Brand Image Research Research Articles

The Influence of Maternity Wear Brand Image Innovation Elements on Consumer Behavior: A Grounded Theory Study

This grounded theory study investigates the influence of maternity wear brand image innovation elements on consumer behavior, addressing two main research questions: (1) How to innovate the brand image of maternity wear? and (2) What is the relationship between brand image innovation and consumer behavior in maternity wear? Maternity wear brands play a critical role in meeting the diverse needs of expectant mothers, yet in China, they often lack distinct brand identities and fail to cater to the varied preferences of pregnant women. Through a comprehensive research design, including literature review, grounded theory analysis, and empirical testing via questionnaire surveys, this study identifies six dimensions of brand image innovation in maternity wear: Product, Identity, Corporate, Marketing, Service, and Store image innovation, along with 21 specific indicators such as style and fabric innovation. The findings reveal a significant impact of each dimension of brand image innovation on consumer behavior. Theoretical and managerial implications highlight the study’s contribution in filling a research gap, providing a new framework for brand image research in maternity wear, and offering targeted recommendations for brand innovation efforts. This research expands understanding of the intricate relationship between consumer behavior and brand image, providing theoretical guidance for maternity wear companies to enhance brand appeal, meet diverse consumer needs, and ultimately improve sales and loyalty.

The effective nature of projective techniques in political brand image research

This study explores the effectiveness of qualitative projective techniques to explore the corporate political brand image of Pakistan Tehreek-I-Insaf party [PTI] from a multiple-stakeholder perspective. This study addresses core gaps in projective techniques research of eliciting responses from a large cross-section of multiple stakeholders in varied non-western contexts. A qualitative interpretivist approach was adopted. More specifically, expressive projective techniques were embedded within focus group discussions. Nine focus group discussions (comprising 37 participants) were carried out in Karachi and Lahore (Pakistan) from June to November 2020. Each focus group lasted 60 to 90 minutes. A six-phased contextualist thematic analytical approach was employed to interpret the findings generated from the projective techniques and subsequent discussions. Projective techniques were established as an efficient and effective tool for exploring corporate political brand image research in Pakistan. The leadership element of the corporate political brand trinity was revealed to be larger than policies and party and it had both positive associations as well as being perceived as opportunistic. Policies were associated with dissatisfaction and incompetence whereas, the party element of the brand was viewed as ineffective and a subordinate brand. This study addresses explicit calls for further insights and research on the use of projective techniques in dynamic contexts and settings. In addition, this research adds to the limited understanding of the choice of stimuli and appraisal of projective techniques. Finally, this study provides a systematic ten-step guide entitled the projective techniques toolkit which outlines how to successfully conduct research using projective techniques. This research and developed toolkit will benefit practitioners and academics alike.

The Academic Landscape and Development of City Brand Image Research in China: Visualization based on the CiteSpace Scientific Knowledge Map

The Academic Landscape and Development of City Brand Image Research in China: Visualization based on the CiteSpace Scientific Knowledge Map

Evolving brand boundaries and expectations: looking back on brand equity, brand loyalty, and brand image research to move forward

PurposeThis paper aims to critically review the most cited literature published from 2000 to 2020 in 24 top-ranked marketing journals on the three most studied branding concepts of the 21st century – brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image – to explore how in these papers they have been defined, measured and examined, and propose how they should move forward in an era where brands are expected to be “socially and socio-politically conscious.”Design/methodology/approachFor each concept a systematic literature review is conducted. In doing so, the definitions, antecedents, outcomes and measures for each concept were accessed and synthesized.FindingsThe systematic literature reviews provide a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of each concept and collectively demonstrate there is no consensus on the independence and interdependence of these dynamic multidimensional concepts. Based on the recommended process in the measurement literature, an evolved definition of each concept is proposed. In addition to the corresponding research directions presented in the moving forward sections of each systematic literature review, common research avenues emerged.Originality/valueThis paper acknowledges these three branding concepts as dynamic (i.e. evolving over time), systemically reviews and synthesizes the extant literature, and provides a path forward to defining, measuring and exploring brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image in the present era where brands are expected to be socially and socio-politically conscious with responsibilities to the planet, people and profit.

