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Service branding research predominantly focuses on the purchase and postpurchase stages of the customer journey. This study aims to expand the lens of enquiry to the prepurchase stage, showing the role service brand awareness and service brand retrieval play before customer experiences and relationships can be established.

The research presents and empirically examines a new framework that links service brand awareness and service brand retrieval to key “battlegrounds” in the prepurchase stage of the customer journey: entry into the Awareness Set, Consideration Set and Repertoire Set. The empirical work draws on data from both services and goods markets from two UK-based consumer surveys (N = 771 and N = 270, respectively).

The findings indicate that, prepurchase, service brands compete most intensively to establish and reinforce a broad array of memory associations, rather than a specific corporate or brand image.

To improve the generalizability of the conclusions drawn, the findings of this study should be replicated in additional service categories and consumer samples.

The findings translate into novel, long-term strategies for the management of service brands at the prepurchase stage of the customer journey, especially opportunities for effective and creative marketing communications.

This study contributes to marketing research and practice by introducing the notion of service brand retrieval and highlighting its role, together with service brand awareness and prepurchase.

Brand awareness is a pivotal, but often neglected, aspect of consumer-based brand equity. This paper revisits brand awareness measures in the context of global brand management.

Drawing on the method of Laurent et al. (1995), this cross-sectional longitudinal study examines changes in brand awareness over time, with sample sizes of approximately 300 whisky consumers per wave in three countries: United Kingdom, Taiwan and Greece.

There is consistency in the underlying structure of awareness scores across countries, and over time, extending the work of Laurent et al. (1995). Results show that a relevant operationalisation of brand awareness needs to account for the history of the brand. Furthermore, the nature of the variation of brand awareness over time interacts with a brand’s market share.

When modelling the impact of brand awareness researchers need to consider two factors – the brand’s market share and whether a more stable or volatile measure is sought. This avoids mis-specifying the country-level contribution of brand awareness.

Global brand managers should be wary of adopting a “one size fits all” approach. The choice of brand awareness measure depends on the brand’s market share, and the desire for higher sensitivity or stability.

The paper provides one of the few multi-country investigations into brand awareness that can help inform global brand management.

This paper aims to investigate the relative influence of advertising and word of mouth (WOM) for new season TV programmes, both new and returning.

The study’s longitudinal research design tracks individuals before and after possible exposure to advertising and/or positive WOM (PWOM) to model the effects of both paid versus earned media on behaviour.

This study provides contrary evidence to previous research that suggests that WOM has more influence on consumers than advertising. By controlling for viewers’ benchmark probabilities of viewing the TV programme, the effect of receiving PWOM becomes insignificant, whereas the effect of TV advertising remains unchanged. Because WOM is commonly exchanged between people with shared interests, it reaches an audience that is already highly disposed to view the TV programme.

The findings implicate that we need to reinvestigate the power of WOM to avoid misattribution of effects. This study is only study in one category, which means replication and extension to more categories are needed. The limitations of the study include the inability to control for creative differences in the execution of programme promotions or examine possible cross-media synergies for multimedia campaigns.

Findings have implications for how much to invest in WOM-generating activities. Findings also have wider implications for cross-media research and media-mix models, as different media may reach audiences with differing predispositions to act.

This is one of the rare individual-level, longitudinal studies that investigate the influence of WOM in comparison to advertising.

This paper aims to investigate factors associated with higher or lower television audience retention from one programme aired sequentially after another, referred to as lead-in audience retention. Lead-in is a primary determinant of television programme audience size.

The study models a series of factors linked to lead-in audience retention, such as rating of the second programme, genre match and competitor options. The hypothesised relationships are tested across over 1,000 pairs of programmes aired in the UK and Australia, using multivariate linear regression models.

The study finds the factors consistently related to significantly higher lead-in audience retention are the rating of the second programme in the pair and news genre match in programming. Factors consistently linked to lower audience retention include the rating of the initial programme and the number of competitor options starting at the same time as the second programme.

The findings help television networks understand drivers of lead-in audience retention. Knowledge that can be used to inform the design of tailored marketing plans for programmes based on schedule, timing and adjacent programming. Further, the findings help advertisers and media buyers with scheduling television advertising to achieve reach or frequency objectives.

No previous studies have comprehensively combined all four factors driving lead-in audience retention into a single model. The testing across multiple markets adds to the robustness of the findings. In particular, the discoveries about the impact of competitor network activities and genre build considerably on past research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what happens to key brand performance metrics as brands change in market share, in the context of packaged goods. The metrics are: penetration—the number of buyers a brand has; and loyalty—measured as purchase frequency (PF) and share of category requirements (SCR).

The study utilizes 24 data sets in 17 packaged goods categories in three emerging markets: China, Malaysia and Indonesia. The authors examine changes in penetration, loyalty and SCR in the context of volume and value market share change. In addition, the authors examine whether initial price point and price movements influence the results.

