analysis techniques such as the common method bias social desirability bias reliability and validity analysis were also assessed.

The results indicate that, for low involvement products, risk adverse consumers do not purchase a brand based only on trust. Risk aversion is also positively associated with attitudinal loyalty. When it comes to the relationship between brand trust and brand affect, it has been concluded that brand trust has had an important impact on brand affect. In this study, it has been found that attitudinal loyalty has a positive and strong impact on behavioral loyalty. This paper explains that due to the lack of trust, certain risk adverse customers are sticking with a particular brand.

Most of the brand loyalty research has been performed on high involvement products, whereas very limited research is available on low involvement day-to-day use products (i.e. personal care products), in particular where the consumption period of the product is less than a month. This kind of research is very rare, and this study has been done to fill this gap using rigorous data analysis.

This study aims to propose a comprehensive causal model to examine the relationships between customer experience and four key factors in brand building, i.e., brand loyalty, brand trust, brand affect and brand involvement. The dimensionality of customer experience in full-service hotel is also particularly examined in relation to brand building.

Three steps of data collection were used: interviews of 50 customers on their experiences of staying full-service hotels, a small survey of 176 hotel guests to establish the measurement scale of customer experience and a major survey of 732 hotel customers in ten major Chinese cities to test the model of brand loyalty.

Customers’ experiences with full-service hotels are proposed to be categorized into functional, affective and social. There is a chain effect from customer experience to brand trust and to brand affect and then to brand loyalty. The brand involvement does moderate relationships between customer experience and brand trust and brand affect but not brand loyalty.

For full-service hotels, social and functional experiences are critical in building brand loyalty, and therefore, they need to be the focal points in the enhancement of customer experience. Also, hoteliers are advised to develop emotional connections between the customers and the hotel brand – an effective way of building trust and affection.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first few studies to link customer experience to brand loyalty with comprehensive causal effect analysis. This study also contributes to the knowledge of customer experience in the context of the full-service hotel sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of sustainable marketing practices of firms on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty. In addition, this study also aims to explore the mediating effect of brand trust and brand affect on this relationship.

A combination of descriptive and causal research has been used, for which data was collected from 582 respondents and processed using structural equation modeling to establish multivariate relationships. The PROCESS method was used to estimate mediation effects.

A rather valuable insight that emerged is the significant role that brand trust and brand affect play in engendering attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty among consumers, for firms adopting sustainable marketing practices. Findings revealed that sustainable marketing practices result in enhanced brand trust, which further translates into higher levels of brand affect, thereby leading to attitudinal brand loyalty and further resulting in behavioral brand loyalty. This study also highlights the importance of brand affect in developing enduring behavioral brand loyalty.

Consumers today are changing their consumption habits, preferring to satisfy ideological and symbolic needs rather than just rational needs. So, marketers practising sustainable marketing should aim to leverage brand trust and brand affect to ensure lasting behavioral brand loyalty.

The examination of the effect of sustainable marketing practices on brand-related variables has contributed to a better understanding of the mechanism that underlines the operation of emotion-based enduring loyalty. The vast majority of studies that provided insights about sustainable marketing practices and consumer behavior thereof were dominated by European and American perspectives and very few studies exist with a focus on developing economies. This study attempts to fill this void by exploring the personal care market in India.