Brand image: A seasoned review

Brand Image is the foundation for making better strategic marketing decisions in context to targeting a specific market segments and positioning a service or a product. The term brand image, has been defined and applied in diverse ways by different researchers. The dissimilarities in definition can be confusing in connection with brand image measurement and consequent assessment of brand equity and brand positioning. As brand image is the vital element to establish a higher level of brand equity and distinguish brand positioning, the course of readdressing the concept is necessary. The lack of agreement regarding the definition of the term brand image restricts the efficient management and positioning of a brand. Brand image is a multidimensional construct that is set off by cognitions, emotions, messages, symbols, values and attitudes of consumers. Still, many researchers measured it as a unidimensional construct. The paper presents the different perspectives defining the brand image concept. The focus on qualitative research for measuring the brand image is now a newest drift in brand image research. The suggestions for road map are presented too.

The Elicitation Capabilities of Qualitative Projective Techniques in Political Brand Image Research

There is a paucity of research that outlines how to understand the image of political brands. Responding to this identified gap in the literature, this research seeks to demonstrate the elicitation capabilities of qualitative projective techniques to explore the political brand image of the UK Conservative Party. This paper highlights that projective techniques can provide a greater understanding of underlying feelings and deep-seated attitudes towards political parties, candidates, and the positive and negative aspects of brand image. Many of the associations and perceptions may have been overlooked if other research methods had been adopted. Projective techniques may be adopted by political actors to assess how their brands are understood and, if required, make adaptations to their communicated brand identity.

Qualitative projective techniques in political brand image research from the perspective of young adults

Purpose – This paper aimed to focus on political marketing and utilised a number of projective techniques to explore the UK Conservative Party’s “brand image” amongst young adults aged 18-24 years. There is little guidance in the extant literature regarding projective technique analysis. Furthermore, there are explicit calls for insight and more understanding into the analytical process. Responding to this identified gap in the literature, this paper provides an illustrative guide that can be used to analyse and interpret findings generated from qualitative projective techniques. Design/methodology/approach – This paper opted for an exploratory study using focus group discussions, combined with qualitative projective techniques. Eight two-hour focus group discussions were conducted with 46 young citizens aged 18-24 years from three locations in England. Focus groups were conducted prior to the 2010 UK General Election. The data from the projective techniques were thematically analysed by the researcher. Findings – This research provides insight into the broad process used to analyse and interpret the qualitative projective expressions in relation to the UK Conservative Party’s brand image from the perspective of young adults. Furthermore, this paper highlights that projective techniques can provide an insight into underlying feelings and deep-seated attitudes towards political parties, candidates and the positive and negative aspects of brand image. Research limitations/implications – Several limitations became apparent at the end of this study. As this is a qualitative study, findings cannot be generalisable to the wider population. Additionally, it is important to note that the researcher had limited experience of conducting focus group discussions combined with projective techniques, and this can be considered a limitation. Nevertheless, the researcher did attend professional “effective depth interviewing” training delivered by the “Marketing Research Society” before data collection. This goes some way in addressing this limitation. Practical implications – This paper provides an illustrative guide and insight into the analytical process that can be used to analyse and interpret findings generated from qualitative projective techniques. This can be used by academics with little experience of projective techniques. Furthermore, this framework may be useful for practitioners such as marketers, political parties and candidates to explore and analyse the external image of other political brands. The elicitation ability of qualitative projective techniques facilitates greater expressive insight that may remain hidden if traditional direct data collection tools such as interviews and questionnaires are used. Social implications – This paper provides some understanding into how to analyse subjective meaning such as feelings, attitudes, perceptions and associations revealed through projective techniques. Furthermore, projective techniques can provide access to the private conscious and unconscious inner-world of the participant. They allow respondents to express themselves with greater detail and discussion compared with direct questioning. This research, therefore, presents greater insight in managing and analysing expressions generated from this non-intrusive approach that can encourage open disclosure with less hesitancy, verbally less demanding and suitable to overcome emotional, language and cultural barriers. Originality/value – This paper adds to the under-researched and undefined practice of analysing projective expressions by providing an illustrative process to interpret and understand insight generated from qualitative projective techniques. Thus, answers the explicit calls for detailed guidance in this area of research. This was achieved by critically reviewing and adapting the approaches taken by Boddy, 2005, Butler-Kisber, 2010 and Hofstede et al., 2007 and incorporating them into a pragmatic systematic framework. This research could be used as a foundation for future studies and a point of reference for people with limited knowledge of projective technique analysis.

