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The purpose of this paper is to quantify the value of brands and countries of origin in monetary units. The automobile industry in Thailand is chosen because of the variety of brands and the intense competition within the industry. Both the pick up truck and passenger car market shares have been dominated by Japanese brands for decades, whilst the luxury market has been dominated by German brands.

The data are collected from an authors' survey carried out during the “Thailand International Motor Expo 2007”. A total of 244 models are chosen from 20 brands, and from 7 countries of origin. The hedonic price model is applied to ascertain the price premiums of these different brands, taking into account their countries of origin, since each automobile brand offers several models with distinguishably different features.

The results indicate that different brand names affect consumers' “Willingness to Pay,” in which Mercedes, BMW, and Audi brands are ranked the highest. Surprisingly, Subaru, Mitsubishi and Toyota are the only Japanese brands to have significant brand values. The findings also illustrate a direct relationship between market acceptance and the price premium for automobiles in the luxury car segment, however the same relationship does not hold true for the cars in economy car segment. It seems that Thai consumers put the highest value on cars from Germany, whilst cars from Japan and the USA possess approximately the same value. Korean and Malaysian cars, which focus on low‐prices as a means to obtain a competitive advantage, are as to be expected ranked last. An association was found between countries' GDP per capita and the price premium. Countries with a lower GDP per capita show lower price premiums and vise versa. The exception is Germany, which has a low GDP per capita yet has a higher price premium than the better ranked GDP countries such as the USA

Though the German brands are ranked the highest, competition in the car industry is likely to be intense, since their premiums are not noticeably different. Additionally, there are implications regarding entry barriers for new automobile brands from the same or different countries. These entry barriers are considered to be quite high, as the brand premiums could represent more than 25 percent of the car prices, at least for the compact car segment. A strategy of discounted price penetration is therefore recommended for a brand which is new to the market, and which does not originate from a highly regarded country. For existing brands with below average values, a customer‐based approach is recommended in which those brands improve the attributes in order to create higher premiums.

In addition to confirming the relationship between the price premiums of brands and their countries of origin, this paper successfully provides valuations in monetary units and rankings accordingly. This research could be useful to both incumbents and new entrants, when designing their pricing strategies.

This study aims to analyze the role of religious knowledge level in influencing customers’ brand association and purchase intention of luxury cars by focusing on the Indonesian context and taking the Lexus brand as a case in point.

A sample of 159 respondents was taken from a population of Muslim consumers who live in Java province, Indonesia, and who have not had Lexus luxury car but have had other cars before. Using a quantitative research approach on primary data collected in several cities in Indonesia, the study adopts the partial least square as a method of analysis.

The study shows that brand association positively and significantly influences Muslim consumers’ attitudes on luxury cars, in this case, the Lexus brand. More importantly, the level of religious knowledge among Muslim consumers is shown to significantly weaken the influence of consumer attitudes toward purchase intention on luxury cars. The study also shows that brand association has a significant influence on Muslim consumers’ purchase intention on luxury cars.

This study only explores the consumers’ perceptions based on their income levels. Further details of the consumers when making purchases of the luxury cars are not being considered; this includes who the decision-maker is, gender and education level.

There are several important implications that come from this study, especially on the risk of after-sales that will be experienced by luxury car owners, in this case, the Lexus brand. Luxury car manufacturers should show and highlight different characters in representing each variant or each type, to be more reflective of the intention and personalities of consumers who purchase luxury cars and not only to show the impression of owning the luxury cars.

There are also social implications of this research where although middle- and high-income consumers do not always intend to buy luxury cars due to the role of religiosity that directs the Muslim consumers to evaluate whether it is really necessary to buy the luxury cars.

There has been a gap in the literature in assessing the role of religious knowledge level in affecting brand association as well as purchase intention, especially from a quantitative research approach and particularly focusing on the Indonesian context. This study including in responsible consumption as a good customer, which is one of Sustainable Development Goals items.

The aim of this study is to explore the attempts by early twentieth century cyclecar manufacturers in the UK and USA to segment the personal transportation market and to position early cyclecars through the development of unique product attributes and advertising. More specifically, the authors speculate about early twentieth century British cyclecar marketing strategies that implicitly recognized a sports car segment and positioned cyclecar brands to meet the needs of that segment.

The primary source material for this research is a sample of 205 print ads and articles from the early twentieth century (1912-1921) specialty magazines devoted to cyclecars in the UK and USA. We combine the content analysis of the sample of ads with a critical reading and interpretation of a sub-sample of those same ads.

