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This study aims to investigate a randomized 3 (endorser type: celebrity vs CEO vs expert) × 2 (product type: hedonic vs utility) between-respondents factorial experiment to inspect the effects of the endorsers and product types on consumers’ engagement in BRM through brand-relationship variables [i.e. self-brand connection (SBC), perceived product attachment (PPA) and source credibility (SC)]. Marketing in a digital era is witnessing a rising trend of “brand resurrection as revolution” led by consumer power. The successful revitalization of various dead brands provides some new opportunities for companies to engage millennial consumers in brand resurrection movements (BRM) through the right choice of brand endorsers. The new-found love of companies for the revitalization of long-forgotten brands has attracted considerable interest among scholars and marketing practitioners. Despite the brand resurrection’s high practical relevance, little is known in marketing research about how to revive failing brands back to life.

Using source credibility theory (SCT) as a lens, this study conducted two studies (i.e. Study 1, N = 300; Study 2, N = 300) and builds on an analysis of data from Pakistani millennials. The hypotheses were inspected using both structural equation modeling and SPSS’s PROCESS macro.

Through two studies, the authors find that the match between endorser types and product types affects customer motivation to engage in BRM via SBC, PPA and SC (i.e. attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise).[AQ2] The results showed that for utilitarian products, both SBC and PPA mediate the link between endorser types and BRM, but for hedonic products, PPA does not play a role. Similarly, the authors’ results indicate that for hedonic products, attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise mediate the link between endorser types and BRM, but for utilitarian products, trustworthiness does not play a role.

The results of this research will help marketing managers devise effective brand endorsers strategies in reviving failing brands. Specifically, this endeavor highlights that understanding brand advertisements merely in terms of celebrity endorsement restricts the full potential that brand advertisements could have and also that a comprehensive understanding must include expert and chief executive officers (CEO) endorsers. Therefore, one of the central contributions of this research is the introduction of expert and CEO endorsers and the evidence that both celebrity (i.e. celebrity and CEO) and non-celebrity endorsers (i.e. experts) have an impact on consumers’ motivation to engage in BRM.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first endeavors of its kind to empirically explore consumer attitude/motivation behind participation in reviving failing brands. The significance of this work is underscored by the fact that numerous dead brands are being brought back by companies because of consumer–brand co-creation movements.

This study aims to investigate specific green-brand affect in terms of commitment and connection through the morality–mortality determinants of consumer social responsibility and the assumptions of terror management theory in the proposed three-layered framework. Religiosity serves as a moderator within the framework.

Data are collected in Taipei, Taiwan, while quota sampling is applied, and 420 valid questionnaires are collected. The partial least squares technique is applied for data analysis.

With the contingent role of religiosity, consumer social responsibility influences socially conscious consumption, which in turn drives the commitment and connection of green-brand affect. The death anxiety and self-esteem outlined in terror management theory influence materialism, which then drives green-brand commitment; however, contrary to expectations, they do not drive green-brand connection.

By considering green brands beyond their cognitive aspects and into their affective counterparts, morality–mortality drivers of green-brand commitment and green-grand connection are explored to provide unique contributions so as to better understand socially responsible consumption.

This research is conducted in the context of beauty salons in India, to investigate how enhanced perceived acceptance in interpersonal relationships through consuming beauty salon services can generate narcissistic brand love among consumers via the mediation of brand happiness. It also investigates the moderating impact of consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style and cynicism on the relationship between perceived salon brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence and salon brand happiness.

To test the hypothesized relationships, a survey was conducted among 225 regular consumers of beauty salon brands. The data were analyzed using Hayes' (2017) process macro in SPSS.

The results suggest that perceived goal congruence between beauty salon brand-interpersonal acceptance positively influences brand happiness, which in turn predicts consumer's narcissistic brand love. Consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style positively moderates the effect of brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence on brand happiness, while cynicism negatively moderates the path.

Value of the study lies in extending interpersonal acceptance and rejection (IPAR) theory to the domain of consumer–salon brand relationship, to posit that if salon brands satisfy consumers' interpersonal acceptance goals, there is a potential for such happy consumers to love the salon brand, albeit narcissistically.

The goal of this paper is twofold: (1) to investigate how relatedness-supportive corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence brand happiness among retail bank customers through a mediating mechanism of customer participation in brand CSR movements; and (2) to analyze how relatedness-supportive CSR initiatives’ effect may be moderated by cause choice and customer-brand goal congruence.

Data were collected from 379 retail bank customers via a paper-and-pencil survey. The hypothesized moderated-mediation effects were tested using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS (Model 3, Model 4 and Model 7).

Results show that relatedness-supportive CSR initiatives increase brand happiness among retail bank customers through increasing their participation in brand CSR movements. Furthermore, the use of customer determination in the choice of cause enhances the positive effect of relatedness-supportive CSR initiatives on customer participation in brand CSR movements. Similarly, when customers choose the cause and the customer-brand goal is congruent, the effect of relatedness-supportive CSR initiatives on brand happiness is stronger than when the customer-brand goal is incongruent and cause choice is not aligned.

This research is grounded on the relationship motivation theory (RMT), basic psychological needs theory and self-congruity theory to unpack the relationship between relatedness-supportive CSR programs on brand happiness. Integrating three research streams (i.e. CSR, brand management and retail banking), this study proposes customer participation in brand CSR movements as a novel mechanism and sheds light on how relatedness-supportive CSR interplays with cause choice/customer-brand goal congruence to affect brand happiness among retail bank customers in emerging markets.

