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Identifies eight sources of brand imagery. Describes new qualitative methods for measuring brand images and general consumer “life images”. Surmises that effective advertising today reflects a deep sensitivity towards consumer feelings about the product usage ritual, the reason for using the product, the usage occasion, the results of using the product, idiosyncratic experiences with the product, the manufacturer, and daily lives in general.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how services might impact a general consumer sense of everyday well-being or life satisfaction.

It was decided to focus on the existential benefits of refurbishing services and see how they might impact owner sense of self and overall life satisfaction. A qualitative study was fielded which consisted of analyses of website testimonials of customers of refurbishing services for products such as pianos, watches, boats, bicycles and other durables. Also analyzed were results from one-on-one qualitative interviews of customers of refurbishing services and selected refurbishers of similar products.

The study suggests that refurbish services provide a mix of hedonic and eudaimonic benefits. They provide an enhanced sense of self and general well-being insofar, as the newly restored item connects owners to loved ones, to other collectors or fans and to their own personal life histories. It also connects them to the refurbishers and their “magic”. Insofar as refurbishers invite customer involvement in the process, they co-create how the process will proceed, so customers feel a special involvement and gain an understanding of the workings of the item and how to best use it.

Refurbishing services might offer, like all the new internet-mediated sharing services, a more sustainable alternative to the buy-and-dispose consumption behaviors found in most world economies.

This paper provides insights into the lives of products after purchase and the roles of relevant service providers. It also provides examples of how service providers in general might deepen and facilitate customers’ feelings about themselves and their daily lives. It shows how service providers can enhance customer hedonic and eudaimonic appreciation of provider knowledge, skills and efforts.

Trend watchers who proclaim a tide of increasing diversity in consumer life styles usually conclude that “the marketplace is becoming more fragmented,” “the era of mass marketing is over,” and “the key to successful marketing is a segmented marketing strategy.” For example, in The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler conjures up the concept of “demassified” markets. And recent statistics confirm this trend. The question facing business now is: What does this mean for consumer goods companies?

In order to distinguish their brands from other brands in the same category, most consumer products companies attempt to establish a unique personality for each brand. Rather than emphasize that it is a soft drink, Dr. Pepper emphasizes, through its name and advertising, that it is an “oddball” soft drink. This article recommends that these companies instead develop advertising and brand names that communicate the best qualities of the relevant product category. Dr. Pepper, for example, might emphasize that it tastes good and quenches thirst. This article suggests that marketers use free association tests to select advertising symbols and names that best communicate key product category benefits; it suggests that they use product categories and candidate symbols and names as stimuli, then match the answers across stimuli. In a sample test, for example, the stimulus “iced tea” drew the responses “refreshment,” “cool,” and “summer.” In a separate test, the stimulus “plunge into swimming pool” drew identical responses. The Nestle Nestea “plunge” (into a pool) campaign, therefore, is thought to be a highly effective one.

Interactive products include all of the new computerized vending, service, and consumer products such as video games, automatic tellers, and telecommunications shopping systems. Human factors researchers and other behavioral scientists who study these machines seek to make them more “user friendly.” Most of their research, however, is aimed at making them less uncomfortable and less difficult to use. In contrast, this paper describes a paradigm for making these machines more stimulating and fun to use. A case study is provided which describes how this paradigm was applied in the design of a teaching machine, the “Talking Typewriter,” a forerunner of Texas Instrument's successful “Speak 'N Spell” and today's educational software packages.

Develops and refines a new way to generate and identify opportunities for really new product functions. Considers that the role played by marketing research in really new products is limited. Traditional marketing research methods here are largely confined to asking people about problems with current products, watching them use these products and asking them to use new prototypes in extended use tests. Describes a new method for identifying new consumer or industrial product functions. Target consumers for a given category are exposed to 300 mini‐concepts. Concepts consist of verb‐object combinations describing possible new functions in that category. Concludes that once key needs or opportunities are identified for a given category, the next step is to determine which current or new technologies are required to address these needs.

Considers the phenomenon of new brands that succeed because their marketing strategy is diametrically opposed to contemporary strategies. Suggests ways to define a product in order to take it against the tide through positioning, general definers, contrarian positioning, and how to identify them. Concludes that contrarian marketing can be achieved by listing defining attributes of a category, and brainstorming creative oppositions that identify new product meanings.

The Great Benchmarking Scam? Time was, in management circles, that the term “benchmarking” would induce none‐too‐disguised yawns in recognition of it “being something to do with computers or job evaluation”. Not today; those yawns have been replaced with the excited management‐blabber of a new fad. You can benchmark anything these days; I encountered recently a guide to benchmarking employee attitudes.

As an aid to understanding brand image and brand attitude, this paper aims to present an innovative method of capturing qualitative brand associations from very large virtual groups.

From the target market, two familiar brands were selected: one more favored and one less favored by the market segment. Two samples of respondents engaged in a collaborative, virtual ideation session designed to elicit “top of mind” brand associations for two fast food brands, McDonald's and In‐N‐Out. Members of each group posted their brand associations and then rated each other's associations on the basis of agreement.

Analysis provided by dialogr.com showed sharp differences between the two brand images. To independently assess brand attitude, two judges evaluated favorability of the free associations as either “good,” “neutral,” or “bad.” The results confirmed initial expectations. The more favored brand received considerably more favorable free associations than did the less favored brand. The results are shown in qualitative word maps.

A potential limitation of this paper is that the proposed qualitative method is more applicable to well‐known, familiar brands; thus these techniques may not work as well with less familiar brands.

Virtual collaboration tools provide a proficient method of measuring brand image and brand attitudes, for very large groups. These tools are well suited for gaining greater understanding of the cognitive and affective dimensions of a realized brand position (image) as well as an aid to re‐positioning an errant brand image.

Most qualitative group interviews are limited to a small number of respondents, ranging from five to 12 people. Virtual ideation sessions, which are designed to elicit “top of mind” brand associations, enable collection of qualitative data from large groups quickly and efficiently; without the negative influences of face‐to‐face group interaction.