Guest editorial
| Date | 19 November 2018 |
| Pages | 733-734 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-005 |
| Published date | 19 November 2018 |
| Author | Nicolas Papadopoulos,Mark Cleveland,Boris Bartikowski |
| Subject Matter | Marketing,Product management,Brand management/equity |
Guest editorial
Introduction to the special issue
Beyond country and brand “Origin”: product/brand
place associations and the role of place image in
behaviour and strategy
The objective of this Special Issu e (SI) was to “go beyond”
country and/or brand “origin”. As we not ed in the Call for
Papers, the traditional “Country of origin”(COO) construct
is old, tired, much debated and much mali gned, while both it
and its more recent cousin, “brand origin ”,alongwiththe
growing interest in “place”studies in tourism and other
cogent fields, show that geography may be e ven more relevant
today than ever before –globalisat ion notwithstanding. In
terms of going beyond “Country”origin, country is but one of
several possible geographic loci, an din terms of going beyond
“Brand”origin, brands can be administered fr om one place,
owned by a parent company headquartere d in a different
place, designed in another, assemb led in still another, from
components designed and sourced in numerous lo cales,
promoted by a spokesperson associated w ith a particular
place, sold by retailers located in on e or several places and
purchased by consumers living in ma ny places, some of whom
may have multiple ethnic origins or national ities –and named
in relation to an origin differen t from their own (e.g. the
Japanese-origin Subaru “Outback”or Cal ifornia’s“Gabbiano
Chianti Classico”wines). In a nut shell, what matters today is
the place with which a product or a brand is ass ociated by its
marketer and in the eyes of its buye rs.
The authors who submitted manuscrip ts and the reviewers
who helped to select papers for inclusion understoodthe need
to “go beyond”well and made it possible to meet t he SI’s
objective in spades. The magnitud e of the task of developing
this issue, and the exhilarating fe eling we as Guest Editors had
as we saw the process unfold in the right direction, ar e best
reflected in the numbers involved: I n total, 131 authors and
reviewers, located at 95 instit utions in 32 countries and six
continents, engaged with us to bring ab out the collection of
papers that have been included. Ac counting for the original
manuscripts and R&Rs this amounted t o 115 papers and 116
reviews, and since each of the three of us as Guest Editors
assessed each paper and each review c arefully, on our part
these figures meant evaluating 345 pape r and 348 review
iterations, or a total of 693 document as sessments. Among
other things, this helps to bet ter understand the work of
Editors-in-Chief who have to deal with hu ndreds of
submissions each year; we are grat eful to JPBM’s co-editors,
Dr Cleopatra Veloutsou (who had pr imary responsibility for
this SI) and Dr Francisco Guzmán , for “being always there”
for us throughout.
The papers comprising this SI clearl y get away from the
narrow conceptualizations of “COO”and related terms and
consider, instead, the bigger picture of pr oduct and brand
place associations (PBPA) and t he role that place image plays
in consumer behaviour and brand str ategy. The issue begins
and ends with two papers that deal with broad overviews of
the field. The first, by the Guest Editors and At tila Yaprak,
presents a holistic view of the PBP A area focussed on an
inventory of 32 place-related consum er dispositions toward
domestic and foreign goods. The las t, by Andéhn and
L’Espoir DeCosta, closes the is sue with a detailed overview of
problems that characterise the COO res earch stream. The ten
papers in-between focus on a variety of specific place-related
subjects that take us “beyond”trad itional foci in place
research.
In the first of these papers, the second of the SI, Bauer,
Johnson and Singh examine the role of consistency between
place and the place-related brand stereotyping, while the third,
by Kucharska, Flisikowski, and Confente reverses the usual
place-to-brand direction of associationby looking at the effects
of global brands on their countries of origin. The next three
papers move from the global to the subnational level: Sloan,
Aiken and Mikkelson look at the congruency between brands
and regions within the USA, Donner and Fort study place-
brand building fromthe stakeholder perspective inFrance, and
Martin and Capelli elaborate on terminal versus instrumental
values in the context of place brand communities, also in
France. Next, three papers study “places”in contexts where
traditional research does not go often: Aruan, Crouch and
Quester take us to the r ealm of services, Me shreki, Ennew
and Murad to industr ial buyers, and Schade, Piehler, Müll er
and Burmann to the ro le of city-level pla ce images in
attracting skil led workers. Last but not least, in the subject-
specific studies, two papers deal with an issue of current and
growing importance, namely, cross-border mergers and
acquisitions,and their effects on place associations: Matarazzo,
Lanzilli and Resciniti focus on country image and corporate
reputation in cross-border acquisitions, and Johansson, Koch,
Varga and Zhaoon change-of-ownershipeffects on the image of
premiumbrands.
Taken individually and together , the papers deal with a
wide scope of issues, were written by scholars representing a
variety of cultural and academic pe rspectives, and use a broad
range of methodological approache s, from conceptual to
empirical and from structural equat ion modelling and
econometrics to qualitative netn ography. We cannot thank
our authors and reviewers enough an d we owe them a debt of
gratitude. We trust that their c ombined efforts will help to
spawn new place-related research that , along the lines of the
papers in this issue, goes “beyond”t he ordinary.
We thank our reviewers most prof oundly:
Zafar Ahmed, American Univers ity of Ras Al Khaimah,
UAE.
Thomas Aichner, Alfaisal Univer sity, Saudi Arabia.
Noel Albert, Kedge Business Sc hool, France.
Mikael Andéhn, Royal Holloway Un iversity of London,
UK.
Anahit Armenakyan, Nipissing Uni versity, Canada.
Søren Askegaard, Syddansk Univer sitet, Denmark.
Daniel Baack, University of De nver, USA.
Sally Baalbaki, Metropolitan S tate University of Denver,
USA.
Naval Bajpai, Indian Inst. of In formation Technology &
Management, India.
Georgios Baltas, Athens Universi ty of Economics and
Business, Greece.
Journal of Product & Brand Management
27/7 (2018) 733–734
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421]
[DOI 10.1108/JPBM-11-2018-005]
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