Guest editorial
| Pages | 433-434 |
| Published date | 21 August 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-06-2017-1485 |
| Date | 21 August 2017 |
| Author | Ravi Pappu,George Christodoulides |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
Guest editorial
Defining, measuring and managing brand equity
Introduction
Our call for papers was in response to the numerous
unanswered questions on brand equity (Christodoulides and
de Chernatony, 2010) despite extensive research on and
significant advances in our understanding of its
conceptualization (Aaker, 1991;Keller, 1993), measurement
(Pappu et al., 2005) and management (Yoo et al., 2000). Not
surprisingly the special issue has received an overwhelming
response with more than 60 submissions. We have selected
eight papers that examine a variety of themes including new
ways of measuring and developing (e.g. CSR, brand
spokesperson, new branding strategies and copycat practices)
brand equity. While these papers offer rich and varied
contributions to the literature on brand equity, many of the
important questions raised in the call for papers remain still
unaddressed.
In the opening paper of this special issue, Guzman and
Davis focus on the impact of CSR communications on
consumer-based brand equity by examining the role of
brand-cause fit. They distinguish between brand value-cause fit
and brand function-cause fit; the former refers to the “perceived
relatedness of the functional needs evidenced by the social
cause with the function of a brand’s product or service”, whilst
the latter is “the perceived relatedness of the values of the
social cause with the values of the brand”. Using survey data
from 370 undergraduate students the authors find evidence
for the differential effect of these two types of fit on consumer
attitudes which in turn build brand equity. The paper provides
implications for the selection of CSR initiatives and
demonstrates how these may be used to strategically build
brand equity.
The next paper by Blair, Athanasova, Pitt, Chan and
Wallstrom examines the viability of the financial perspective of
brand equity in the in the luxury wine market by focussing in
the Bordeaux region. Using the Parker score as an established
measure of equivalence, the authors calculate brand equity for
one wine of a particular vintage over another of the same
vintage as the difference in price for a bottle of that wine from
another wine with an identical Parker score. Their findings
suggest that brand equity in the luxury wine market exists and
that this is not only true for the brand of a specific château but
also for vintage and growth.
Stocchi and Fuller argue for the necessity to analyse brand
equity at the disaggregate level and provide evidence to
illustrate that significant differences occur in the analysis of
brand equity strength amongst three segments of consumers
(non-users,light users and heavy users) in two markets, namely,
soft drinks and banks. Based on their data, the authors
advocate for a segment-level appraisal of brand equity at least
vis-a
`-vis brand image given that aggregation might negate
what would be significant insights into the perceptions of most
loyal/least loyal customers.
The paper by Romaniuk, Faulkner and Wight focuses on a
significant yet often neglected dimension of brand equity by
offering one of few multi-country investigations into brand
awareness. Using longitudinal data from whisky consumers in
three international markets (i.e. UK, Greece and Taiwan), the
study examines three metrics of brand awareness: top of mind,
unprompted and aided recall. Based on their analyses, the
authors argue that the brands’ market share should be a key
consideration when selecting an appropriate metric for brand
awareness and offer relevant guidance for small, medium and
large market share brands.
Mohan, Jiménez, Brown and Caley introduce the concept of
brand skill and define it as the extent to which consumers
perceive their own performance as emanating from their use of
a particular brand. The results show that brand skill mediates
the relationship between brand functionality and
consumer-based brand equity and that the relationship is
moderated by the type of dominant benefit the brand provides
(hedonic- versus utilitarian-dominant). This paper highlights
the importance of brand functionality in comparison to
non-functional brand dimensions.
Zoghaib examines an interesting question – how do the
voice characteristics of a brand’s spokesperson affect the
brand’s equity. Results of their experimental investigation
demonstrate how a spokesperson’s voice pitch can help in
building a brand’s equity. The study finds that low-pitched
voices induce distinctive and positive brand associations as
well as greater brand recall regardless of the gender of the
spokesperson or that of the respondents. The author argues
that brand managers should choose a spokesperson with a
low-pitched voice to strengthen brand associations such as
strength, warmth, wisdom and maturity and a high-pitched
voice to strengthen associations such as lightness, happiness,
youth and modernity.
Stoner, Torelli and Monga examine how two different types
of a brand’s abstractness, portfolio abstractness and image
abstractness, interact to influence a brand’s equity. Their
results make an important contribution by demonstrating that
image abstractness moderates the impact of portfolio
abstractness on brand attitudes. Specifically, high portfolio
abstractness is associated with more favorable brand
evaluations at low levels of image abstractness but not at high
levels of image abstractness. In contrast, high image
abstractness is found to positively influence brand evaluations
both at low and high levels of portfolio abstractness. The
results also suggest that the equity built through image
abstractness (vs portfolio abstractness) is more resilient to
negative brand publicity.
In the final paper, Vogel and Watchravesringkan examine a
topical issue – how imitating the product design of another
brand may dilute the equity of the copying brand. The authors
find that imitating the innovative product design of other
brands adversely affects the consumer-based equity of the
copying brand and that such negative effects are stronger for
luxury brands than for follower brands.
In conclusion, the papers in this special issue attest to the
increasing complexity of today’s “brandscape” and failure of
one-size-fits-all solutions to managing brands. Researchers
increasingly recognise that brand equity is a complex,
multi-faceted and non-linear construct whose measurement
needs sophisticated methodologies and brand equity systems
that take into account inter alia the brand’s characteristics and
Journal of Product & Brand Management
26/5 (2017) 433–434
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-06-2017-1485]
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