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This study aims to investigate the relationships among corporate-brand credibility, product-brand personality, and purchase intention, specifically in China's auto industry. A large-scale survey was conducted in four major Chinese Mainland cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. A total of 800 questionnaires were distributed for the study. Ultimately, 477 usable cases were collected for a 60 percent response rate. Results reveal that corporate-brand credibility and product-brand personality have direct positive effects on purchase intention. Furthermore, corporate-brand credibility acts as a positive moderator in the relationship between product-brand personality and purchase intention. This chapter offers new theoretical insights into the influential factors affecting consumers' purchase intentions by testing the moderating effect of corporate-brand credibility in the relationship between product-brand personality and purchase intention. It further provides useful suggestions to companies on brand credibility and personality issues.

Corporations in all industries recognize the demand for responsible business behavior and have developed corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs accordingly. This paper examines to which extent sustainability practices – unrelated to the actual ingredients of a consumable product – affect brand equity, taste perceptions, and perceived emotional value. In an experimental setting, effects were determined of the presence or lack of a sustainability-marketing message within a beer brand’s promotional material. The constructs were measured in a survey, and a PLS-SEM was used to analyze the results. In the factor model, all constructs proved to be sufficiently reliable and valid. The experiment’s results indicate that taste perception is positively influenced by the presence of a sustainability message.

In part because of the complexity and large risks involved, branding plays an important role in business-to-business (B2B) markets. Although marketers of B2B brands must do many of the things that marketers of any kind of product or service must do, six guidelines that are more unique to B2B settings can be defined.

First, the entire organization should understand and support branding and brand management. Employees at all levels and in all departments must have a complete, up-to-date understanding of the vision for the brand and their role. A brand mantra – a short three- to five-word summary of the essence of a brand – can help with this vertical and horizontal alignment.

Second, a corporate branding strategy should be adopted if possible with a well-defined brand hierarchy. Ideally, sub-brands would be created that combined a well-known and highly credible corporate brand name with descriptive product modifiers.

Third, to avoid falling into a commoditization trap, sufficient differentiation must be established to justify price premiums. To sustain that premium, it may be necessary to “frame” value perceptions to ensure that customers appreciate a brand's differences. Fourth, one often overlooked means of differentiation is to link brands to relevant non-product-related brand associations related to customer service, well-respected customers, or clients, etc.

Fifth, emotional associations related to a sense of security, social or peer approval, and self respect can also be linked to the brand and serve as sources of brand equity. Finally, customers must be carefully segmented both within and across companies and tailored marketing programs developed for these different segments.

Adopting these six guidelines will increase the likelihood of creating a strong B2B brand, reaping all the benefits that such an achievement entails.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

The concept of brand purpose and ‘woke’ brand campaigns.

The theoretical underpinning of brand purpose.

Generation Z response to brand purpose and woke branding campaigns.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research and practice have grown in preeminence over the past two decades. In corporations, global institutional frameworks (e.g. the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) have guided and spurred the adoption and operationalisation of CSR strategies across industries and sectors. In academia, the business case for CSR seems to have been one of the main research foci towards the transition to more ethical and more responsible management. However, recent ecological and social disturbances (i.e. COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, etc.) have challenged our understanding of the role that CSR can play in this transition. In this chapter, we explore how the use and instrumentalisation of CSR practices in both academia and business have led not only to eroding the concept from its conceptual essence, but also to giving increased power and legitimacy to the very ailments that CSR was created to heal.

This study aims to examine the mediating role of organisational fairness on the association between the emphasis on budgets and budget difficulty with budget value and job stress. Data were collected using an online survey questionnaire with 515 responses from middle and lower-level managers in Australian business organisations. The results indicate that organisational fairness fully mediates the association between budget difficulty with both budget value and job stress. Organisational fairness was not found to mediate the association between the emphasis on budgets with budget value and job stress. Rather, the emphasis on budgets was significantly negatively associated with job stress, implying that a greater emphasis on budgets is desirable in alleviating job stress. The findings have important implications for practice.

Massive shifts in the recruitment landscape, the continually changing nature of work and workers, and extraordinary technological progress have combined to enable unparalleled advances in how current and prospective employees receive and process information about organizations. Once the domain of internal organizational public relations and human resources (HR) teams, most employment branding has moved beyond organizations’ control. This chapter provides a conceptual framework pertaining to third party employment branding, defined as communications, claims, or status-based classifications generated by parties outside of direct company control that shape, enhance, and differentiate organizations’ images as favorable or unfavorable employers. Specifically, the authors first theorize about the underlying mechanisms by which third party employment branding might signal prospective and current employees. Second, the authors develop a framework whereby we comprehensively review third party employment branding sources, thus identifying the different ways that third party employment branding might manifest. Third, using prototypical examples, the authors link the various signaling mechanisms to the various third party employment branding sources identified. Finally, the authors propose an ambitious future research agenda that considers not only the positive aspects of third party employment branding but also potential “dark sides.” Thus, the authors view this chapter as contributing to the broader employment branding literature, which should enhance scholarly endeavors to study it and practitioner efforts to leverage it.