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This case is used in Darden's core Marketing course and in the Pricing elective. It would work well in course modules covering the topics of branding or product line management. A teaching note is available for instructors. Soon after Pernod Ricard acquires Absolut vodka and other brands, the economic downturn results in changes in purchasing behavior away from premium to standard products. Brand managers consider whether to introduce a “basic” Absolut, promote a lower-priced alternative, or rebrand other vodkas under the Absolut brand to trade on its considerable brand equity.

Prior research has identified that brands have a differential impact on consumer evaluations across various brand benefits. This paper investigates whether these effects are stable over time, or evolve in a consistent way.

Consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources through a standard confirmatory factor analysis approach have been decomposed. Two unique datasets have been analyzed; the first contains cross-sectional data from Kodak across four different consumer goods categories, and the other is a longitudinal dataset from the USA and Canada in the surface-cleaning category, covering seven brands over five years (2007-2011).

A systematic evolution in brand effects has been demonstrated: a general trend is that over time and with experience, consumers rely more heavily on overall brand information to develop their evaluations. However, early in a brand’s life, or later when circumstances compel consumers to actively consider the attributes, ingredients or features of a brand, consumers may rely more heavily on, detailed attribute-specific information to evaluate brand benefits.

The systematic evolution in consumers’ use of information from attribute to brand is hypothesized in this paper and is found to occur contrary to the speculation of Dillon et al. (2001) regarding the direction of such an evolution. Further, our results indicate the sensitivity of our approach to detect changes in consumers’ use of the two sources that should be expected, given the various exogenous factors.

Brand managers can use the results from our procedure to alter their messages to more strongly emphasize either overall brand information or detailed attribute-specific information, depending on the consumer segment or key benefit in question. The research offers insights for the kind of information managers should communicate for brands trying to extend into new categories. The research also raises interesting questions regarding the extent to which brands can own a strong position on a particular benefit over time.

No prior work has evaluated brand effects (i.e. the relative use of brand vs attribute sources) to evaluate brand benefits over time. Our results demonstrate the value of the decompositional procedure we recommend and the importance of knowing which source is relied upon more heavily as consumers evaluate brands.

For centuries, gratitude has represented an integral component of social relationships, yet it remains relatively overlooked by marketing scholars in the study of commercial relationships. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how gratitude helps to build, maintain and transform commercial relationships and to suggest noteworthy areas of investigation for those researchers seeking to help companies understand the role of gratitude in relationship marketing.

Gratitude's role in relational exchange is explored by a review of relevant literature and two qualitative studies. Questions developed from the literature and exploratory interviews are then investigated in a main study through in-depth interviews with buyers and sellers of goods and services in both B2B and B2C contexts, leading to a grounded theoretical foundation. Generalizations and directions for future research are presented.

Gratitude is a fundamental component of buyer-seller relationships and is critical for advancing relationship marketing theory and practice. Gratitude's changing role as relationship stages advance is described.

The research is of an exploratory nature. Confirmation of the generalizations by other studies is suggested. This research is largely consistent with that from a markets-as-networks perspective and moves relationship marketing research toward a more extended view.

Gratitude should be included along with other relational mediators in discussions and investigations of relationship success, and practiced by those that seek to build, develop and enhance their buyer-seller relationships.

This paper provides a much needed exploration of a new and important topic in relationship marketing and a call for gratitude to be studied and implemented in a variety of relational exchange contexts. Specifically, it is the first to address the importance of gratitude to both buyers and sellers in B2B and B2C goods and services markets. It also is the first to document the changing role of gratitude through relationship stages.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether brands impact consumer evaluations in ways other than a consistent halo and the degree to which consumers use both overall brand information along with detailed attribute-specific information to construct their evaluations.

The authors decompose consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources through a standard CFA approach. Data cover 55 brands in four product categories sold in nine global markets.

Halo effects are rare in global CPG markets. The authors identify the presence of differential brand effects in eight of nine global markets tested. Application of an extended model to a market where several competing family brands are present demonstrates the ability of the model to identify relationships among brand offerings within a family brand and to differentiate between family brand sets.

The finding of differential effects calls into question the assumption of a consistent brand effect assumed in past research; future models should accommodate differential effects.

The ability to decompose consumer brand-benefit beliefs into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources provides managers with insights into which latent mental sources consumers use to construct their brand beliefs. As such, the methodology provides useful descriptive and diagnostic measures concerning the sources of suspicious, interesting, or worrisome consumer brand beliefs as well as a means to determine if their branding, positioning and/or messaging is having the desired impact on consumer evaluations so that they can make and evaluate required changes.

A significant contribution of this research is the finding that many times the brand source differentially impacts consumers' evaluations of brand-benefits, a finding that is contrary to a consistent halo effect that is assumed in prior models.

This paper seeks to address the following question: What causes firms to choose brand creation vs brand acquisition for brand portfolio expansion?

A multilevel interdisciplinary conceptual model is developed with nine factors at three levels of influence: the market, firm, and brand portfolio. Using 125 brand acquisitions and creations for 22 firms between 2001 and 2007, the model is tested using logistic regression to determine which factors significantly influence brand portfolio expansion strategy and whether they encourage acquisition or creation.

Significant factors were found at the market and firm levels, with competitive intensity of the market having the strongest effect, followed by the firm's financial leverage, market concentration, and market growth.

Contrary to prior expectations, external factors at the market and firm levels have an impact on choice of acquisition vs creation. However, internal firm factors may serve as moderators of strategy effectiveness.

This is the first study to empirically examine factors affecting the brand portfolio expansion strategy via brand creation versus brand acquisition across a variety of industries. From a methodological standpoint, one of the more serious and persistent problems facing prior brand research is the lack of brand‐level data, but this paper's approach overcomes this limitation by using media expenditures in the AdSpender database to represent brands within a category/market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use, effectiveness, and dark sides of gratitude communications in workplace organizations. From the perspective of the subordinate employee, this study offers managers applicable insight into best practices for expressing appreciation.

The original research incorporates a two-part study; narratives from three focus groups, and quantitative survey responses from 883 full-time professionals across a spectrum of industries.

The usage of various gratitude mediums (verbal, electronic, handwritten, monetary, etc.) is discussed. Most employees prefer verbal one-on-one gratitude to any other form. Sincerity is highly important to employees, which was found to be indicated by specificity, personalization, timeliness, and equivalency.

Although it is presumed the majority of the 883 survey participants were from the USA, they were never asked to indicate their location. Conducting the same research in another country with a different value of gratitude could yield different results. While this study focusses on managerial expression of gratitude to their employees, there’s a compelling need to explore the converse: best practices for how employees should express appreciation to their managers. To complete the organizational ecosystem, it would also be valuable to explore the most effective methods of gratitude in peer-to-peer workplace relationships.

The synthesis of experiential themes offers practical applications for executives, managers, and corporate communication leaders seeking to improve day-to-day operations and overall employee satisfaction in their organizations.

In the corporate communication landscape, the results of this study should cause management professionals and scholars to reflect on gratitude communication in managerial interactions with employees and the resulting employee satisfaction (or lack thereof).

Understanding how employees like to be thanked can have great value for organizations seeking to maintain a productive, satisfied workforce.