Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Product & Brand Management, Volume 18, Issue 3

What drives a brand’s success? Is it the prior experiences that a consumer has had with that specific brand? Is it a company’s successes with previous brands, or the fact that a company is engaging in brand extension? Is it that a company’s reputation has been so positive, that consumer confidence in that company adds to the idea that what the company has offered before (in terms of products and/or services) can only mean that what they now have to offer is at the same quality level? How can a company measure the strength of their particular brand, and what is driving a brand’s success?These are but some of the many factors that have to be considered in the global marketplace today. Success is not easy to come by, nor is it guaranteed.

Vukaosvic examines the concept of what is the meaning of brand management and how is it dealt with in practice. What is the importance pf positioning in the light of brand image and identity? What are the ways to measure brand strength with the aid of brand potential index (BPI) and to identify the characteristics(key drivers) that have the greatest influence on brand strength? The author determines that a company’s key to success is to determine what makes its brand so different from the competition and to continue with its mission as successfully in the future as well.

Omar, Williams and Lingelbach make a case for the practical management of corporate reputation and investigate its relationship with other related elements. The authors explore the development of the management of corporate reputation in relation to two groups of concepts:

• 1.

  Communication, identity and trust.

• 2.

  Communication, identity and image.

The two concepts create guidelines for managing corporate reputation:companies should manage their corporate reputation in relation to trustworthiness and credibility, which (in part) are based on the past achievement of the firm. The authors present a case study of a market-entry global branding strategy by an emerging multinational corporation.

Rajamma, Paswan and Hossain explore the factors leading to the consumer’s propensity to abandon the shopping cart at the online transaction completion stage. For online shopping environment, the authors findings suggest that marketers must pay attention to the perception of risk and transaction inconvenience (even for familiar brands) otherwise they risk losing consumers during the final stage of transaction. This is a fact that affects all online brand shoppers.

Wallace and de Chernatony explore managers’ and employees’ views about service brand sabotage at the front line in retail banking. Much of the current literature explores service performance from the perspective of the consumer, and little is known about the employee’s views. The authors offer suggestions to help managers to help better control sabotage in this service sector, and make recommendations for future research that will help to further address this problem.

Olson examines the brand impact of intra-brand platforms sharing. The authors shows that platform sharing has been shown to damage brand equity in inter-brand applications, but the author’s findings suggest that intra-brand platform sharing is safe for the brand and allows marketing managers to also benefit from the cost savings in product design, manufacturing and servicing that have made the technique popular.

In this issue you will also find our Pricing strategy & practice section as well as our book review section.

Richard C. Leventhal