The primary finding is that market share change is accompanied by a greater change in penetration than in any other metric. This finding is very consistent across categories and countries. The relative importance of the two loyalty metrics varies by country. SCR was a stronger factor in Indonesia, while PF was stronger in Malaysia. Analysis indicated that pricing strategy (initial price and promotional depth) did not alter the main pattern of results, suggesting the results hold for brands with different price levels and tactics.

Irrespective of circumstance, to grow in value or volume market share, brands should aim to grow in penetration, while the importance of changes in specific loyalty measures depends on market conditions.

This research extends past research on brand growth to the very different economic, geographic and cultural conditions of three crucially important emerging markets. Its main value lies in recommendations on how much to invest in building the size of the customer base vs consumer retention.

Despite the growing availability of scanner-panel data, surveys remain the most common and inexpensive method of gathering marketing metrics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the size, direction and correction of response errors in retrospective reports of category buying.

Self-reported purchase frequency data were validated using British household panel records and the negative binomial distribution (NBD) in six packaged goods categories. The log likelihood theory and the fit of the NBD model were used to test an approach to adjusting the errors post-data collection.

The authors found variations in systematic response errors according to buyer type. Specifically, lighter buyers tend to forward telescope their buying episodes. Heavier buyers tend either to over-use a rate-based estimation of once-a-month buying and over-report purchases at multiples of six or to use round numbers. These errors lead to overestimates of penetration and average purchase frequency. Adjusting the aggregate data for the NBD, however, improves the accuracy of these metrics.

In light of the importance of purchase data for decision making, the authors describe the inaccuracy problem in frequency reports and offer practical suggestions regarding the correction of survey data.

Two novel contributions are offered here: an investigation of errors in different buyer groups and use of the NBD in survey accuracy research.

Retailers are increasingly adding banks, gas stations, mobile services and even real estate agencies to their portfolio and branding these new ventures with the retailer name, such as Tesco Bank or Asda Money. The purpose of this paper is to test the ability of a retailer brand to stretch from traditional packaged goods categories to very different categories such as banking.

Using data from an online survey collected from 953 UK grocery buyers, this paper examines consumers’ behaviour towards UK retailer brands across four categories: soft drinks, chocolate, fuel and banking.

The results show that cross-category retailer brand purchasing is stronger between categories with similar buying behaviour (e.g. soft drinks and chocolate) than in categories with very different buying behaviour (e.g. soft drinks and banking). The behavioural spill over effects are stronger for retailer brands from the same chain and persist even for unrelated categories. However, apart from fuel, the strongest cross-purchasing occurs across competing retailer-branded offers within the same category.

The main implication of this study is that behavioural spill overs for retailer brands are possible even between unrelated categories. The finding about the effects being strongest within a given chain implies that umbrella branded strategy is a key to take advantage of the effects.

These findings extend past literature about the cross-category buying of umbrella branded store brands to very different categories. This paper highlights the challenges retailers face regarding their ability to extend the retailer brand across categories. The findings also provide insights for cross-selling retailer brands in unrelated categories to current store brand buyers.

This is the first study to examine the use of retailer brands across a wide spectrum of categories from Soft Drinks to Fuel.

This paper aims to review the validation of assumptions made in agent-based modeling of diffusion and the sufficiency (completeness) of the mechanisms assumed to operate.

One well-cited paper is examined.

Evidence is presented that casts doubt on the assumptions and mechanisms used. A range of mechanisms is suggested that should be evaluated for inclusion in diffusion modeling.

The need for validation of assumptions has been stressed elsewhere but there has been a lack of examples. This paper provides examples. The stress on the sufficiency of the mechanisms used is new.

This paper aims to respond to the commentaries by Nejad, and Rand and Rust on the paper “Improving Agent-Based Models of Diffusion”.

Evidence on the nature of word of mouth was reviewed and related to the views expressed by the authors of the commentaries.

The authors of this paper remain concerned about the assumptions used in agent-based models of diffusion.

The study refers to previously published work.

The paper seeks to conduct an exploratory study into how positive and negative brand belief levels differ before, and change after, consumers defect from a brand or take up a new brand.

Two longitudinal studies in banking and insurance were used. These included repeat interviews with the same consumers. Brand buying behaviour and positive and negative brand beliefs were measured and then compared across those who defected from a brand and those who took up a new brand.

Prior to defection, differences in both positive and negative perceptions were apparent in those who subsequently defected. There was also evidence of a readjustment after defection to match the new user status. There was evidence that this readjustment did not just occur in the behaviour change period, but continued to occur afterwards, with differences over time much greater for the longer time frame interview than evident for the shorter time frame. Negative beliefs were more discriminating when the defection was customer‐initiated rather than during a renewal process. New brand users displayed a higher propensity to give positive beliefs prior to taking up the brand compared to non‐users who did not take up the brand. These changes further continued post‐switching as new users adjusted to their new status.

This research contributes to the understanding of the brand belief‐behaviour relationship using two very different longitudinal studies. It also investigates negative brand beliefs, which are rarely researched, and compares the effects of negative beliefs with that of positive beliefs.