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In the highly saturated sports industry where sport teams represent a complex offering loaded with intangible and tangible attributes, it is important to implement appropriate marketing strategies that will ultimately contribute to the development of strong brand equity. In this paper, the authors focused on the relationship between brand variables and marketing activities on the development of brand equity. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to study the impact of brand personality on the evaluation of marketing promotional activities and the impact on the brand equity.

Respondents (2,400) were recruited through an online survey and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The survey revealed that the congruence between the brand personality and the promotional activities has a positive impact on its evaluation and on brand equity. In addition, the results showed that consumers who consider the financial strength of the team as an important factor evaluate more positively the value of congruent and incongruent promotional activities.

Brand managers should maintain consistency between their brand personality and their promotional activities in order to maintain and increase their brand equity.

The results contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of brand personality on the evaluation of promotional activities. Also, it examines an important factor (financial consciousness) that could influence how fans react in front of an incongruent promotional activity. This research brings a better understanding of the impact of brand personality on marketing strategies and brand equity.

This paper looks at how two sports teams, hockey club the Toronto Maple Leafs and Football Club Barcelona, have each built and leveraged their brand equity. The main differences between the two clubs lie in how they position their brands. For TML, the affective and experiential sides of the product are emphasised to make the brand grow; for Barcelona, the cognitive and affective dimensions of the product are prioritised to nurture the brand. Differences between hockey and soccer also contribute to branding discrepancies in terms of exposure and global influences.

This study presents a multi-method based approach to matching fan expectations and needs with a franchise's strategic vision. This approach is demonstrated by looking at a Canadian team in the National Hockey League. The needs of the customers are assessed through a questionnaire survey and an indepth interview with the franchise's marketing vicepresident. Results are discussed, discrepancies between the two positions are analysed and recommendations are made.

This paper aims to focus on understanding three dimensions of international alliance formation by small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs): the role of internal actors, planning/opportunity management, and organizational learning.

The three dimensions form a proposed model of international alliance formation which is examined using semi‐structured interviews with 16 biotechnology SMEs from Montreal (Canada) and 12 from Boston (USA).

Findings deepen the understanding of the firm's internal development of international alliance strategy. Results generally support different roles of organizational actors in international alliance formation, often a combination of planning and opportunity management, and signal rather weak administrative routines to ensure organizational learning from the alliance experience. Interestingly, alliance formation strategies vary across the two cities (countries). Age of the firm, development phase, human and financial resources, and competencies may explain these differences.

Limitations include a single respondent in each firm, sample size, and single sector (biotechnology). Future longitudinal research could combine information from and about the implication of all actors and their networks during alliance formation and examine the process by alliance functions (R&D, production, marketing) and governance modes (equity, non‐equity).

Results suggest weaknesses and potential avenues to be explored by managers.

To the authors' knowledge, this is a first attempt to model the internal dimensions of alliance strategy formation for SMEs, integrating the role of actors, planning and opportunity, as well as learning. Multiple quotations provide a rich environment for understanding practice.

This paper aims to examine the impact of recall crisis management on the manufacturer's image, consumers' loyalty and future purchase intentions. More specifically, this research aims to clarify the types of recall strategies that companies put forward, as well as their impact on consumers' behaviors and perceptions of the manufacturer's image.

The current study focuses on vehicle users who have either experienced automobile recalls or heard them discussed. Data were collected via car‐related web sites. The final sample comprises 573 people. The direction and strength of the relationships between various consumers' attitudes toward the different recall methods and their purchase intention are assessed through structural equation modeling (SEM).

Results show that recalls contested by manufacturers have a significant negative impact on manufacturers' image, as well as on consumers' loyalty and purchase intentions. On the other hand, voluntary recalls or improvement campaigns have a significant positive impact on the manufacturer's image, as well as consumers' loyalty and purchase intentions.

Proactive strategies are the best solution to avoid a loss in consumer loyalty to the manufacturer during a recall crisis. In the contrary, manufacturers' adoption of reactive strategies harms their image, as well as consumers' loyalty. This translates into a negative impact on future purchase intentions and manufacturers' market share. This study concludes by recommending appropriate strategies to limit possible negative effects of product recalls.

