Editorial

Citation

Veloutsou, C. and Guzman, F. (2018), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 469-470. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-08-2018-004

Welcome to the fifth issue of Volume 27 of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. This issue has in total nine contributions mostly focusing on brand management, with work that examines the role of senses in understanding and evaluating brands, the effect of brands when presented together, brand strength and employer branding. We hope that you find this issue enjoyable and that these papers will contribute to your research and academic thinking. The contributions in this particular issue were authored from twenty-five who work in ten different countries.

The first three papers focus on the role of sensual stimuli in branding with an emphasis on behavioural outcomes. Clearly, many types of sensual stimuli are key in enhancing brand experiences that lead to brand evaluations and brand related consumer behaviour, and as a result, research in this area has increased in the past few years.

Leonidas Hatzithomas, Panagiotis Gkorezis, Athina Zotou and George Tsourvakas examine the role of store atmospherics in generating word of mouth (WoM) for short-life-cycle products. The study uses data collected from 314 students recruited outside large cinemas in Thessaloniki (Greece) to assess how movie theatres’ atmospherics predict positive WoM intentions for movies. The results support that atmospherics generate positive emotions that lead to attitude towards the movie (brand) and intentions to share positive comments and recommend the movie (positive WoM).

Damien Hallegatte, Myriam Ertz and Francois Marticotte focus on brands with a past and evaluate the role of retro music in triggering behaviour expressed through the willingness to attend an event (purchase), the intention to share positive WoM, and the willingness to pay a price premium. A total of four experiments in different scenarios with 181 subjects, chosen based on their knowledge of rock music, revealed that mixing the past and the present for a retro brand partially impacts consumer behaviour. In particular this tactic increases the willingness to attend an event and the willingness to pay a price premium, but not the intention to generate more positive WoM.

The conceptual paper authored from Andreas Eklund and Miralem Helmefalk is based on a strong literature review of work published in marketing and psychology. The authors propose a conceptual framework that illustrates how visual-tactile interplay provokes various consumer responses in terms of cognition, emotion, and behaviour. The authors also argue that the responses depend on whether the focal objects are brands, products or servicescapes.

Brands are not only assessed on the basis of stimuli and atmospherics, but also on the basis of various associations, including the association with other brands. The following two papers discuss brand alliances and the various effects of presenting multiple brands together in various contexts.

Daniel Böger, Pascal Kottemann and Reinhold Decker use data from 317 respondents collected online to examine the effect of using two well-known brands, with distinguishable associations and look, as parent brands on the perception of a newly formed co-branding alliance. They find that the perception of a co-brand arises from a weighted merge of the multiple parent brands’ perceptions and the relevant use of each of the parent brands in supporting the newly formed co-brand.

Arpita Agnihotri, Saurabh Bhattacharya and Satya Prasad look at another form of co-branding, multiple celebrity endorsements. The data for this study were collected from various Indian archival sources. The results indicate that reputable celebrities can positively influence a brand, as the company’s valuation increases as celebrity endorsement increases. The results also indicate that this effect is not present for endorsement in social media.

The overall objective of any company is to build stronger brands. The next three papers concentrate on brand strength measures, in terms of brand evaluations, brand attachment, and brand equity.

Sabrina Hegner, Ardion Beldad and Ruth Hulzink focus on the tactics that companies should adopt in crisis situations to protect the overall evaluation of their brand. Data were collected from experiments with 180 Dutch participants. The study finds that when a company discloses information, consumers’ attitudes, trust, and purchase intention are higher compared to when the disclosure is from another source. The type of the crisis also affects the overall evaluations and behavioural intentions.

Anna Vredeveld uses data from 447 online respondents to examine the effect of external emotional brand connections and emotional intelligence on brand attachment. The findings indicate that both external emotional brand connections and emotional intelligence lead to brand attachment, which in turn can lead to more positive brand attitudes and purchase intention.

Marta de Oliviera, Aline Stefanan and Mauri Leodir Lobler focus on brand equity and investors’ risk. They use monthly data of 732 stocks in the Latin American market over a 10-year period, collected by Economatica, to examine the most valuable brands in the region as reported by Millward Brown. The results indicate that a lower risk for investors exists when they invest in the most valuable brands in these emerging markets.

In the final paper of this issue, Lorena Ronda, Carmen Valor and Carmen Abril use a systematic literature review to examine employer brand attractiveness. The paper proposes a framework that supports employer choice that consists from employer attributes, employee benefits and employee perceived value.

For this issue, the Journal of Product and Brand Management relied on the help of 21 reviewers based in ten different countries and four continents. They are listed below in alphabetical order:

• Antonio Azevedo, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

• Mike Breazeale, Mississippi State University, USA

• Isabel Buil, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain

• Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou, University of Glasgow, UK

• Michelle Childs, University of Tennessee, USA

• Kesha K Coker, Eastern Illinois University, USA

• Arezoo Davari, Eastern Washington University, USA

• Nebojsa S. Davcik, University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal

• Nabil Ghantous, Qatar University, Qatar

• Mark Goode, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK

• Julien Grobert, IAE de Toulouse, France

• Ulla Hakala, University of Turku, Finland

• Jeonggyu Lee, Drexel University Bennett, USA

• Amira Fouad Ahmed Mahran, Cairo University, Egypt

• Emmanuel Mogaji, University of Greenwich, UK

• Laurent Muzellec, UCD Michael Smurfit, Ireland

• Anders Parment, Stockholm University, Sweden

• Luca Petruzzellis, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

• Khanyapuss Punjaisri, University of Kent, UK

• Amanda Spry, Cardiff University, UK

• Donald Phillip Roy, Middle Tennessee State, USA

• Jane Thomas, Winthrop University, USA

• Cara Wrigley, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

We would like to thank all these reviewers for helping the Journal to improve the quality of its content by providing their time and expertise.

We hope that you find reading this issue interesting and enjoyable.