The Journal of Product and Brand Management (JPBM) has a 30-year long history. To commemorate the journal’s 30th anniversary, this research paper aims to present a retrospective overview of JPBM.

This research examines the performance of the research constituents, social structure and intellectual structure of scholarly publications produced by JPBM between 1992 and 2021 using bibliometric analysis.

This research sheds light on the growing influence of JPBM through four major knowledge clusters (themes): strategic brand management; consumer behavior; product development and innovation management; and brand engagement. A temporal analysis of decade-by-decade cataloguing of the JPBM corpus revealed another set of three distinct knowledge clusters (themes): retailing and pricing strategies; marketing communications; and relationship marketing.

Though the state-of-the-art overview herein offers seminal and useful insights about product and brand management research curated by JPBM, which can be used by the editorial board and prospective authors to curate and position the novelty of future contributions, it remains limited to the accuracy and availability of bibliographic records acquired from Scopus.

This research advances the internal review and subjective evaluation of the evolution of brand management thinking in JPBM by Veloutsou and Guzmán (2017) with an objective retrospection on the performance and scientific evolution of product and brand management research in JPBM.

Illustrates the importance of managing the brand in the future, much like managing other assets within the company (i.e. people, capital and machinery). This requires taking a different management discipline than has been used in the past and requires longer‐term perspectives by management. Discusses the rationale behind adopting a brand asset management approach to help companies maximize the long‐term value of their brands from two perspectives: demanding consumers are forcing companies to spend more dollars to earn greater returns, and companies, in general, admit to not having strategies in place to maximize their chances for getting those dollars from consumers. Findings from a recent study point to the serious mismanagement of the brand and short‐term focus on the brand. Shows that there are several aspects to this myopia that need to be overcome. Shows that management ought to change its ways and start managing its brands much more like assets – increasing their value over time.

This paper aims to explore whether brand corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives increase consumers’ happiness via a mediating mechanism of emotional brand attachment and to examine how brand CSR’s effect may be moderated by CSR fit (e.g. CSR-brand fit vs misfit) and sense of relatedness (e.g. low vs high).

A series of six studies (including the one that is available online), combining field and experimental data, were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results support the hypothesis that brand CSR initiatives make consumers happy by increasing their attachment to the brand (Studies 1 and 2). This effect is strengthened both directly and indirectly through emotional attachment when brands engage in CSR fit activities (Study 3), but it is weakened when brands engage in CSR misfit activities (Study 4). Furthermore, the effect is more pronounced when brands choose CSR activities that have a high sense of relatedness, and it is eliminated when brands use CSR activities with a low sense of relatedness (Study 5). Finally, the results indicate that when brand CSR programs make consumers happy, they become more likely to purchase, spread positive word of mouth and pay a premium (Study 6).

This research has several major implications for business-to-consumer companies that are unsure about the value of brand CSR initiatives, want to make consumers happy but are unsure which CSR strategies to focus on and/or have decided to launch CSR initiatives but lack guidance on the specific strategies relevant to their desired performance outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to define the tasks of product managers from the perspective of professional brand managers and to point out the gaps between their short‐ and long‐term tasks.

The paper conducted two studies: the first utilized a focus group in order to define the tasks of brand managers. In the second study, 58 brand managers were interviewed using in‐depth interviews in order to define the various factors of each of the nine branding aspects. In the second phase of the second study, the participants were asked to point out gaps between the brand managers' long‐ and short‐term perspectives.

The findings indicate that the daily pressure on brand managers comes from the distributors, who are the decisive factor in the threefold connection (manufacturer‐distributor‐consumer) due to their strong position in the market and the ongoing requirement to learn from and to satisfy them significantly more than the competition.

The implications of the study to the brand managers' approach is that they should nurture relationships with consumers, perform more frequent market segmentations in order to identify new needs, and consequently reduce the distributors' power.

The importance of this research is that it provides a new definition for brand managers' tasks and copes with the real gaps between the short‐term and the long‐term perspectives of brand management, and as such supplies substantial qualitative data for better decision making in accordance with the twenty‐first century challenges of the brand managers.

Negativity towards a brand is typically conceived as a significant problem for brand managers. This paper aims to show that negativity towards a brand can represent an opportunity for companies when brand polarization occurs. To this end, the paper offers a new conception of the brand polarization phenomenon and reports exploratory findings on the benefits of consumers’ negativity towards brands in the context of brand polarization.

To develop a conception of brand polarization, the paper builds on research on polarizing brands and extends it by integrating insights from systematic literature reviews in three bodies of literature: scholarship on brand rivalry and, separately, polarization in political science and social psychology. Using qualitative data from 22 semi-structured interviews, the paper explores possible advantages of brand polarization.

This paper defines the brand polarization phenomenon and identifies multiple perspectives on brand polarization. Specifically, the findings highlight three distinct parties that can benefit from brand polarization: the polarizing brand as an independent entity; the brand team behind the polarizing brand; and the passionate consumers involved with the polarizing brand. The data reveal specific advantages of brand polarization associated with the three parties involved.

Managers of brands with a polarizing nature could benefit from having identified a group of lovers and a group of haters, as this could allow them to improve their focus when developing and implementing the brands’ strategies.

This exploratory study is the first explicitly focusing on the brand polarization phenomenon and approaches negativity towards brands as a potential opportunity.