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This article explores the rebranding boom in the USA and around the world, citing numerous examples of strategies that worked as well as some famous attempts that missed the mark. The authors have two main objectives: to analyze the pitfalls of rebranding campaigns and to present six strategic options for implementing a rebranding campaign that meets expectations.

To provide a concise briefing on the most topical issues and relevant implications from the top 400 management publications in the world.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the argument in context.

Stephen Brown reports on how marketers are constantly thinking of new ways to keep one step ahead of customers who have become wise to, and increasingly wary and cynical of, the advertiser's message. His entertaining article pokes fun at the marketing business to underline a serious and well‐constructed message that new approaches have to be adopted to attract marketing‐literate consumers. Typical quote: “The ultimate aim is to get marketing‐savvy consumers talking about the savvy marketing campaign and the marketing‐savvy talking about being talked about by marketing‐savvy media”. Andy Cohen describes how the senior vice‐president of strategic marketing and new media for Samsung Electronics America oversees more than 150 product launches every year and more than 40 new online marketing campaigns each month – and how he uses the internet to “superaccelerate” the company's marketing plans. A perceptive insight into a workaholic boss's vision for delivering a constant stream of information about what the company has on offer. Andrew and Jack Kaikati take a similar theme to Stephen Brown, chronicling the sometimes‐bizarre methods marketers are using to replace more traditional forms of advertising that are losing their effectiveness among consumers. Methods such as paying actors to go into trendy bars, music stores or tourist hot‐spots and convince total strangers that their cell phone CD or video game is a “must have” product. This enjoyable essay considers the pros and cons of such “advertising by stealth” and touches on the ethical, and possibly legal, pitfalls such an increasingly popular phenomenon might hold in store for the future.

Provides implementable strategies and practical thinking that has influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The proliferation of various interpretations of the marketing concept suggests a lack of unanimity as to its meaning. This article outlines five definitional “schools” of the marketing concept.

This article analyzes Accenture’s reincarnation by pinpointing the main lessons that might be emulated by other companies contemplating going down the three‐pronged road to rebranding, restructuring and repositioning. Its objectives are three‐fold. First, it traces the company’s heritage and highlights that it pioneered the splitting of consulting from accounting activities. Second, it discusses the three pillars of Accenture’s transformation involving rebranding, restructuring and repositioning campaigns. Finally, it recognizes Accenture’s two leaders who transformed this company from merely good to truly great in a relatively short time.

This paper seeks to provide an overview of the growing popularity of slotting fees and their potential for abuse that led to congressional hearings as well as investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the General Accounting Office, respectively. It also aims to discuss the widespread use of promotional allowances and their potential for abuse, leading to accounting irregularities.

It focuses on how promotional allowances have been improperly accounted for at Royal Ahold, Fleming Companies and AmerisourceBergen Corp. By reviewing how the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) overhauled the accounting rules, it sheds some light on the magnitude of these practices.

The FASB failed to go far enough in its crack‐down. It reveals that heavy reliance on these allowances by financially weak retailers can be a red flag to current and potential investors, both professional and individual. However, the post‐Enron accounting rule changes and the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act are forcing CEOs and CFOs of publicly traded companies to rethink how to account for these allowances. Additionally, while the vast majority of grocery chains dabble in the slotting ritual, the world's largest retailer and the world's largest commissary do not demand and do not accept slotting fees.

By reviewing a limited sample of the literature, this study offers some guidelines for conducting future research.

Synthetic leases, used by some retailers to finance rapid expansion, could be ticking time bombs that might blow up anytime in the USA. This paper has three objectives. First, it provides an overview of the financing technique in the USA by tracing its origin and pin‐pointing its advantages and drawbacks. It shows that the drawbacks tend to outweigh the benefits. Second, it discusses how some retailers were red‐flagged for using it and how they responded to such undesirable exposure. The third objective is to highlight the more stringent accounting regulations recently imposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) on synthetic leases in the USA.

This articles provides a managerial framework to examine and analyse factors that may influence government decision making in less developed countries. In order to market successfully to these buyers, a series of hurdles has to be cleared. These include meeting eligibility, following procedures, establishing critical linkages, developing competitive offers and exerting appropriate influence. International firms can enhance their success and profits by taking a serious, long‐term approach to these markets.

Barter and countertrade will be significant trade tools throughout the 1980s. Presently confronted by saturated established markets and debt‐burdened new markets, firms of all sizes in all industry sectors must evaluate these trading approaches. This paper describes the forms of barter and countertrade, products typically traded, markets served, and objectives advanced by each form. The intent is to explore opportunities and problems accompanying each form, so that managers can assess the utilities of these transactions to their firms' international marketing strategies.

For those who like certainty, now is not a good time to be in logistics management ‐ for those who relish challenges, there are plenty to be had. There are challenges not just to the old certainties, but the new certainties which replaced them. Companies have, in recent years, looked to Japan for inspiration, only to find the Japanese economy beginning to falter. Japanese management practices were endorsed by, and imported into, many Western organizations and, when these transplanted practices failed to work, cultural difficulties were cited. It then becomes something of a shock, for example, to see the keiretsu distribution system fall into disrepute, and lean production methods become modified or abandoned by those who developed them.

It is known that to encourage people to interact (e.g. sharing) with brands through social media, businesses create content in line with the expectations of their target audience. On these sites, however, such interaction by consumers is visible, contributing to their self-presentation, which can be seen by their wider network; some of whom will find it appropriate, others may not. Currently, little is known about the effects of consumers’ own diverse set of audiences on behavioral intention toward brand interaction and emotional effect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Survey methodology (n=386) was adopted to examine intention to interact with real brand posts.

Results show that the brand interaction is associated with social anxiety when it is felt that visible evidence of such actions is discrepant from the audience expectations. This, then, constrains the behavioral intention to interact with brands online.

For businesses to maximize brand interactions and minimize social anxiety, they must be mindful of not just the expectations of their target but also consider their target’s own network. For site designers, this research urges for greater refining of privacy tools and suggests the addition of a “Secret Like” option.

Encouraging visible brand interaction through social media is paramount for businesses. Managers focus only on their target audience when designing content but neglect to consider the self-presentational implications of interacting with branded content to wider networks. This paper shows that this must be considered to increase success and maintain ethical practice. This is of value for multiple-stakeholders, managers, users, site designers and academics.