Search results

The common market practice by global consumer brands to create localised packaging for foreign markets conflicts with findings that cast doubt on this strategy. By examining the differential influence of standard (Western) and local (Chinese) packaging on Chinese consumers’ perceptions and choice behaviour, this study aims to examine whether this strategy is effective or even necessary.

A pre-test first identified suitable products and brands. Using a multiple methods approach, online participants in China first rated the brands and packaging of hedonic and utilitarian products. The ratings were then validated by triangulating with the results of a discrete choice experiment that captured participants’ choice behaviour.

For hedonic products, standard packaging is rated more positively and chosen more often than local packaging. For utilitarian products, there are no differences in ratings and choice. For hedonic products, brand likeability is higher for standard packaging than for local packaging. For utilitarian products, brand likeability does not differ between the two packaging types.

These findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of indiscriminate packaging localisation. International marketers need to rethink their approach, particularly in non-Western markets. Interviews with five brand managers in charge of major consumer brands in China revealed their actual market practice and further illuminate this study’s findings.

This is first study to question the common market practice of packaging localisation and investigate the differential effects of standard versus local packaging of foreign products on consumers’ perceptions and choice behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between brand equity and financial performance and the moderation role of brand likeability retail banking sector.

The study is quantitative and employed the survey methodology to sample the views of 550 retail bank customers. Data were analyzed though the structuring equation modeling using AMOS.

The study found out that service quality, brand association, brand loyalty, and brand relevance positively and significantly predicted financial performance of the retail banks. In addition, brand likeability also moderates the relationship between brand equity and financial performance.

The study contributes to the ongoing research in examining the linkage between brand equity and financial performance. The study has also shown the value of brand likeability as a moderator of the brand equity-financial performance linkage. The strategic implication of the results are discussed in the paper.

The purpose of this paper was to conduct an experimental design of Americans’ preferences for the English version of Chinese brand names by drawing from prior research in psychology, linguistics and marketing. The impact of string length and semantic relevance to English on meaningfulness, memorability and likeability of brand names from Chinese companies was assessed.

A 2 × 2 experimental design was used, whereby brand names are categorized by string length (short vs long) and semantic relevance to English (with vs without). Respondents’ perception of the Chinese language in terms of pronounceability, language familiarity and language attitude is used as covariate.

Results reveal shorter brand names, and those with semantic relevance to English are perceived as more memorable. It was also found that pronounceability of the brand name does influence brand name preference in terms of their meaningfulness, memorability and likeability.

This exploratory paper is limited to Americans’ perceptions of the English version of Chinese automobile brand names.

Chinese companies should therefore carefully consider the brand name characteristics in terms of string length and semantic relevance, as well as their ease of pronunciation when choosing and introducing their brand name in the USA.

This is the first paper which assesses Western consumers’ perception of brand names from Chinese automobile companies in terms of their brand meaningfulness, brand memorability and brand likeability.

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent that consumers prefer the localised packaging over standard packaging, and how the differences may vary across different product types. An ongoing debate facing marketers is whether marketing approaches should be localised as international brands enter foreign markets. In practice, international brands often localise their packaging when sold in foreign markets. This research questions whether and under what conditions is this practice beneficial to foreign brands.

The experiment used a 2 (product type: hedonic versus utilitarian) × 2 (packaging design: standard versus local) factorial designs. Product type was within-subjects, and packaging design was between-subject to minimise learning effects. For each product type, two product categories were used.

Overall, the results show that the role of packaging is more pertinent for hedonic than for utilitarian products. For hedonic products, participants preferred the standard packaging to the local packaging and brand likeability is also rated more positively in their standard package. However, there were generally no significant differences in rating between standard and localised packaging likeability and brand likeability for utilitarian products. The results for the choice decisions were similar to those for the likeability ratings across both product types.

A better understanding into how consumers perceive these packaging strategies would help international marketers operating in local markets.

Although past studies on international marketing communications have investigated standardisation and localisation of messages in the context of advertising using foreign and local cues, none have examined this issue with packaging. This study also extends past research by examining the differential effects of localisation on hedonic versus utilitarian products.

