Editorial

Citation

Guzmán, F. and Veloutsou, C. (2017), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 26 No. 7, pp. 669-670. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-09-2017-1585

Welcome to the last issue of Volume 26 of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. This issue has in total eight contributions. The first four contributions included in this issue cover a myriad of current and relevant brand and product management topics, while the others are the last four pricing strategy papers that the journal will publish. We hope that this will be enjoyable and useful for your research. The authors of the eight papers in this issue are researchers based at universities from five different countries.

Michelle Childs develops a systematic literature review on brand extension feedback effects. After analysing relevant publications, she identifies a set of research issues that have inhibited the advancement of this stream of literature. Specific research questions are presented to address the issues identified.

O’Reilly, Mumuni, Newell and Addicott examine the relative impact of three drivers affecting consumers’ usage consideration for a brand extension into a service category using data from actual consumers of an oil change retailer. Their results indicate that parent brand evaluations are the strongest driver of brand extension usage consideration, regardless of extension fit or the degree of service intensity of the extension. In addition, the findings suggest that the closer the fit to the parent brand, the more likely the extension is considered. In contrast, consumers are less likely to consider using an extension as the level of service intensity increases.

Han-Chiang, Lado and Rivera-Torres examine consumer attitude towards a new type of co-branded high-technology and luxury products (HLCPs). They apply the Affect-Behaviour-Cognition model of attitudes to explore how affect and cognition drive consumer behaviour towards HLCPs. Using structural equation modeling, they find that consumers use both affect and cognition simultaneously when forming an attitude towards HLCPs. Also, consumers’ perception of product fit represents a more relevant driver of consumer behaviour with respect to brand fit.

Zhu, Cao and Li explore how logo design characteristics influence consumer response based on visual representation. Using the Kansei Engineer method, 115 logos of youth education brands were classified into three categories – abstract, natural and text mark. Their results show that four factors – sense of contemporaneity, sense of aesthetics, feeling of interest and sense of style – affect the liking of a logo.

Xia and Bechwati present a model that links price promotions to checkout donations. They argue that price promotions evoke two perceptions/emotions, feelings of gratitude and perceived sacrifice of purchase, which, consequently, influence the likelihood to donate. Their findings suggest that compared to no-discount situations, high discounts enhance consumers’ intention to donate, while low discounts reduce this intention. The effects are mediated by feelings of gratitude and sacrifice and moderated by effort obtaining the discount and format of the discount.

DelVecchio, Heath and Chauvin explore how multi-unit discounts (MUDs) increase sales relative to other discounting frames. They test the effectiveness of MUDs in both the field and a lab. Their study demonstrates the value of MUDs by showing that positive multi-unit price/quantity signals are potent enough to match and even exceed the sales produced by larger discounts on single items.

Estelami and Nejad explore how a manager’s price responses to price cuts by a competitor are affected by his/her cognitive style, gender and entrepreneurial attitudes. Through two studies, they find significant effects for cognitive style, gender and entrepreneurial attitudes. Individuals with stronger entrepreneurial attitudes and analytical cognitive styles, and females, are less likely to engage in reactive price reductions.

Finally, Mario Kienzler explores the relationship between the five basic personality traits of the five-factor model (extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism) and three basic pricing practices (value-, competition- and cost-informed). Through the examination of the pricing decisions of 57 managers in relation to a new business service, his findings suggest that managers’ conscientiousness and openness to experience are positively related to preference for value-informed pricing. Similarly, managers’ agreeableness is positively related to preference for competition-informed pricing, and managers’ openness to experience and agreeableness are positively related to preference for cost-informed pricing.

For this issue, the Journal of Product and Brand Management relied on the help of 17 reviewers based in nine different countries. They are listed below in alphabetical order:

1. Siddharth Bhatt, Drexel University, USA;

2. Ursula Bougoure, University of Newcastle, Australia;

3. Christop Burmann, University of Bremen, Germany;

4. Ana Filipa Corte-Real, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal;

5. Eric Dolansky, Brock University, USA;

6. Shan Feng, William Patterson University, USA;

7. Elaine Francisco Maffezzolli, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Brazil;

8. Bianca Grohmann, Concordia University, Canada;

9. Jony Haryanto, President University, Indonesia;

10. Kostis Indounas, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece;

11. Beichen Lang, East Tennesee State University, USA;

12. Raj Manchanda, University of Manitoba, Canada;

13. Sanjay Mishra, University of Kansas, USA;

14. Scott Motyka, Keck Graduate Institute, USA;

15. HG Parsa, Denver University, USA;

16. Lei Song, Stockton University, USA; and

17. Amanda Spry, Cardiff University, UK.

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 intellectually stimulating and enjoyable.