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Reverse innovation has been claimed to be the new emerging paradigm on how to succeed in emerging markets before spreading to more mature ones. This study aims to investigate how the BB cream, a concept that gave birth to one of the recent most impressive worldwide breakthrough products in cosmetics, was successfully integrated into a growth-through reverse innovation strategy by a Western leading brand, Garnier, in its domestic market.

Using a single case study design that combines brand and product levels of analysis, this paper examines how reverse innovation/BB cream contributed to (re)build perceptions of brand superiority. Data were extracted from the IRI Census Database (retail panel data) and from various other market sources. Additional insights were collected through semi-structured interviews with top executives. Some data, as they remain confidential, are not included in the paper.

Reverse innovation, although counter-intuitive regarding one of its fundamental assumptions (i.e. a low-cost/low-price strategy targeting price-sensitive consumers), can be used within a niche strategy to help brands develop a radically new offer that justifies a price premium. In this regard, it has to be managed step-by-step, from appropriation to exploitation and, finally, “extinction” in a given market segment.

Evidence is scarce on how Western companies/brands can integrate reverse innovation into their growth strategies. Further investigation is required on this emerging paradigm.

The case of Garnier BB cream invites marketing managers to think differently about where to look for opportunities and how to grow in stagnant markets. Moreover, the inherent latent value of a reverse innovation can serve to trade up the brand with both volume and value benefits, despite the common claim that it is related to a volume strategy. Thus, it opens the range of possibilities to escape commoditization and price wars.

This paper demonstrated that reverse innovation is not limited to the bottom of the market. The story of the BB cream concept, which has been appropriated and valorized by the leading cosmetic brand Garnier through a niche strategy, supports this argument. In addition, instead of viewing the niche strategy as a methodological/theoretical stage within the segmentation–targeting–positioning process, this case study highlights it as a creative process linked to innovation, which helps a brand and/or company to define a new territory within its market.

The purpose of this article is to describe the rationale behind and analyze the results of a strategy in regards to changing conditions and market share dominance. For more than 20 years, with the growth in available product varieties, product and brand proliferation have become increasingly evident in many consumer markets.

This article examines how three L’Oréal mass market businesses, i.e. L’Oréal Paris, Lascad and Gemey-Maybelline-Garnier (GMG), managed proliferation activities between 1988 and 2012 on their domestic market. Data were extracted from the information resources, inc. (IRI) Census and Sample Databases (retail panel data), and information was collected from internal sources and semi-structured interviews with top executives. Brand performance was assessed using panel data structure analysis, as recommended by IRI and Nielsen. Some data, as they remain confidential, were not included in the paper.

The study reveals that when opportunities are lacking, demand is declining, and competition is fierce – the situation that marks most mature markets – a proliferation strategy actually can yield diminishing results and reduced brand dominance.

Offering broader lines appears to generate confusion and to be counterproductive in relation to theoretical assumptions. Additional research on proliferation strategies is needed, particularly in declining market conditions, which implies diminished demand and market saturation due to increased competition and isomorphic practices.

When deciding to extend product lines, managers should take into account competition and more qualitative factors than those included in the models developed by and for store brands. The respective positioning and marketing strategy (i.e. challenger and leader) of the brands involved have also to be considered.

Prior research on proliferation strategies has relied on strong assumptions such as increase in demand and unsaturated markets. Through these case studies, this article shows that making the shelf space denser affects brand dominance, particularly when market conditions change. These results challenge current thinking as, in facing internal and external contingencies, managers might think which scenario is most favorable for maintaining a dominant position: changing the structure of the market by reducing (i.e. concentration) or increasing the number of brands/products in the market.

Brand authenticity has emerged as a strategic imperative for many firms. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of consumer perceptions of brand marketing communications on brand authenticity of fast-moving consumer goods.

Direct and indirect pathways from brand marketing communications to brand authenticity were conceptualized. Data were collected from US energy drink consumers and analysed using structural equation modelling. Multiple marketing mix variables and context-relevant covariates have been controlled for.

Direct and indirect pathways to building brand authenticity have been observed. The total effect of brand marketing communications on brand authenticity is strong, thereby highlighting the predictor’s overall effectiveness in shaping the ultimate outcome.

