National Brand Promotions Research Articles

In-Store Marketing Strategies towards Customer Attitude to Private Label Brands using Cue Utilization Theory

The research aimed to find out instore marketing strategies that can influence consumer attitudes towards private label brands based on “cue utilization theory”. The research belonged to the category of explanatory research since it uses primary data with the population of consumers who have shopped for private label products in Hypermart Tanjungpinang, and sample as many as 174 respondents with convenience sampling techniques. The analysis approach uses partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that private label marketing has a positive and significant effect on private label attitudes; private label marketing and store environment positively and significantly influence private label attitudes through the mediation role of perceived quality variants; product related attributes have a positive and significant influence on private label attitudes; the national brand promotion attitudes does not moderate the relationship between private label marketing and perceived quality variants on private label attitude; and price consciousness does not moderate the relationship between private label marketing and perceived quality variants on private label attitudes.

In-store marketing of private labels: applying cue utilisation theory

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of in-store private label marketing to impact the attitude of consumers towards private label brands (PLBs) by influencing consumers' perceived quality variations between the PLBs and national brands.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on “Cue utilisation theory” and focusses on how retailers can influence consumers' perception of quality variations by providing them in-store marketing cues. Data was collected through the mall intercept method in New Delhi, India. Data analysis was done using AMOS 25 and the PROCESS SPSS macro.FindingsThis study establishes the effect of in-store private label marketing in improving consumers' quality perception of PLBs vis-à-vis national brands and thereby leading to a positive attitude towards PLBs. Further, the national brand promotions attitude is found to moderate the relationship between private label marketing and attitude towards PLBs. However, contrary to the authors' expectations, it has a positive effect on this relationship. The study found an insignificant moderation influence of price consciousness.Originality/valueThis study complements existing literature on “Cue utilisation theory” by demonstrating the importance of in-store private label marketing in improving consumers' attitudes towards PLBs. It also extends to fill some gaps in the literature by studying the direct, mediating and moderating relationship among in-store private label marketing, perceived quality variations, price consciousness, national brand promotion attitude and attitude towards PLBs, especially in an emerging market such as India.

Consumption dynamics during recession and recovery: A learning journey

This paper original contribution builds on examining consumer attitudes in periods of recession and post-recession, providing new insights concerning consumer decision-making, new logics of spending and saving behavior and also opening new paths for research on the psychology of choice in contexts of recession and the immediate stage of recovery. The study used a longitudinal qualitative approach comprising twenty-two semi-structured interviews with eleven Portuguese consumers. The research was conducted in two moments in time: 2014 and 2018, corresponding to periods of Portuguese recession and recovery. The results show that, during recessions, consumers look for economic level-headedness, adopting and assuming new behaviors that allow them to accommodate the reduced income, which also translates into increased social responsibility. Besides switching to cheaper options, namely looking for private labels and national brand promotions, consumers revealed new strategies and new habits, such as i) more organization and planned behavior; ii) going shopping more frequently; iii) reducing stocking behavior, and iv) avoiding wasting. The study expands the comprehension of consumer behavior during recessions and recovery, bringing the idea of crises as ‘learning journeys’ and transformational opportunities.

АНАЛІЗ ПРОБЛЕМ УПРАВЛІННЯ ВИТРАТАМИ НА ВІТЧИЗНЯНИХ ШВЕЙНИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВАХ ТА ШЛЯХИ ЇХ ПОДОЛАННЯ

The paper offers a system approach to cost analysis in garment manufacturing. The content of cost analysis and its major elements have been disclosed: the purpose, objectives, object, subject, principles, information and methodological support, unit of measurement and results. The major problems that affect the expenditure level in domestic garment manufacturing have been revealed. It is evidenced that factors of both internal and external environment negatively affect cost management, thus triggering the problems at the three levels: the macrolevel (the Ukrainian industry), the mesolevel (sector of textiles, apparel, leather, leather goods and products from other materials) and the microlevel (garment manufacturer). The key macrolevel problems account for inflation, tax burden, imperfection of legislation, tariffs on public utilities and energy, political challenges, low solvency of the population. At the mesolevel, the major challenges are: the low level of cooperation between domestic enterprises and supporting industries, high import dependency and the high price of imported raw materials, equipment and technologies, small share of medium-sized enterprises or small business associations, intense competition, lack of active government support. Among the main problems at the microlevel are moral and physical depreciation of equipment with depleted resources, low-skilled young employees and high staff turnover, low competitiveness and high production costs, high toll rates, underdeveloped logistics infrastructure which hampers the finished product sales, insufficient product intellectual property rights protection, inadequate national brand promotion policies. The research findings provide an assessment on how the above challenges affect business costs. The problems have been classified depending on the extent of their regulatory management capacity. A matrix has been constructed that allows problems differentiation and their priority setting. This matrix application will contribute to enhance the decision-making and cost management efficiency in garment manufacturing.

