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Brand equity has been a topic of interest in consumer goods markets for many years. Several studies suggest that existing consumer‐based measures of brand equity, which have traditionally been used in the consumer goods markets, can also be used to capture brand equity in the services markets. The purpose of this research is to assess the quality dimension in consumer‐based measurers of brand equity in the context of services and to compare it with consumer goods.

A pilot and a main study were conducted. Nine different brands were tested in a consumer‐based experimental online survey. Each participant was assigned randomly to one brand.

In the consumer goods markets customer service can be considered as a marketing instrument. In the services markets customer service is a part of the perceived quality of a service.

The implication leads to the question whether existing measures of brand equity in consumer goods markets should be used without adaptation in services markets. The findings show that the consumer‐based brand equity should be measured different in these markets. Concerning the differences the findings show also that customer service can be seen as a marketing instrument in consumer goods markets and a part of the perceived service quality in services markets.

There is a lack of research in the difference of measuring brand equity between consumer goods and services. This paper explores this difference of measuring brand equity.

Although research associated with branding′s influence on consumer behavior has increased in recent years, the vast majority of this work has focussed on tangible goods rather than intangible services. Focusses on branding and brand name strategies for intangible services. Develops a classification system for service brand names and describes a study which explores the degree to which these diverse strategies are used by different types of services.

Briefly covers the development of the “brand” concept in marketing before looking at the experience of the service brand. Outlines the development of the fast food sector in the UK and discusses the make up and growth of McDonalds, KFC and Burger King in turn. Gathers customer perception about each brand by the use of discussion groups. Concludes that the ideas of focus, consistency and value were key, together with community activities.

The purpose of this study is to describe, analyse, and understand the emerging metaphors in brand management in the context of service brands.

This article takes the form of a conceptual study.

The silence metaphor illustrates the product paradigm and the monologue metaphor describes the projective paradigm. The listening metaphor demonstrates the adaptive paradigm and finally, the dialogue metaphor depicts the relational paradigm.

The traditional understanding of service branding neglects a key characteristic of services – the fact that services are processes – and this neglect causes the crucial role of dialogue with the customer in service delivery to be relatively overlooked. There is an emerging need to move towards a relational approach in brand management.

Service brands continuously develop as the customer relates to the flow of communication in the form of diverse brand messages. These brand messages come from contact personnel, from physical product elements in the service process, and from various planned and unplanned communication messages.

The importance of creating brands in service offerings has become apparent, and communication issues in branding have become extremely vital for service firms. By creating dialogue in brand relationships, the customer is given an active role in service branding.

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.

This study investigates the role of source familiarity in moderating the effect of service adaptive behavior (SAB) on customer satisfaction. Applying the accessibility–diagnosticity framework and situated cognition theory as the theoretical basis, this research hypothesizes that when customers are familiar with the source that provides the service (i.e. brand familiarity for Study 1 and personal familiarity for Study 2), customer satisfaction responses to SAB would be more moderate than when customers are not familiar with the source. Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Two experiments manipulating SAB and the brand name familiarity (Study 1) and personal familiarity with the service staff (Study 2) as the source familiarity were conducted. Customer satisfaction as a function of source familiarity was measured to test the hypothesis that source familiarity moderates the relationship between SAB and customer satisfaction.

Compared to unfamiliar sources, familiar sources generated a more moderate response in customer satisfaction as a function of SAB. High familiarity with the brand and service staff induced top-down, memory-based processing that overrides external stimuli as the basis of satisfaction judgment; bottom-up, stimulus-based processing relying on SAB for judgment kicked in only when the source familiarity is low.

From a practical point of view, this study indicates the importance of SAB, especially for brands with low awareness, and alludes to the comparative importance of relationship building in service delivery processes.

This study contributes to the literature by validating the role of contextual factors in influencing the impact of SAB on customer satisfaction.

This paper aims to describe the development and evaluation of a process model to transform brand strategy into service experiences during the front end of new service development (NSD). This is an important yet poorly understood transformation that occurs early in service development projects. The paper also aims to describe the theoretical basis for this transformation, and introduces a process model that has been developed to understand and assist with this. Further, it seeks to describe early evaluation results and reflections upon its use.

