Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine effects of gender, need for uniqueness, and attitudes toward American products on dimensions of brand equity for a US and local apparel brand in the Indian market.

Three dimensions of brand equity are evaluated based on the respondents' shopping experience related to the selected US and local apparel brands. Data are collected from a convenience sample of college students in India.

The empirical tests show that, for a US apparel brand, there are direct and indirect effects of Indian consumers' gender, need for uniqueness (NFU), and attitudes toward American products on three dimensions of brand equity: perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand associations with brand awareness. For local apparel brands, these effects are found for only one brand equity dimension: perceived quality.

The study uses only one US apparel brand, which may limit the generalization of the findings to all product categories and countries.

US marketers need to improve Indian consumers' attitudes toward American products through marketing and promotional campaigns. On the other hand, Indian marketers should overcome the negative relationship between Indian consumers' attitudes toward American products and their quality perception toward a local apparel brand.

Little attention has been given to individual differences in evaluating the three dimensions of brand equity. By assessing brand equity based on the individual characteristics of gender, need for uniqueness, and attitudes toward American products, results of the study can help marketers to obtain more specific knowledge of brand equity about a target consumer group and thus enable them to plan and implement well‐suited strategies for improving their brand equity.

Retailers have demonstrated mixed results during international expansions. However, home market saturation and the economic climate are forcing more and more retailers to look beyond their borders for revenue. A critical participant in the internationalizing effort is the expatriate manager. Unfortunately the literature is unclear and at times conflicted over how to select and prepare expatriate management for their leadership role. Therefore, this study was designed with the purpose of uncovering various factors which may lead to expatriate retail management success.

Based on the lack of unanimity in the literature this study adopted a qualitative research methodology in order to develop some consensus regarding successful expatriate leadership attributes. Grounded theory was employed utilizing extensive in-depth interviews as the primary data gathering and analysis tools.

A multi-dimensional construct emerged from the data requiring all dimensions to be utilized for a successful retail expatriate assignment. The construct of “Universal Leadership”, is proposed as formative, comprised of reflective sub-dimensions; Ability, Adaptability, Ambassadorship, and Awareness (Self), which we refer to as the Four A's, for successful expatriate management assignments. Several propositions are put forward as suggestions for future research in the use of the universal leadership model for both selection and training of retail expatriate managers.

The study develops a theoretical platform for expatriate leadership success allowing for cultural and business variation. Awareness is introduced as a critical attribute in achieving success as an expatriate success. The universal leadership model proposes attributes beneficial for training and also selection which is critically under examined in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a general holistic view of implications of the growing and highly relevant customer segment of elder consumers for the food demand chain (food retail, production, logistics, and business informatics) in Germany.

This paper takes a holistic demand-chain approach that is based on interviews with 36 German food consumers aged 65-87 and with 50 experts from manufacturing, trade, logistics, and business informatics as well as a survey with 1,288 consumers above 64 years of age and 682 consumers below 65 years of age.

Physical, statistical, psychological, social, and behavioural characteristics of elder German consumers may influence location, services, and layout of food retail, food variety, sizes, packaging, and labelling, food production, transportation, and storage volumes and capacities, as well as facility location, route, and inventory planning. The social function of grocery shopping especially for single consumers, intergenerational products and services, home-delivery services especially to rural areas, as well as decentralisation and regionalisation are expected to gain importance. Logistics and industry 4.0 can facilitate the efficient and effective supply of food.

This research is the first to investigate the needs and wants of elder German food consumers and their implications for the German food demand chain in a more holistic demand-chain approach.

Elder German grocery shoppers are a growing, heterogeneous, and highly relevant and attractive, but under-researched market segment. In order to understand them and their grocery shopping motivations better and target them efficiently and effectively, the purpose of this paper is to identify dimensions of their shopping motivations and segment them based on these dimensions.

In total, 26 grocery store-choice criteria were identified in a thorough literature review and focus-group interviews with 36 elder German consumers aged 65 and older. In a subsequent survey, the importance of these criteria was rated by 1,288 German shoppers of the same age group. A principal component and cluster analysis were performed to identify dimensions of store-choice criteria and segments of elder German grocery shoppers. Multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of variance and discriminant analysis were used to test for statistically significant differences between the clusters.

Basic quality considerations, shopping experience and social interaction, service and assistance, price consciousness, product orientation, convenient location and quick service and packaging requirements influence the grocery store choice of elder German consumers in decreasing order of variance explained. The cluster analysis revealed indifferent, leisure, convenience, assistance-oriented, no frills, product-oriented and service-oriented elder German shoppers, which differ in their shopping motivations statistically and significantly. These clusters are described and contrasted in detail to derive managerial implications.

This research provides the first store-choice component analysis and cluster analysis for elder German grocery shoppers. This can help food retail to reach this attractive target group more efficiently and effectively and improve the food supply of elder German consumers.

Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love.

The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK.

Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics clustered around engagement, involvement, self-concept and self-connection, brand love and hedonic values. Informants however, display some discernible differences as they “rally” to two distinctive totems: first, active luxury brand advocates and second, passive brand advocates. Although subtle, these differences suggest significant possibilities for fashion brand owners.

Further research could include the measurement of brand advocacy to distinguish more clearly between high and low levels of advocacy and the resulting consumer behaviour intentions. One sub-group that would be interesting to explore is that of brand evangelists and their relationship with fashion brands: what are the reasons for treating brands as religious artefacts and can this extreme level of advocacy be developed by marketing? The study focused on observing online posts by self-selected brand advocates. A worthwhile comparison could be made with fashion communities where brand marketers are active participants and how this influences the discourse and actions of brand advocates.

The findings indicate that all forum members are incredibly attached to their brands, but will still consider purchasing several brands as their “evoked set”. Additionally, even when demonstrating involvement, they can operate as passive observers in the online community.

Social media, especially online forums, play an important role in contemporary luxury fashion branding. This study addresses the role these forums play in supporting brand love and the contribution they make to luxury brand advocacy. Membership and influence dynamics are reported; which have resonance to both practitioners and researchers.

In an era of burgeoning activity in online retail in India, the role of web-store design is paramount. Web-store design elements such as website functionality, brand assortment and product quality are expected to generate customer loyalty.

Using data collected from 553 students from two universities in north India, the present study investigates the indirect effect of web-store dimensions (through website functionality, brand assortment and product quality) on online store loyalty via an enjoyment state (flow) and customer satisfaction. Serial mediation has been analysed through PROCESS macro developed by Hayes version 3.0. In addition to this, the moderating role of gender and purchase frequency has also been investigated.

The present study renders support to serial mediation between website functionality, flow, customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, the path between brand assortment and loyalty is more strongly mediated by customer satisfaction only. Males experience less flow as compared to females while handling brand assortment on websites. The three-way interaction between brand assortment, gender and purchase frequency is also statistically significant.

The study examines the manner in which online retailers can choose to build customer loyalty when they try to build retail image using web store functionality and /or product/brand assortments. The study offers insights to retailers about how and when to focus on hedonism versus customer satisfaction or both of them in conjunction to enhance customer loyalty. This study is important as it investigates the relationships in Indian scenario witnessing a high rate of growth in online retail which can tremendously affect these relationships.