Editorial

Citation

Guzman, F. and Veloutsou, C. (2017), "Editorial", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 529-530. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2017-1521

This is the sixth issue of Volume 26 of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. It consists of nine contributions, all on different product and brand management topics, by 24 researchers based at universities from ten different countries and five continents.

The first two papers stem from the 11th Global Brand Conference held at University of Bradford, Bradford, UK on April 27-29, 2016.

The first paper, by Emmanuel Mogaji and Annie Danbury, focuses on how UK banks use emotional appeals in their advertisements and how this shapes consumers’ attitudes towards their brands. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, they conduct two studies that reveal that the use of emotional appeals in their marketing communication strategies leads to a bi-dimensional nature of feelings towards the advertisements and thus how consumers relate to the brand of the bank.

The second paper by Agus Harjoto and Jim Salas investigates the impact of strategic and institutional (normative) CSR on brand value and brand reputation. Relying on secondary data and indicators, they find that strategic CSR enhances brand value, while socially irresponsible activities that are against social norms, values and ethics, adversely affect the companies’ legitimacy and adversely affect changes in brand reputation.

Tiebing Shi, Jiandong Li and Chi Lo Lim investigate the factors impacting host country consumers’ attitudes toward acquirers’ corporate brands and target brands after cross-border-acquisitions (CBA). Using survey data from US consumers, they find that:

• consumer ethnocentric tendencies (CETs) are negatively related to attitudes toward a CBA event;

• attitudes toward a CBA event are positively related to post-CBA attitudes toward the acquirer’s corporate brand;

• brand-image fit is positively related to attitudes toward a CBA event, and post-CBA attitudes toward the acquirer’s corporate brand and the target brand; and

• post-CBA attitudes toward the acquirer’s corporate brand and the target brand are positively related.

Beat Wafler and Yuosre Badir analyse how twelve brands from two global Multinational Companies (MNCs) deal with market uncertainty and political instability in a newly emerging market (Vietnam), and how this affected the impact of their product marketing strategy (PMS) and product (brand) performance. A comparative longitudinal paired case study of a market entry by two global MNCs. Their findings indicate that product standardization, adaptation and semi-adaptation are processes applied to fit a product to a newly emerging market.

Huda Khan, Richard Lee and Larry Lockshi study the effectiveness of using standard versus localised packaging the localisation, by examining the differential influence of standard (Western) and local (Urdu) packaging on Pakistani consumers’ perceptions and choice under conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption situations. Their findings suggest that indiscriminately localising the packaging of any products, as they enter foreign markets may not be the most effective strategy for international marketers.

Marco Vriens and Alessandro Martins Alves investigate modelling implicit attitudes as potential drivers of overall brand attitudes and stated behaviour and how the results are expected to be different from brand driver models that are based on explicit attitudes. Their findings, consistent across five countries and 15 categories, show that implicit attitudes result in a higher number of significant effects than their explicit counterparts when used to explain behavioural intentions, brand closeness and brand usage in a multivariate situation. They also find fewer counter-intuitive effects in the implicit models.

Toula Perrea, Athanasios Krystallis, Charlotte Engelgreen and Polymeros Chrysochou study how customer value is created in the context of novel food products, and how customer value influences product evaluation. They propose a model formed by a series of causal relations among value (i.e. functional, social, hedonic, altruistic values) and cost perceptions (i.e. price, effort, evaluation costs, performance and product safety), their trade-offs (i.e. overall customer value) and product evaluation outcomes (i.e. satisfaction, trust). They find that perceptions about product quality, likeability and ethical image predominantly formulate customer value.

Choukri Menidjel, Abderrezzak Bernhabib and Anil Bilgihan investigate both the relationships among brand satisfaction, trust and loyalty and the moderating effects of personality traits, namely, consumer innovativeness, variety-seeking and relationship proneness, in the context of fast-moving consumer goods. They find that brand loyalty is the most affected (both directly and indirectly) by satisfaction through the mediation of brand trust in both product categories studied. Moreover, variety-seeking behaviour negatively moderates the relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty for fruit juices.

The final paper of this issue, by María Fuentes Blasco, Beatriz Moliner Velázquez, David Servera Francés and Irene Gil Saura, investigates the direct and indirect influence of marketing and technological innovation on satisfaction and word-of-mouth through three core constructs: store image, consumer value and store brand equity in a retail store context. They find that technological innovation is more important than marketing innovation in shaping image, value and satisfaction. Also, that store image is the variable that most influences customer satisfaction and that satisfaction is a significant antecedent of word-of-mouth behaviour.

For the assessment of the work that is presented in this issue, the Journal of Product and Brand Management relied on the help of eighteen reviewers. These reviewers are based in six different countries on three continents, and five of them are members of the journal’s editorial board. They are listed below in alphabetical order:

• Eleftherios Alamanos, Newcastle University, UK.

• Manon Arcand, ESG-UQAM, Canada.

• Agnieszka Baruk, Lodz University of Technology, Poland.

• Debra Basil, University of Lethbridge, Canada.

• Charles Blankson, University of North Texas, USA.

• Pavlos Dimitratos, University of Glasgow, UK.

• Abhishek Dwivedi, Charles Strut University, Australia.

• Bashar Gamoh, University of Toledo, USA.

• Gary Gregory, University of New South Wales, Australia.

• Julien Grobert, IAE de Toulouse, France.

• Richard Lee, University of Southern Australia, Australia.

• André Le Roux, IAE Université de Poitiers, France.

• SMA Moin, University of Nottingham, UK.

• Audhesh Paswan, University of North Texas, USA.

• Susan Shaw, University of Glasgow, UK.

• Eric Van Steenburg, Montana State University, USA.

• David Taylor, Sacred Heart University, USA.

• Hong Yu, Ryerson University, Canada.

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.