This chapter aims to identify integrated marketing communication (IMC) in the context of business to business to consumer (B2B2C) and empirically test a number of hypotheses related to the selected constructs. A model of the IMC was tested in a survey conducted among stakeholders in the selected field. Professionals responsible for communication and branding activities need to evaluate the relative contributions of the IMC in the B2B2C perspective.

Given that global advertising often originates in the West, this study aimed to investigate whether the same racial cues in advertising had different effects on US and Chinese readers who belonged to the majority group in their own country but occupied varied positions in the global racial hierarchy.

The study included two experiments that used US and Chinese college students as participants to test the effect of model race on model likeability, ad attitude, and brand attitude.

The experiments confirmed that model race affected the effectiveness of advertising, though the nature and extent of its effects were mediated by factors such as country and product category. The effects of model race were much more pronounced for the Chinese data than for the US data, and for computer than for beer.

The findings illustrate the inadequacy of the center-periphery approach to global advertising planning, expose the limitations of the social identity theory in predicting racial attitudes in international settings, and outline the ethical challenge for global advertisers to develop effective multicultural advertising.

To date, most studies on racial cues in advertising have focused on the USA, and very few have explored the topic in the context of other markets. As an initial cross-country comparative investigation, this study suggests that multicultural advertising does not have the same effect in international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various gratifications obtained in the social media context affect customer participation, and its sequential effect on brand trust, brand commitment and word of mouth (WOM) in social media brand communities.

The data were collected from 352 respondents who used social media using a survey method. The data were assessed using AMOS with structural equation modeling.

The findings depicted that among all gratifications obtained in the social media context, information seeking, incentive and brand likeability strongly affect customer participation, which sequentially affect brand trust, commitment and WOM in social media brand communities. In the context of social media brand communities, brand trust partially mediates the relationship between customer participation and its two outcome variables (brand commitment and WOM).

The present paper contributes that theory of uses and gratifications has particular significance and supposed to be provided further importance in the field of social media. It also presents a vivid and rich understanding of why customers use social media and participate in social media brand communities.

This article aims to focus on product-featuring advertising targeted to stock investors – that is, ads that provide investors with impressions about the company’s products, over and above financial information. The purpose is to explicate and test the psychological mechanisms by which such ads may exert influence on investors.

An experiment is conducted with a representative sample of real investors, to test the effect and explore the underlying mechanisms. Two additional laboratory experiments reveal moderating factors of this effect.

The results show that highlighting the company’s product features in an investor ad increases investors’ interest in investing in the company’s stock, by enhancing investors’ subjective evaluations of the company’s products. This effect emerges independent of factors related to preexisting brand perceptions (e.g. brand recognizability and likeability) and is mediated by dual causal channels: by increasing expectations about the company’s financial returns and by increasing affective attachment with the company’s products.

The findings identify and confirm different mechanisms of the effect of investor ads, but the relative magnitude of the effects is not generalizable.

The results provide corporate marketing, corporate communications and investor relations professionals insights into how investors may be attracted by product-featuring advertisements.

The study is the first to explicate the different channels of influence through which product-featuring ads may affect investors’ willingness to invest in companies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse Facebook brand posts along dimensions of vividness, interactivity, novelty, brand consistency and content type and tests how these characteristics influence audience response in terms of liking and sharing brand posts.

The sample comprised 191 brand posts sourced from the Facebook brand pages of five top selling automotive brands in the UK. Audience response was operationalised using brand post likes and brand post shares, while brand post characteristics were operationalised according to relevant theory. Poisson regression models were tested to measure the effect of brand post characteristics on audience response.

The findings indicate that brand post vividness has a significant positive effect on brand post shares, but not on brand post likes. Brand post interactivity has a significant negative effect on both brand post likes and brand post shares. Brand post novelty and brand post consistency have a significant positive effect on both brand post likes and brand post shares. Finally, brand post content type has a significant positive effect on brand post likes, but not brand post shares.

The findings underscore the need for marketers to develop a systematic content strategy for Facebook brand pages. With this in mind, the study proposes several evidence based suggestions.

This study contributes to the literature first by synthesising and testing brand post characteristics that were overlooked in prior research and second by developing theoretically consistent operationalisation for already familiar brand post characteristics. These enhancements resulted in a final model with a superior explanatory power.