Research Insight 10.1

Source: Brown, G.H. (1953), ‘Brand loyalty—fact or fiction?’, Advertising Age , 43, 251–258.

Insight: In 1953, Brown published a paper entitled ‘Brand loyalty—fact or fiction?’ which summarized analysis of consumer panel data for items such as margarine, toothpaste, and coffee over a year-long period. This seminal work was the starting point for research using consumer panel data to identify brand loyalty. Brown examined the purchasing habits of 100 members of the 610 families in the USA involved in the panel to identify whether there were differences in their purchase profiles. He identified four types of loyalty which he called undivided, divided, unstable, and no loyalty.

URL: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/thetmr43&div=45&id=&page=

 

Research Insight 10.2

Source: Ehrenberg, A.S.C., Uncles, M.D., and Goodhardt, G.J. (2004), ‘Understanding brand performance measures: using Dirichlet benchmarks’, Journal of Business Research, 57, 12, 1307–1325.

Insight: Sales of a brand are determined by measures such as how many customers buy the brand, how often, and how much they also buy other brands. Scanner panel operators routinely report these “brand performance measures” (BPMs) to their clients. In this position paper, we consider how to understand, interpret, and use these measures. The measures are shown to follow well-established patterns. One is that big and small brands differ greatly in how many buyers they have, but usually far less in how loyal these buyers are. The Dirichlet model predicts these patterns. It also provides a broader framework for thinking about all competitive repeat-purchase markets—from soup to gasoline, prescription drugs to aviation fuel, where there are large and small brands, and light and heavy buyers, in contexts as diverse as the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and Australasia.

Numerous practical uses of the framework are illustrated: auditing the performance of established brands, predicting and evaluating the performance of new brands, checking the nature of unfamiliar markets, of partitioned markets, and of dynamic market situations more generally (where the Dirichlet provides theoretical benchmarks for price promotions, advertising, etc.). In addition, many implications for our understanding of consumers, brands, and the marketing mix logically follow from the Dirichlet framework. In repeat-purchase markets, there is often a lack of segmentation between brands and the typical consumer exhibits polygamous buying behaviour (though there might be strong segmentation at the category level). An understanding of these applications and implications leads to consumer insights, imposes constraints on marketing action, and provides norms for evaluating brands and for assessing marketing initiatives.

URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296303001796

 

Research Insight 10.3

Source: Van Marrewijk, A. and Broos, M. (2012), ‘Retail stores as brands: performances, theatre and space’, Consumption Markets and Culture, 15, 4, 374–391.

Insight: The scholars of Consumer Culture Theory studies as well as practitioners have recognised the potential power of spatial design in stores in constructing and communicating retail brands. Retail space and the aesthetic structuring of a range of expressive artefacts have become the stage on which shop attendants perform. This paper focuses on how management and shop attendants of Dutch menswear fashion house Oger communicate and construct the Oger brand, with a special focus on the spatial settings of the retail store. This study shows how the management carefully combines elements generally found in Italian ateliers, English gentlemen's clubs and boardrooms. The symbolic message behind the spatial design of the Oger flagship store is that of human quest for wealth and fame removed from the everyday life. In addition to this earlier observed interplay between design, display and consumption processes, this study indicates the important role of shop attendants in constructing and communicating retail brands. By forging links with organisation studies, we show how retail management carefully designed, managed and orchestrated retail space, objects and shop attendants’ roles to construct and communicate the Oger brand. The selling of products through performances in designed theatres connects organisational, economic and aesthetic realms. Finally, the paper introduces “internal design proxemics” as an extra analytical concept of spatial settings.

URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10253866.2012.659438#.VE98O3efXi4

Romaniuk, J. and Nenycz-Thiel, M. (2016). Lapsed buyers’ durable brand consideration in emerging markets. Journal of Business Research, 69, 9, 3645–51. This research examines consumers with a mixed brand buying history, attempting to understand the lapsed buyer, i.e. consumers who have purchased a brand in the past but have since defected to another brand. Looking at data across 26 brands, in a range of markets, the authors found that lapsed buyers hold more positive attitudes towards the brand than never-buyers of the brand, and the likelihood of considering the brand in future is in fact more likely than other non-customers. This shows the importance of considering the buyer’s full past history with the brand, not just current status, in theoretical models and when modelling brand choice or customer lifetime value for durables in emerging markets.

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296316300455