Impacts of brand familiarity and brand responses on perceived brand credibility, similarity, and blog recommendation intention: a study of corporate blogs

PurposeAdopting the theory of parasocial interaction (PSI) and schema theory, this study proposes that a brand’s personalized response and brand familiarity on a corporate blog will lead to higher perceived brand similarity, credibility and blog recommendation intention.Design/methodology/approachA 2 (brand familiarity: high, low) × 3 (brand responses: none, automated and personal) experimental design was developed to test the hypothesized relationships. A total of 474 qualified data were collected using an online survey. ANOVA was utilized to test the research hypotheses.FindingsStudy results revealed that personalized messages lead to stronger perceived brand similarity, credibility and blog recommendation intention than those exposed to automated and no response. Brand familiarity also significantly influenced perceived brand similarity, brand credibility and blog recommendation intention. Further, the study analysis revealed an interesting interaction effect between brand awareness and brand response on recommendation intention.Originality/valueThe study provides meaningful implications and suggestions for the effective corporate blogging strategy to influence consumers’ attitudes and image toward brands and establish strong brand equity and relationships with customers.

BRAND SIMILARITY – ITS ROLE ON BRAND LOYALTY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

The concept of brand loyalty is a strategic potent weapon for companies in order to obtain sustainable competitive advantages. Brand loyalty has been identified as a major determinant of brand equity. In simple words, improving consumers’ brand loyalty allows firms to secure a comfortable long-term position in the market place. Similarity is the search for connections between similar objects or identifying something common between two comparable objects. The main objective of this research work is to identify the influence of brand similarity on brand loyalty. By using convenience sampling method 200 respondents from cuddalore district, tamilnadu were used to collect the data.

Who says what?: exploring the impacts of content type and blog type on brand credibility, brand similarity and eWOM intention

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to conduct an exploratory study to discover if presenting consumers with a certain content type (i.e. product-focused content with informational appeal, institution-focused content with emotional appeal, experience-focused content with emotional appeal,) and blog type (i.e. a corporate, sponsored or a personal blog) persuade consumers to form perceptions of credibility and similarity toward the fashion brand, which leads them to further engage with the brand through Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM).Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a 3(content type: product-focused, institution-focused, experience-focused) x 3(blog type: corporate, sponsored and personal) between-subjects design. Mock fashion blogs and content were developed in order to provide a realistic blogging experience for the participants. With 511 usable data collected, ANOVA was employed to test the relationships.FindingsFindings reveal that content type, specifically product-focused content and experiential content, is an important consideration for illustrating similarities between the brand and consumers compared to institutional content. Product-focused content is found to be effective in encouraging consumer eWOM for the brand as well. Further, the interaction effect of blog type and content type was significant in establishing brand credibility. However, blog type did not influence any of the dependent variable.Originality/valueThis study brings meaningful suggestions to fashion brands on effective blog campaign, which eventually provide insights on how brands can influence female consumers to shape positive evaluation toward the brand.

The asymmetric patterns of adverse extension effects on narrow and broad brands: perspectives on brand structure and extension typicality

Purpose This study aims to examine the impacts of brand structure (i.e. brand cohesiveness and similarity) on brand perceptions and the adverse effects of brand extensions. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected online via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Overall, 188 US residents participated in the 2 (extension typicality: typical and atypical) × 3 (brand cohesiveness: high, medium and low) between-subject experimental design. Findings Narrow brands are favored over cohesive broad brands, and cohesive broad brands are favored over incohesive broad brands. When new extensions are typical, brand cohesiveness dominates brand similarity in terms of adverse extension effects. Negative extension information exerts more salient adverse effects on narrow brands and cohesive broad brands than on incohesive broad brands. Conversely, when new extensions are atypical, brand similarity dominates brand cohesiveness on adverse extension effects. Negative extension information exerts more salient adverse effects on narrow brands than on cohesive and incohesive broad brands. Research limitations/implications Brand cohesiveness is more impactful than brand similarity on brand perceptions. The identical adverse effects of typical extensions on narrow, and broad brands exist only when the portfolio products of the broad brands are cohesive. Practical implications Cohesive broad brands have the advantages of being more favored than incohesive broad brands and being less vulnerable to negative atypical extension information than are narrow brands. Originality/value This study advances brand research by examining the interplay between brand structure (i.e. category cohesiveness and similarity) and extension typicality on adverse extension effects.

Mapping brand similarities: Comparing consumer online comments versus survey data

Online consumer behavior has become a valuable and viable source of consumer insights. Consumer comments in online forums, or discussion groups, have proven useful as a source to extract brand similarity data from. Apart from the cost and speed advantages, such data can be captured easily over different time periods. Both online consumer-generated data (CGD) and surveys have their pros and cons. To date, little is known as to how these two data sources compare in terms of brand insights. In this study, we discuss the results from analyzing survey and consumer-generated online data pertaining to the U.S. skincare market. Our study included 57 brands, and we used multidimensional scaling (MDS), t-stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE; an alternative to MDS), hierarchical clustering, and additive similarity trees (an extension of hierarchical clustering) to analyze the data. We show that the outcomes vary between CGD and surveys. As an additional insight, we show that, rather than the spatial scaling methods, additive trees result in a much better fit of brand similarity data in cases where we have many brands.

Perceptual mapping based on web search queries and consumer forum comments

Consumers’ online activities such as keyword searching and writing reviews can provide valuable information that reflects their perception of the market. This study proposes ways to analyze market structure and draw a perceptual map from the following two types of online data: keyword search and online consumer forum data. We apply our methodology to the imported car brands in South Korea automobile market. The multidimensional scaling (MDS) results provide different consumer insights depending on the nature of data. The inter-brand similarity values derived from the proposed two metrics are shown to be correlated. Especially, using consumer forum data, we apply our metric to analyzing the market structure of two sub-markets: midsize sedan and compact crossover sport utility vehicle (SUV). Furthermore, utilizing the proposed measures, we calculate the prototypicality of a brand and demonstrate its positive effect on sales. Marketing managers can apply our technique to understand the market structure and perform longitudinal studies to monitor consumers’ perceptual changes without conducting a time-consuming, traditional survey method.