Between 1910 and 1921, a new form of personal transportation was developed that combined the technology of motorcycles with the utility of automobiles. Known as “cyclecars”, these vehicles were typically constructed from off-the-shelf motorcycle parts and assembled in small batches by a myriad of manufacturers. Current scholarship suggests that the cyclecar craze of the 1910s ended with the introduction of low cost “real” automobiles such as the Ford Model T, Austin 7 and Morris Oxford. We use the content analysis of cyclecar advertisements to construct a brand-positioning map of this emerging segment of the transportation market. We argue that while the core cyclecar positioning was in direct competition with small economically positioned cars such as the Ford Model T, a significant part of the market, primarily centered in the UK, could be considered as for sports cars. That segment of the cyclecar market, along with the development of cyclecars into urban delivery vehicles, continued over time and has re-emerged today in a range of three-wheeled sports cars, including the updating and continuation of the British Morgan 3 Wheeler model which was launched during the heyday of cyclecars.

The authors can only speculate about the impact of the Ford Model T in this study. Further research on that issue is needed.

This is the first historical study of cyclecar marketing. Most of what little has been published about cyclecars focuses on their design and technology.

Chinese and Indian car manufacturers are entering developed markets. The question arises how they will be perceived by consumers from those countries. Using the multi‐dimensional brand personality scale, this paper provides an explorative study of the country of origin effect on U.S. consumers’ brand perception of automobiles from China and India. Our multivariate analysis of variance shows differences in terms of brand excitement, brand competence, brand sophistication, and brand ruggedness. Our results indicate that the Chinese car is perceived to be more daring, up‐to‐date, and outdoorsy than the Indian and U.S. car; more intelligent, successful, and upper‐class than the Indian car; and more charming than the U.S. car. The U.S. car is perceived as more successful than the Indian car.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how product characteristics, segment differences, and brand‐name effects determine the price structure of the new car market.

The authors design and implement a hedonic price model that includes functional characteristics and addresses segment and brand heterogeneity.

The application of the model to an extensive dataset supports the hypotheses of segment differences and brand‐name effects. In mainstream segments automobile prices are determined more completely by functional characteristics. In high‐end segments carmakers follow implicit premium pricing strategies. The brand‐name effects reflect the incremental value added to a car by its brand name. Prestige brands not only earn brand‐name premia but also seize high‐margin market segments.

Several issues await investigation including possible discrepancies between the primary and secondary market, inter‐temporal change, and differences in attribute value across segments and marques.

The study has clear implications for auto manufactures, distributors and advertisers. It demonstrates the role of brands, segments, and observed product differences in the price structure of the automobile market. The proposed approach also allows managers to appraise new concepts and determine market‐driven prices.

The paper provides new interesting insights into critical issues for pricing strategy and brand management. It demonstrates the return on investment in brand building and identifies considerable opportunities for future research.

China has become the world’s largest vehicle market, because of the strong governmental support to boost car sales and particularly because of the establishment of joint ventures between state-owned enterprises and world-class automakers. However, because many Sino-foreign joint ventures have performed unsatisfactorily in terms of creating indigenous brands, the purpose of this paper is to explore the cause-and-effect relationships among governmental policy support, Sino-foreign joint ventures and own-brand innovation in China’s passenger-car industry.

After briefly introducing the development history of the Chinese auto industry and reviewing relevant literature, first, the analytic hierarchy process method is used to create a unique, context-specific equation to measure the degree of policy support in China. This paper then uses the hierarchical multiple regression method to process the 2014 public data set.

The findings show that the degree of policy support increases the preference of the firms for producing foreign-brand cars, while such a relationship is fully mediated by the establishment of Sino-foreign joint ventures.

The research brings greater and deeper insights into the interplay among governmental policy, the conduct of own-brand strategy and international joint ventures in China’s auto market, showing that policy support may not always be beneficial, but sometimes be detrimental to indigenous innovation.

This paper can be seen as an exciting step that adds to a better understanding of the role of political support in shaping the strategic choices of firms in terms of brand innovation in the Chinese automobile industry. The proposed novel, context-specific approach for evaluating the degree of policy support embodies the distinctive institutional complexity and intricate social network embedded in the local car market during the period of China’s socio-economic transformation – an approach that is original in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of ethnocentrism in attenuating the negative country of origin effect and latecomer brands. The literature has established the importance of the “country of origin” effect, and this study compares consumers in the Asian emerging markets to developed consumers' response to cars from China, India and Russia.