Some variables (such as media, the degree of severity of recalls and the frequency of recalls) are not investigated in this study. Additionally, the research is limited to the automobile industry. Other industries that also experience recalls (such as the pharmaceutical industry) might be considered in future research in order to confirm the consistency of the research findings.

The approach adopted by the current research is relatively different from earlier studies that directly link the types of recalls to the danger perceived by consumers that in turn affects their purchase intentions. In the current study, recalls indirectly impact purchase intentions principally via the manufacturer's image and brand loyalty. Additionally, the originality of this research stems from the fact that the manufacturer's image is considered as part of the changeable legacy of the company that itself may be affected by the “crisis situation,” not a stable asset.

The pupose of this paper is to investigate consumers' behavior in emerging countries. In particular, it simultaneously assesses the effects of country image and country‐of‐origin's image on consumers' uncertainty, aspiration and purchasing intention of high‐tech products.

Based on a sample of 479 Chinese consumers, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results show that compared to country‐of‐origin, country's image is a more effective tool in reducing consumers' uncertainty and increasing their aspiration to purchase high technology products. Contrary to country's image, however, country‐of‐origin's image plays a considerable role in influencing the product image.

The major role of a country‐of‐origin is to influence product image while that of country's image is to increase consumers' aspiration to acquire its product and diminish their uncertainty and hesitation about buying the product. In other words, the image of a product is much more prone to the effect of country‐of‐origin's image than country's image.

Marketers should understand that consumers in emerging countries are ambivalent when they consider the purchase of complex products. On the one hand, highlighting the country image can contribute in alleviating consumers' uncertainty and increasing their aspiration to purchase sophisticated and complex products. On the other hand, promoting the country‐of‐origin's image can prove an effective means to improve product image in emerging markets.

Most of the previous studies have focused on one of the two concepts (i.e. country's image or country‐of‐origin), interchangeably used both of them, and relatively ignored their simultaneous impact on consumer behavior. The present study has tried to address this shortfall through simultaneously studying their influences on product image and consumer purchase intention; and highlighting their differential impacts.

Interpersonal influences play a major role in shaping consumer choice decisions. This is particularly evident in the case of services, where intangibility and variability add to the decision difficulty. While all consumers are susceptible to interpersonal influence, people differ in the extent of their susceptibility to interpersonal influence, with some individuals being chronically more susceptible to social influence than others. Seeks to speculate in this paper that, in addition to individual differences, susceptibility to interpersonal influence also varies systematically across cultures with varying degrees of individualism‐collectivism.

Hypothesis is tested by investigating and comparing the structure, properties, and mean levels of the susceptibility to interpersonal influence scale across samples of French and English Canadian consumers.

It is found that: French Canadians are significantly more susceptible to normative influence than English Canadians; French Canadians score significantly lower than English Canadians on measures of individualism; and individualism has a significant negative effect on consumer susceptibility to normative influence.

By showing that French Canadians were indeed less individualistic than English Canadians, and that individualistic orientation had a significant negative effect on both the utilitarian and the value‐expressive dimensions of consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, hopefully it has been demonstrated that differences in susceptibility to normative influence between French and English Canadians are partly driven by cultural differences in individualistic orientation.

The adoption process for new products varies from one individual to another according to socio‐economic and demographic characteristics. This article focuses on cultural values because an individual’s inclination to adopt a new product is also influenced by his system of values. The advantage of using values to explain innovativeness is that this variable transcends national, cultural and social boundaries. In order to determine the influence of values on adoption, this study utilizes a multicultural research framework consisting of consumers living in a large metropolitan area and coming from three distinct cultural groups: business school students from Quebec, France and North Africa. The results of this study suggest that individual values have a significant impact on consumers’ inclinations to adopt new products. In multi‐ethnic heterogeneous markets, segmenting consumers according to their values should be an important tool in the strategic kit of marketing managers.