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This paper compares the relative influence of perceived brand localness (PBL) and perceived brand globalness (PBG) on customer behavioral responses of brand loyalty (BL), willingness to pay price premiums (WTPP) and positive word of mouth (PWOM) towards retail banks. It further examines the mediating effects of brand trust (BT) on these relationships.

Data were collected from 320 retail banking customers in Trinidad and Tobago and analyzed with exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis (MRA).

The findings show that PBL has a more substantial impact on BL, willingness to pay a price premium and PWOM compared to PBG. The results also show that BT mediates the relationships between PBL and PBG on customer brand-related responses. The effect is more substantial for brands perceived as local.

The findings have important implications for banks in developing countries and suggest that localized positioning and branding strategies will trigger preferential brand-related responses in retail banking services. The paper ends with a discussion on the practical implications of these findings and present future research opportunities.

The paper responds to the rising skepticism and discomfort with globalization. It offers bank managers valuable insights on how global and local branding strategies affect brand-related outcomes. The study contributes to the literature by empirically comparing the effects of PBL and PBG in retail banking and demonstrating the unique contribution of BT in explaining why customers respond differently to global and local brands. It also simultaneously considers multiple customer responses.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model to represent how service experience (core, employee and service scale), customer satisfaction (transaction-specific and cumulative) and brand affinity influence brand equity in financial services, taking into account the moderating influence of financial service providers.

Data were collected from 751 customers in three types of financial service providers (banks, insurance companies and credit unions), and analyzed with structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The findings confirm the significant and positive influence of service experience, customer satisfaction and brand affinity on brand equity. Employee service experience has the strongest influence, but its impact is mediated by customer satisfaction. Brand affinity has the lowest influence on brand equity. The type of financial service provider moderates the influence of customer satisfaction on brand equity; transactional satisfaction is more important for credit unions and insurance companies, but cumulative satisfaction is higher for banks.

The study is significant for three reasons. First, it reconciles branding strategies across different types of financial service providers. Second, it will help financial managers to develop and implement a more integrated approach toward building brand equity for financial service brands. Finally, it will identify specific service-related areas financial providers can target to increase customers’ preferential value.

The paper addresses previous concerns within brand equity studies by examining the drivers of brand equity formation in multiple financial institutions. It shows how different aspects of service experience and customer satisfaction affect brand affinity and preferential attitudes toward financial brands.

Marketers increasingly use social media influencers to appeal to young consumers. This study aims to investigate the impact of the influencers’ country of origin (COO) on young customers' online brand advocacy (OBA). It also tests the mediating effects of trustworthiness and perceived homophily on these relationships.

Data were obtained from 197 Generation Z (Gen-Z) consumers of skin care products living in Trinidad and Tobago, using a quasi-experimental study and online self-administered questionnaires. The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of covariance and multiple regression analysis.

The findings support the role of an influencer's COO on young consumers' OBA and the mediating effects of influencers' trustworthiness and perceived homophily. The findings show that local influencers have a more substantial effect on OBA for Gen-Z customers. In addition, results show that both variables of trustworthiness and perceived homophily mediate the influencer’s COO and OBA relationship. The findings also show that local influencers benefit from higher levels of trustworthiness and greater perceived homophily than foreign ones.

The study fills the gap in the marketing literature by understanding how an influencer’s extrinsic characteristics, such as country of origin, can affect the marketing outcome of OBA among Gen-Z consumers in a small developing country. It also demonstrates the importance of perceived homophily and trustworthiness between influencers and audiences for marketing success.

Consumers' attitude toward luxury brands remains a crucial area for many researchers and marketers. But, attitude toward domestically-produced luxury fashion brands in developing countries have not been sufficiently examined. Drawing on the social identity theory (SIT), this study proposes that consumer ethnocentrism (CE) and cultural sensitivity (CS) will significantly influence attitudes toward luxury fashion brands produced in Trinidad and Tobago. Furthermore, the study suggests that consumer demographical characteristics of age, gender and income will moderate the influence.

