Editorial

The current issue of the Journal of Product and Brand Management (Vol. 24, No. 7) has in total eight contributions; seven in the area of Product and Brand Management and one in the area of Pricing Strategy and Practice. The twenty three authors who have authored the papers in this issue are based in universities from eleven different countries.

Rubio, Oubiña, and Gómez-Suárez explore the extent to which price consciousness and quality consciousness influence attitudinal loyalty to store brands in different segments of consumers: heavy, medium, and light buyers of store brands. Their study focuses on Spanish food products, a sector in which store brands have achieved a significant market share. Their findings suggest that retailers should be alert of the importance of price versus quality in the formation of store brand value and loyalty among heavy buyers, show the balance between price and quality as components of store brand value and generators of loyalty among medium buyers, and highlight the need to strengthen the image of store brand quality to reinforce the value and smart shopping associations to the loyalty to store brands among light buyers.

Indounas and Arvaniti explore what makes a new health service successful through a case study analysis of three leading health care service providers in Greece. Their findings indicate that the success factors of new health services are largely in line with the literature on new service development, and reveal the significance of two factors that have not been identified by previous studies: branding and doctors’ participation in the new service development process.

Vernuccio, Pagani, Barbarossa, and Pastore analyse the antecedents of brand love in online network-based communities and develop an integrative conceptual model in which social-interactive engagement influences brand love via the mediating effects of social identity. Responses collected from European and American consumers, identified through Facebook fan pages of 20 leading international brands, were used to test the hypothesised linkages. Their results show that the positive influence of social-interactive engagement on brand love is mediated by the psychological effects related to how members perceive their self-concept based on belonging to the social group of the brand fan page.

Beise-Zee and Pongjit conceptualize and test the effect of monetary and non-monetary incentives for Word-of-Mouth (WOM) campaigns on the brand attitude of those receiving an incentivized brand recommendation, and analyse the factors that moderate this relationship using experimental design. Their findings suggest that the introduction of rewards for recommendations harms the attitude of the receiver of a recommendation towards the brand and that these negative effects further increase further with the introduction of cash rewards. They also find that the social relationship between the recommender and the new customer does not moderate the effect of incentivisation.

Säksjäärvi, van den Hende, Mugge, and van Peursem explore how brands can be kept both prominent and fresh by using existing logos as well as logo varieties. Through two experimental studies, respondents were exposed to either the existing brand logo or a logo variety, and their influence on brand prominence and freshness were examined. Their findings suggest that consumers subconsciously process logo varieties to which they are exposed in a similar way as they subconsciously process the existing logo of the brand, making both types of logo exposure effective for building brand prominence and freshness.

Peterson, AlShebil, and Bishop develop and empirically test a model of how consumers process logo changes used in rebranding. Through individual depth interviews with twelve informants they developed a model of how consumers process logo changes, which they tested through a field study with 406 respondents evaluating two actual retail brands. Their findings suggest, amongst other things, that both consumers’ interest in, and doubt about, the logo change characterize consumers’ processing of a change in logo.

Koo and Jeong explore how volunteering influences how people indulge in luxury purchases, through heightening moral self-evaluation and reducing guilt. Through three experiments they test that moral self-evaluation and reduced guilt are mediators of, and that the passive goal guidance model is a valid theory for explaining, this behaviour.

The final paper of this issue is a Pricing Strategy and Practice paper. In this paper Wasink, Just, and Sigirci, explore if the level of payment required for consumption changes the relationship between a consumer’s overall evaluation of a hedonic consumption experience and the evaluation of the first, middle, last piece and peak consumption experience. They analyse the relationship between price paid and the peak-end heuristic by examining the importance of peak and end experiences under two different pricing regimes (diners at an all-you-can-eat restaurant that were charged either $4 or $8 for an Italian lunch buffet). Their study also indicates that the peak-end rule may depend on specific contextual factors.

We would like to thank the reviewers involved in the assessment of the papers in this issue for providing guidance to the authors on how to improve their submissions. The people who reviewed papers in this issue are based in universities from seven different countries and are listed below in alphabetical order:

• Anubhav Aggarwal, Drexel University, USA.

• Gerard Athaide, Loyola University Maryland, USA.

• George Baltas, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece.

• Linda Brennan, RMIT University, Australia.

• Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou, University of Glasgow, UK.

• Leonor de Carvalho, Universidade de Évora, Portugal.

• Moira Fischbacher-Smith, University of Glasgow, UK.

• Jungkeun Kim, AUT University, New Zealand.

• Monika Kukar-Kinney, University of Richmond, USA.

• Jeonggyu Lee, Drexel University, USA.

• Suzanne Makarem, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA.

• Patrício Costa, Minho University, Portugal.

• Hoori Rafiein, Drexel University, USA.

• Carla-Mafé Ruiz, University of Valencia, Spain.

• David Taylor, Sacred Heart University, USA.

• Eric VanSteenburg, Montana State University, USA.

• Elaine Wallace, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland.

• Michael Walsh, West Virginia University, USA.

We hope that you find reading this issue enjoyable.