Research of brand personality concept in marketing

Brand personality is a set of personal traits by which consumers describe brands. Today, the brand personality is a particular and very popular area of research in marketing. Well designed brand personality can be an excellent tool that differentiates a brand on the market. The main objective of this paper is a comprehensive presentation of the brand personality subject in domestic Serbian literature. We reviewed a large number of previous studies in this area, in order to show how the brand personality has become an integral part of marketing theory and practice, how it is formed, how to measure brand personality and what impact brand personality has on marketing results. In particular we dealt with methodological shortcomings of previous studies. The paper also presents the basic results of the study we conducted on the Serbian market, which main concern was the measurement of brand personality of mobile operators. This author of this study concluded that the three mobile phone operators in Serbia (mt:s, Telenor and Vip Mobile), differ fundamentaly in the basic dimensions of the brand personality. Furthermore, the research showed that the perception of brand personality depends on the perception of the personality of brand category and advertising. Exploring brand personality is very important and useful in practice. Determining personality traits of a brand provides far more accurate picture of the current state of the brand image and of improvement capabilities of individual features of the brand, than the classic brand image research models.

Applying structuralist semiotics to brand image research

The aim of this paper is to display a conceptual and methodological framework for brand image research by drawing on the discipline of structuralist semiotics. Upon a critical review of existing research from key authors in the brand semiotics literature and through an engagement with the concept of brand image as formulated by key authors in the marketing literature, a semiotic model is furnished for the formation of brand image and brand identity. By drawing on the structuration process of brand image along the three major strata in a brand’s signification trajectory, and the key operations of reduction, redundancy, recurrence, isotopy, homologation, I focus more narrowly on how the chaining [enchaînement] of elements from the three strata is effected with view to addressing how brand image may be operationalised in structuralist semiotic terms vis a vis a brand’s intended positioning, how it may be linked to a brand’s advertising discourse and how the conceptual framework may yield a platform for ongoing brand image analysis and management.

Factors Determining Brand Image: A Product Comparison of Proctor & Gamble and Unilever in Pakistan

A brand is unlikely to have one brand image, but several, though one or two may predominate. The key in brand image research is to identify or develop the most powerful images and reinforce them through subsequent brand communications. The aim of the research is to conduct a study of brand image and provide recommendations for brand image enhancement after theoretical analysis of brand image on sales .This research has been done as a comparison between the products of P&G and Unilever in Pakistan with respect to their brand image that, Does the brand image has any impact on the fast moving consumer good’s consumption of different companies? Does brand image affects consumer behavior? For this research the tool we are using questionnaire. Brand image can be reinforced by brand communications such as packaging, advertising, promotion, customer service, word-of-mouth and other aspects of the brand experience. This would also be seen with having different kind of questions in questionnaire to cover as many aspects of brand image. The results show that there were more users of Unilever Products as compared to Proctor and Gamble with advertising, Customer Satisfaction and Innovation positively correlated with Brand Image.