Data were collected from 160 fashion consumers and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The findings confirm the positive impact of CE on consumers' attitude toward domestically produced luxury products, while CS has a significant but negative effect. Also, the results show that these effects are consistent across different levels of income, but vary by age and gender.

These findings provide a deeper understanding of consumers' perceptions and inherent biases toward luxury brands. It further explains how brands with ostentatious value, in particular fashion brands, produced in Trinidad and Tobago, can compete against larger international brands.

The study is one of the few that examines the effects of personal values on attitudes toward luxurious fashion brands produced in a developing country. It uniquely extends the SIT model by examining the influence of CE, CS and demographical characteristics on preferential attitudes toward locally produced luxury fashion brands.

The explosion of internet-generated content, coupled with methodologies such as sentiment analysis, present exciting opportunities for marketers to generate market intelligence on consumer attitudes and brand opinions. The purpose of this paper is to review the marketing literature on online sentiment analysis and examines the application of sentiment analysis from three main perspectives: the unit of analysis, sampling design and methods used in sentiment detection and statistical analysis.

The paper reviews the prior literature on the application of online sentiment analysis published in marketing journals over the period 2008-2016.

The findings highlight the uniqueness of online sentiment analysis in action-oriented marketing research and examine the technical, practical and ethical challenges faced by researchers.

The paper discusses the application of sentiment analysis in marketing research and offers recommendations to address the challenges researchers confront in using this technique.

This study provides academics and practitioners with a comprehensive review of the application of online sentiment analysis within the marketing discipline. The paper focuses attention on the limitations surrounding the utilization of this technique and provides suggestions for mitigating these challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between brand equity and customer behavioral intentions to repeat purchases, willingness to pay a price premium, switch and provide positive word of mouth. It further explores the mediating role of customer satisfaction and the moderating impact of customer age, education and gender on these relationships.

Data were collected from 283 banking customers and analyzed with structural equation modeling.

The results supported a strong relationship between brand equity and all four measures of behavioral intent with customer satisfaction partially mediating these relationships. In addition, the results supported the moderating effect of customer age and education on the customer satisfaction-switch relationship.

The study provides a useful perspective on the impact of brand building investments on consumers’ behavioral intentions, which bank managers can use to monitor and evaluate the outcome of branding initiatives and relationship management strategies.

The study provides a nuanced understanding of the effect of brand equity on consumer behavioral intentions. It also explains the mediating and moderating effects of customer satisfaction and demographical characteristics.

This study aims to investigate the reliability of a mystery client (MC) as a service evaluation technique taking into consideration personal differences of the MC agents.

The ratings from 144 MCs from 355 evaluations of computer and electronic stores were cross analyzed with eight psychographic and demographic profile variables.

MCs who were highly involved in the product category were more critical of service responsiveness with respect to product demonstrations and listening to customer requirements. On the other hand, MCs with stronger faith in intuition were more inclined to rate services higher on empathy with respect to employees making a conscientious effort to understand customers’ needs.

Depending on the service marketing goals, managers learn to define which aspects of MC profile they should consider or avoid during the recruitment as well as becoming more critical when they analyze the evaluation reports to avoid an interpretation bias.

The usefulness of the MC tool relies on its reliability and credibility as a marketing research technique. It was identified that the MC personality traits are more likely associated with marketing service evaluation variability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an integrated model mapping the influence of brand affinity, customer experience, and customer satisfaction on brand equity in retail banking.

Data were collected from 315 banking customers in Trinidad and Tobago through personally administered structured questionnaires and analyzed with Structural Equation Modelling.

The findings showed the mediating role of customer satisfaction in brand equity relationships. The results also showed the pivotal role of brand affinity, customer satisfaction, and service experience in explaining brand equity.

The study provides an integrated approach to brand building. It also offers an objective framework brand owners can use to evaluate marketing investments. It also provides a clear brand differentiation strategy for bank brands. Finally, it introduces cross-cultural research in brand equity which can be a useful competitive tool for indigenous banks and foreign banks seeking market expansion strategies.

This research is one of the few studies that analyzed brand equity in retail banking. It advanced a brand equity framework that explores the mediating role of customer satisfaction and provides a guide to uplift perceptions and stimulate customer confidence in the banking sector.