The focus on consumer-perceived authenticity as opposed to objective authenticity complements the prior literature. An integrative perspective on brand marketing communications is offered, specifying it as an antecedent of perceived brand authenticity.

An important implication is that investments into brand marketing communications will likely influence perceived brand authenticity. Such investments may also have favourable implications for the clarity of brand positioning. Overall, brand marketing communications are effective tools for building consumer-perceived brand authenticity.

A need to outline managerially controllable drivers of authenticity was addressed. How consumer perceptions of brand marketing communications influence brand authenticity via direct and indirect mechanisms was demonstrated. The existence of authenticity in fast-moving consumer goods was also demonstrated.

The purpose of this paper is to address how marketing assets and resources of the firm perform under different product (brand) innovation conditions using the dynamic marketing capabilities (DMC) research perspective. The study contributes to the DMC research stream showing the effects and performance of heterogeneous firm drivers and resources. Academic research to date has paid a little attention to the interrelationship between market share as a performance metric, dynamic capabilities and product (brand) innovation. The current study bridges this knowledge gap by empirically validating the effects of DMC on market share performance output using panel data for 753 retail food brands.

The model was initially fitted with the β regression analysis and cluster analysis in the second step of the estimation procedure. The results of simulation by Monte Carlo experimentation are discussed.

The findings show that firms leverage their marketing capabilities unequally in the multi-brand portfolios, which leads to an unequal intra-firm distribution of assets and resources. The research contributes to the understanding of the brand competitive dynamics and appropriate deployment of assets and resources for improved firm performance.

These findings are useful for both academics and practitioners because they address new and future research. In doing so, the authors advance the firm performance and branding literature with extension in the DMC literature.

The world's leading manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) generate up to 50 per cent of their revenues in emerging markets. Simulated test marketing (STM) is a common practice deployed by these companies to forecast new product sales. Emerging markets represent only a small portion of the global STM business. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate and further explore some key trends anticipated in the development of the future generation of STM models by drawing specific attention to the issues currently experienced in one of the emerging markets, Russia.

A quantitative survey of Russian client-side marketing experts provides strong evidence for the need to further improve and modify STM methods, addressing new challenges in rapidly developing markets of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Marketers in Russia believe many STM approaches poorly reflect the nuances and characteristics of their markets. This has implications for global players targeting emerging markets based on assumptions formed for STM in their home markets.

This is a preliminary study which warrants following up. Its basis in Russia arguably has implications for other emerging markets, but whether these findings are evident in other markets needs to be tested.

FMCG companies in Russia would appreciate a flexible, proactive, “client-oriented” approach as opposed to conservative, “model-centered” services based on “global” execution standards. This would lead to the co-creation of STM models that could achieve more accurate forecasts in emerging markets and achieve a greater level of confidence in the use of STM among multinational FMCG companies.

The research undertaken leads to a general conclusion that although traditional STM models have attained relatively high awareness among FMCGs in Russia, their use is still limited as there is a perception of this being a research instrument that would need adaptation to the Russian market. Instead, simpler, cheaper and less time consuming alternatives are often employed, such as expert assessments, basic quantitative or qualitative tests. Although the most commonly acknowledged advantages of STM are well understood in Russia, there are some key barriers to its widespread adoption: poor quality or insufficient market data, lack of local market experience and validations, lower forecast accuracy as compared to “western” markets, low flexibility in terms of design and cost.

The study aims to identify salespeople’s challenges while selling newly launched products in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector by examining the holistic environment in which they perform their selling tasks. Furthermore, it develops a hierarchical model mapping the interrelationships between identified challenges to explore their dependence and driving power through qualitative research techniques.

The current study is exploratory and inductive in its research design. It used focus-group discussion (FGD), semistructured interviews and thematic content analysis (TCA) to identify new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. The identified factors were then worked into a hierarchical model using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze their relationship. The factors were further classified into clusters based on their driving and dependence power, with the help of the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) technique

The TISM and MICMAC results identified salespeople’s most critical new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector: product innovation, product differentiation, customer perception and market turbulence. An enhanced organizational focus on these factors will ensure that salespeople get adequate input to tackle the challenges they face while selling newly launched FMCG products.

The study was confined to identifying challenges in the FMCG sector alone but offered scope for application in other sectors.

