Editorial

Citation

Veloutsou, F.G.a.C. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-03-2014-0529

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Product & Brand Management, Volume 23, Issue 3

Introduction

The current issue of the Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, has in total 11 contributions; 5 papers on product and brand management, 2 papers on pricing strategy and practice and 4 book reviews.

Using data collected via face-to-face interviews, a survey and content analysis in the UK, Blankson, Kalafatis, Coffie and Tsogas undertake a comparative examination of TV, newspaper, pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and billboard marketing executions to project the positioning strategies of service brands. They examine whether there is evidence of congruence/fit between the brand voice, the adopted communications and the target audience positioning perceptions of the brands. Their findings suggest that, overall, there is a failure to translate strategic brand decisions into the corresponding positioning messages, and that brand positioning cannot be only supported through marketing communications.

Lähtinen, Samaniego and Toppinen focus on Nordic wood furniture designers, in particular the ecodesign in Scandinavian wooden furniture industries, who extensively leverage the country of origin in their branding strategies. Their findings suggest that the integration of ecological criteria in the designers’ brand identities influences both the perception of material, process optimization and the end use of wooden furniture, and the perception of the recyclability of these products.

Using data collected online from 600 consumers in Germany, Schallehn, Burmann and Riley develop a brand authenticity scale that consists of six items. Using data from two product categories, beer and fast food, they suggest that the antecedents of brand authenticity are brand individuality, brand consistency and brand continuity. Their results also suggest that brand authenticity is a very good predictor of brand trust.

Wang and Finn compare cross-product-category consumer-based brand equity. They develop an instrument using two student data sets collected in North America with data on two product categories: soft drinks and cars. They suggest that their instrument, which consists of 25 items measuring brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty, perceived quality and uniqueness, can be used to assess equity in multiple product categories.

Banerjee and Roy discuss brand identity and brand image and propose a framework to measure identity and image consistency. They test their framework using data collected from consumers, managers and cross-functional partners of a brand in India.

Paswan, Crawford, Ngamsiriudom and Nguyen examine consumers' reactions to price increases. With data from the USA, and with a focal product that can be considered essential, namely, gasoline, their results suggest that a price increase intensifies consumer anxiety and, as a result, the average quantity purchased.

Weisstein, Asgari and Siew examine the role of pricing in the relationship between “green attitudes” and purchase intention of “green products”. Based on experimental data, their results suggest that different formats of price promotions influence consumers’ purchase perceptions differently.

In the book review section, Paswan reviews Dyers, Gregersen and Christensen's book titled The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. Bishop reviews Sicard’s book titled Brand Revolution. Rethinking Brand Identity. Hardenrbook reviews Adner’s book titled The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation. Finally, Dietz reviews the second edition of Kapferer and Bastein’s book titled The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands.

We hope that you find reading this issue enjoyable. We would like to thank the reviewers who were involved in the assessment of the papers in this issue, for providing guidance to the authors on how to further improve their submissions.

Francisco Guzmán and Cleopatra Veloutsou