A research through design approach using participatory co‐design led to the development of the new process. The development was iterative and carried out together with three service providers. The process model was evaluated using a combination of qualitative methods, including interviews, observation and participatory observation.

This work underlines the importance of aligning the customer experience to the company brand and suggests how this can be achieved. A key element in this is the development of a service personality and consideration of service touch‐point behaviours through a combination of analytical work and experience prototyping. The suggested process model has received positive evaluation when used in commercial projects, in terms of brand congruence, project team cohesiveness and experiential result. The work advocates tighter integration between brand management and NSD, and has identified multiple issues regarding the content of a service brand strategy. These include the ways in which a brand department should communicate its brand strategy, and how it should be involved in NSD projects to ensure brand alignment.

The evaluation of the model has limitations, both in terms of number of cases and downstream/long term effects. This should therefore be considered an initial evaluation of the model, requiring further verification.

The paper describes a structured three‐stage experience‐centric process that improves brand alignment in projects. Further, the work shows that brand specifications for services should increasingly focus upon desired customer experiences, service touch‐points and touch‐point behaviours rather than the current focus upon visual identity.

This is the first paper to suggest a process that transforms a brand strategy into customer experiences during NSD. It also adds original insights into the transition from brand to concept, bridging branding, service design and NSD.

There are few valuable services brands, which may be due to the lack of services branding knowledge and the inappropriate use of product‐based branding advice. To contribute to services branding knowledge the authors undertook a review of the services management and services branding literature and postulated a model of services branding. In‐depth interviews with 28 leading‐edge consultants showed the appropriateness of this model. The study found a need for ruthless clarity about positioning and the corporation's genuinely felt values. Success is more likely when everyone internally believes in their brand's values. When management behaviour is based on genuine conviction, shared values are more likely. Through shared values, there is a greater likelihood of commitment, internal loyalty, clearer brand understanding, and importantly, consistent brand delivery across all stakeholders. By viewing these factors within a systems perspective, greater services brand consistency can result.

“Brand architecture” is an organisation's approach to the design and management of its brand portfolio. Previous research, focused on the views of practitioners, identified a “multi‐corporate” approach in financial services, where a “family of main brands” was incorporated into an organisation's brand portfolio, often in the form of brands traditionally associated with separate companies. The current study seeks to provide contrasting insights from consumer data and to highlight the conceptual and practical implications of the findings.

A qualitative methodology was adopted for the study incorporating six focus groups containing an average of nine participants.

The findings from the current study offer empirical support for the conceptualisation of the corporate brand playing a predominant role in services markets. In doing so, the findings also suggest that the alternative conceptualization of a “multi‐corporate” approach advocated by practitioners and identified previously is not validated by consumer‐based research.

The context of the study reported may be limited by its restriction to a single category, financial services.

Practitioners' rationales for maintaining multiple brands are, in the main, undermined by the views of consumers. Organisations should consider rationalising their brand architecture in order to benefit from significant cost savings.

The consumer perspective on brand architecture is significantly under‐researched and as a result this paper provides valuable insights, and a significant contribution to existing literature.

This paper seeks to determine from the standpoint of undergraduate students, service‐quality dispositions of bank brands operating in Ghana; in respect of customer service (human interaction), service knowledge and bank infrastructure and technology.

Data were obtained from undergraduate first time bank customers in the University of Ghana Business School via a questionnaire using a convenience sampling method. A structured questionnaire containing 12 service‐quality statements was designed and administered to 519 first time undergraduate bank customers to measure their perception of service quality with regard to bank brands in Ghana. The repeated measures of ANOVA were employed.

The respondents perceive the service knowledge dimension of brand service quality as the weakest performance service attribute for banks operating in Ghana.

This study offers practical tips for bank managers seeking to manage an increasingly important segment; the undergraduate banking segment.

This study contributes to the bank marketing literature by utilizing a new brand service‐quality conceptualization to investigate research issues that focused on a banking segment that is under‐researched in the context of developing economies and Africa in particular.