This study will help organizations to identify and close gaps in the new-product selling process, thereby improving the performance of salespeople and contributing to a new product’s success. The study findings have a bearing on various stages of product development, management and life cycle. They also highlight the need for greater synergy between an organization’s sales force and other departments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique in identifying new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. It also delineates the complex Web of interrelationships between them and classifies the identified factors based on their driving and dependence on power. The research results can help in organizational decision-making and sales practices, empowering salespeople in their new-product selling tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the influence of a tourism‐oriented environment on the promotional channel strategies of fast‐moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms.

The study utilises an exploratory, qualitative research design among 14 case studies of FMCG firms operating in the tourism‐oriented environment of Greece.

Findings show that most firms utilise adapted promotional channels due to the influence of structural characteristics of the tourism industry and tourists' modes of behavior.

The outcomes of this qualitative study are limited to the context that is investigated and thus, future researchers are encouraged to investigate similar contexts with the goal of generalising findings.

Findings suggest that firms ought to appreciate the contextual idiosyncrasies of Euro‐Mediterranean countries (as a result of international tourism) and thus, tailor their programs to these idiosyncrasies, which are distinct from other non‐tourism‐oriented environments.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates the effect of tourism‐induced idiosyncrasies of Euro‐Mediterranean countries on FMCG firms' promotional strategies. In light of the increasing importance of global consumer mobility, such studies are expected to increase.

This exploratory study attempts to cast some light on the state of market segmentation and the issues faced by practitioners amongst a sample of Russian subsidiaries of Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in fast‐moving consumer goods markets.

Qualitative research in the form of depth interviews with seven respondents was undertaken at five MNEs (covering 11 brands across 13 product categories) and one Russian‐owned company which had recently recruited its senior management from Coca‐Cola in Moscow. MNEs were chosen because it was believed they would have the resources to acquire such expertise and knowledge as was necessary to develop a segmentation structure.

The companies researched had indicated that, in most cases, they had not been fully satisfied with their segmentations and so were engaged in continual attempts to improve their segmentations. For the majority, need‐state segmentation was currently seen as a considerable step forward but other options were being investigated. The study shows that factors influencing the search for the better segmentation need to include the nature of the product but also the stage of development of the product category, itself resulting, in most cases, from the pattern of market development in transition economies.

The research uses only a limited number of respondents but there was a large degree of commonality in respect of the key broad issues.

The study has implications for the factors to be taken into account when designing segmentation approaches, including the nature and stage of development of the product category and the purpose of the segmentation.

As far as is known, this is the first study which addresses segmentation issues amongst Russian subsidiaries of Western FMCG multi nationals.

Suggests that significant changes are taking place within the promotional mix in UK FMCG firms. In particular points to the emergence of public relations as a dynamic tool within the promotional mix, indicating why this tool may have emerged in relation to the more well known promotion tools. Puts forward reasons for changes in promotional mixes and the emergence and usage of new tools. Reports on the perception among FMCG executives of movements towards integration between marketing and corporate public relations.

This study aims to examine the impact of brand ethical behavior, specifically perceived brand ethicality, on corporate brand legitimacy in the context of halal cosmetics, by considering perceived brand integrity as a mediating factor.

The study used a quantitative cross-sectional research design to gather data from 341 fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in Tanzania. The data was analyzed by using AMOS 21, using structural equation modeling techniques.

The findings indicated that perceived brand ethicality has a significant influence on corporate brand legitimacy through the mediation of perceived brand integrity.

The study emphasizes the significance of incorporating and clarifying Islamic laws as integral components of marketing strategies aimed at attracting conscientious customers of halal products. It recommends defining Islamic laws as societal values and norms and integrating them into various brand practices to showcase professionalism, ultimately fostering social acceptance and approval. The study presents valuable practical implications for managers and marketers of FMCG, assisting them in formulating policies and strategies that reflect societal values and norms.

This study represents a novel endeavor that explores the interplay between perceived brand ethicality, corporate brand legitimacy and perceived brand integrity in the context of halal products. It extends theoretical understanding by shedding light on the significance of Islamic laws as a foundation for establishing a competitive advantage. By offering and designing ethical practices, businesses can enhance their legitimacy among halal consumers, particularly in the domain of halal cosmetics.