Abstract
An underdog brand is a brand with humble resources that competes with passion and determination against competitors that dominate a market. Numerous anecdotal examples and a few research articles of underdog brands exist, yet the understanding of what an underdog brand is and how brands can use the underdog effect is still limited. Considering the relevance of underdog brand management for practice, the purpose of our article is to distill the components of the concepts “underdog brand” and “the underdog effect” and to propose a conceptual framework to guide underdog brand management. To achieve this goal, we undertook a systematic review of the extant literature that resulted in (1) a clear and demarking definition of the term underdog brand, (2) an analysis of the usefulness of the underdog effect and (3) a reference frame we termed “the underdog brand management framework”. By doing so, we helped to overcome the research gap in the field of underdog brand management. To validate our findings, we tested the framework against a case study of a successful underdog brand. Our analysis resulted in a robust model that could inspire and guide practitioners who are in charge of underdog brands.
Highlights
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters; it’s the size of the fight in the dog (Fishman 2014, 28).The term “underdog” is often used to refer to disadvantaged individuals or groups who are not likely to win (Vandello et al 2007; Kim et al 2008) but it is not as old as it may seem
We specified the research questions which we formulated as follows: how are underdog brands defined in past and current literature? What effect can a brand expect by using its underdog status or heritage? And, most important: how can brands use the underdog effect to strengthen brand image and reputation? Following this, we defined the relevant keywords and decided to search for the keywords “underdog” AND (“brand” OR “marketing” OR “consumer behavior")
The results show that underdog brands are described as smaller, less powerful and with fewer resources (Hoch and Deighton 1989; McGinnis and Gentry 2009; Sidali and Hemmerling 2014; Sidali et al 2015; Anonymous 2014; Laybats and Tredinnick 2015); lesser known (Gnepa 1993); with less chance of success than the top dog (Baik and Shogren 1992; Wolburg 2003), but determined to succeed (Wolburg 2003; Paharia et al 2011) despite the disadvantage (McGinnis and Gentry 2009; Keinan et al 2010)
Summary
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters; it’s the size of the fight in the dog (Fishman 2014, 28). We provide a comprehensive review of sources of the positive underdog effect This might encourage brand researchers to include the underdog effect in brand management theories; further, brand practitioners can take advantage of the underdog effect by tapping into consumers’ affection for underdogs. The literature review uncovers themes which become the building blocks of a proposed conceptual underdog brand management framework These themes are sequenced and presented in the discussion section of this article. We strive to validate the framework by assessing an underdog brand and comparing the insights of the case with the results of our literature-based analysis This is the first step, and it is hoped that other researchers will follow suit and apply the framework to case studies in different contexts.
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