Data on consumers' willingness to purchase cars from emerging markets such as China, India and Russia were collected from 3,201 respondents in those three emerging markets and in the three most important Western car markets, the USA, the UK and Germany. The study employed a choice-based conjoint analysis.

The results of this study confirmed the hypothesised ethnocentrism in the emerging markets with a strong preference for their own latecomer brands (Great Wall, Tata and AvtoVAZ, respectively). Developed markets in contrast are more sceptical of the Chinese, Indian and Russian car brands, but there is nonetheless substantial potential, especially with consumers who have previously bought latecomer brands from Asia. Utility values per brand, price, brand-partnership, product features, warranties and also place of manufacturing/assembly have been calculated in the study.

This paper should prove valuable to academic researchers in establishing strong consumer preferences in emerging markets for their own products, and in establishing the potential of latecomer brands in developed markets.

The purpose of this research is to explore the practical implications of brand management decisions, particularly those involving the combination of luxury and mass‐market brands within the same organization through merger or acquisition. The aim of the paper is to expand brand theory by linking it to administrative heritage in the context of the increasingly integrated global automobile industry.

Integrated case studies of Jaguar, Mercedes‐Benz, and Saab illustrate the effects of brand extension and dilution through the lenses of brand development, luxury brands, and administrative heritage theories. The recent history of acquisitions and mergers involving luxury automobile brands provides background to the in‐depth examination of these three specific instances. Conclusions are reached by comparing and contrasting the experiences of these firms relative to their mass‐market siblings.

The blending of luxury and mass‐market automobile brands in one corporate portfolio engages advantages of scale and scope economies, but induces potentially fatal brand corrosion. Consumer perceptions of luxury brands are influenced by the degree of commonality with the associated mass‐market brands, independent of whether the luxury brand or the mass‐market brand is the dominant corporate vehicle.

The paper provides insights useful to practitioners as well as academic researchers. The novel juxtapositioning of the concepts of luxury brands, administrative heritage, and global strategic management through mergers/acquisitions demonstrates the unintended consequences of complex interactions in a dynamic industry. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research.

This paper aims to draw on values theory, associative network theory and schema congruity theory to examine how consumers attribute human-like values to product categories and products, and how these attributions affect product evaluations.

Study 1 randomly assigned 925 respondents to one of three product categories (cars, mobile phones and vacations). They were asked about their values and to attribute values to an assigned product category. Study 2 randomly assigned 919 respondents to one of the four value-expressive car conditions. They were asked to attribute values to the car, and then about their attitudes and purchase intentions.

Respondents attributed human-like values to product categories and products that were distinct and reflected the motivational compatibilities and conflicts inherent in the circular structure of human values. Moreover, multifaceted value congruity effects were found to positively influence attitudes and intentions to purchase a car, including congruity with product category values-schema, consumers’ personal values-schema and the structure of human values.

The authors demonstrate how a cognitive memory-based view can be used to better understand the complexities of the attribution of human-like values to products and product categories. Moving beyond the attribution of brand personality, this study shows the importance of not only understanding the attributions of values to a product but also considering how these attributions interact with the more abstract product category values to influence evaluations.

This paper aims to explore how the ownership transfer from a highly industrialised country to less industrialised countries influences consumers’ brand perceptions.

Three acquisition cases of premium car brands (Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo) are investigated using qualitative data from online brand communities.

When country of ownership (COOW) for brands changes, it leads to different effects on consumers’ brand perception. Consumers are disoriented as to which cue to apply when evaluating the brand. They also see that brand values, and how these are communicated, are in conflict, as are sustainability images.

This paper focuses on the perspective of brand community members in Europe and the USA and studies only the car industry and acquisitions by two countries (China and India) using data from the time of ownership transfers. The authors discuss theoretical implications and suggest further research to gain more insights and address limitations.

Following a transfer of ownership, communication campaigns are required for addressing the original brand’s heritage and promoting the new brand owner’s image. Managers need to take advantage of loyal brand fans by turning them into brand ambassadors, spreading information to convince consumers that are more sceptical.

This study fills the knowledge gap regarding change of COOW to developing countries as new owners, and its consequences for consumer perception. The authors also introduce an innovative type of data collection through brand communities, which is less commonly used in international marketing research.