A Strategic Use of the Communication Mix in the Destination Image-Formation Process

National tourist offices and tourism stakeholders are challenged to maintain and secure travel markets. Travelers are constantly bombarded with travel marketing messages. Compounding the challenge is a lack of research on effective, efficient, and optimal methods in convincing tourists to travel to a particular destination. To address this literature gap, a questionnaire survey on destination brand image research was conducted on outbound travelers from four major cities, examining their image perceptions of Macao and the degree of influence that various information sources had on destination selection. Results show that a communication mix strategy could be designed to more effectively manage tourist destination image perceptions. A cross-tabulation of the data revealed that the information sources affecting travel destination choice had varying levels of influence. A “Communication Effectiveness Grid” (CEG) was conceptualized from the research with quadrants indicating marketing resource effectiveness. The CEG has significant implications for destinations with limited budgets wishing to influence travelers.

Projective techniques for brand image research

PurposeSince it is hard for consumers to express their feelings and views regarding brand images, market researchers increasingly use projective and enabling techniques to collect rich and meaningful data. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and use of two methods of brand image research based on personification. Both methods were used to investigate the personality of four beer brands.Design/methodology/approachThe first method was based on mood boards: participants were asked to make collages of celebrity photographs representing the beer brands (n=16). The second method used a job‐sorting task: participants were asked to connect jobs with the beer brands (n=100). The results of both methods were related to a list of brand personality traits.FindingsHolistic interpretations of the mood boards and the jobs associated with the beer brands reveal highly similar results among the two methods, which strongly discriminate between the four beer brands. A translation of these findings to scores on personality dimensions further underlines the similarity of the two methods used, but does not convincingly distinguish between the four beer brands.Research limitations/implicationsThe similarities in the results underline the congruent validity of the two methods. The observation that the two methods lose their discriminating value when holistic impressions are translated to personality dimensions scores calls for more research into the way projective research data may be interpreted and used.Originality/valueThis study is a first attempt to compare the results of two different but related projective techniques for brand image research. It demonstrates the importance of methodological research in this area.

Familiarity Breeds Ambivalence

One goal of most corporate marketing strategies is to make stakeholders more familiar with the corporation. The implicit assumption behind these strategies is that familiarity leads to positive outcomes – particularly in the context of firm reputation. Although evidence for a positive effect of familiarity on reputation is inconclusive at best, the effect has remained part of the conventional wisdom in brand image research. This paper presents theory and research from business (eg, management, marketing, consumer research) and psychology (eg, judgment and decision making, cognitive, social, and industrial/organizational psychology), aimed at clarifying the theoretical connection between familiarity and firm reputation. We point to theoretical and empirical evidence that challenges the conventional wisdom of a positive effect of familiarity on firm reputation. We suggest that familiarity is often associated with ambivalence about organizations, and thus can be seen as both a blessing and a curse.

From brand image research to teaching assessment: using a projective technique borrowed from marketing research to aid an understanding of teaching effectiveness

This paper describes how a simple qualitative market research technique using a projective device called a bubble drawing can be used as a useful feedback device to gain an understanding of students' views of the teaching effectiveness of a market research lecture. Comparisons are made with feedback gained from teaching observations and insights drawn from this. Some areas for further research are suggested.

The 2001 General Election: Factors Influencing the Brand Image of Political Parties and their Leaders

This paper considers the importance of building the brand image of parties and leaders in modern day politics. Firstly, the appropriateness of branding in the sphere of politics is considered. Then, brand image research on political parties and their leaders is identified and discussed. From this, the advertising (positive and negative), events and celebrity endorsements that affected the June 2001 election are discussed. Finally, some tentative conclusions on political image management are forwarded along with the likely future developments in this area.

Stereotyping in Self Image Brand Image Research

Self Image Brand Image theory implies that consumers attracted to different brands should have different Self Images. Unfortunately, the presence or absence of such Self Image differences is generally not reported in the literature and the few articles that do address the topic yield conflicting results. The A. explores the idea that the occasional Self Image differences that are reported in the literature may be the artificial result of the specific methodology used. If the investigation stereotypes the subjects as users of a particular brand their Self Images may shift towards the image of this brand resulting in Self Image differences that are not present without such stereotyping. Two studies in the domains of smoking and cars are presented that support the position that Self Image differences between users of different brands will not be found unless stereotyping has occurred.