An empirical study of consumer behavior related to private labels and national brand promotions

One day while in the store, Bernard grabs his usual Dominick's cream cheese off the shelf. I notice and point out that the national brand of Philadelphia cream cheese is on sale and less expensive. Bernard looks at the two products and actually hesitates for a while to switch to the national brand. His hesitation makes it clear that his preference is not based solely on price. (Chang Coupland 2005, 115).Recent research has proved the existence of interesting and significant interactions between consumer purchase behavior related to national brand promotions and private labels, traditionally investigated as separate phenomena. Following this path, our work investigates the behavior of consumers concerning the purchase of private labels and the purchase of national brands sold on monetary and non-monetary promotions. The empirical research has been conducted in Italy, a country with a relatively low, but increasing, penetration of private labels. A sample of consumers has been interviewed in person, and data were analyzed in three steps. First, a principal component analysis was run on the three behaviors of interest and their antecedent variables. Second, factors relative to the antecedents were regressed on the factors relative to the dependent variables. Finally, a cluster analysis was operated on the factors related to the three dependent variables to segment consumers. The cluster analysis shows four segments that can be grouped in two macro-segments: consumers who use and who do not use private labels. Since the second macro-segment is larger than the first (56% vs. 44%), retailers who want to improve the performance of their brands could work on their penetration, trying to attract the 56% of consumers who do not use them. As these consumers use sales promotions, monetary and non-monetary, retailers could develop original promotional strategies, specifically targeted to each segment. Avenues for future research include a multi-country survey and separate investigations of individual promotion techniques, which have shown very distinctive characteristics.

Price promotion landscape in the US and UK: Depicting retail practice to inform future research agenda

Price promotions dominate the modern grocery retail environment. This paper documents the prevalence and nature of these price promotions (i.e., deal types and discount depths) in the United States and United Kingdom. The analysis comprises of 23 categories across five retail chains. One of the key findings is that multiple-unit promotions – deal types that have been under-researched – account for approximately half of all price promotion activity. The analysis also identifies an increase in price promotion prevalence since the Global Financial Crisis, predominantly driven by national brand promotions. This research carries important implications for the alignment of academic research with common industry practices.

Take Turns or March in Sync? The Impact of the National Brand Promotion Calendar on Manufacturer and Retailer Performance

Featured price cuts are a popular tool among brand manufacturers and retailers. However, there is increasing concern about the net sales and revenue gains from these promotions, because retailers and manufacturers may simply be subsidizing consumers who shop around. Thus, the (co-)occurrence of a brand's promotions across retailers has been placed high on the promotion-planning agenda. This article examines the mechanisms underlying out-of-phase versus in-phase schedules and empirically demonstrates their sales and revenue implications in four product categories, covering purchases of a national panel of households across eight years. The results reveal that calendar effects primarily materialize in categories in which the chosen retailer is driven by brand promotions. In those categories, alternating the timing of featured price cuts across chains substantially increases the manufacturer and retailers' immediate sales lift. However, with regard to net gains, striving for out-of-phase promotions—the dominant approach among chains—is not necessarily the best practice, because retailers observe the revenue advantage diminish, and manufacturers may even earn less.

Promotional Timing for Substitutes and Complements at Major US Supermarkets

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the major determinants of the supermarket manager’s decision rule for placing products on promotions. Specifically, I examine the roles of substitutes and close complements as well as the potential interaction between national brands and private labels in determining promotional timing. The results expand upon the literature by demonstrating that complementary considerations, both within stores and among competitors, are highly significant determinants of promotional timing. Additionally, the results indicate that private labels are promoted heavily and that retailers incorporate the promotional timing of private labels when setting national brand promotions. This study provides further evidence that retail sales pricing typically does not conform to theoretical models of pricing.

Store brand and national brand promotion attitudes antecedents

Retailers compete against national manufacturers by launching store brands. National manufactures regularly use brand promotions to fight store brands back. The purpose of this article is to find out whether attitudes toward national brand promotions and store brands have similar or different conceptual antecedents. The study presents and tests a model of the effects of shoppers´ characteristics (price and non-price-related) on attitudes toward store brand and national brand promotions. The results support that constructs relating to price impact both store brand attitude and national brand promotion attitude, but the strength of some of these relationships differ. Other shopper characteristics like brand loyalty and store loyalty, have similar negative and positive effects, respectively. These slight differences suggest that promotions of national brands might be a good tool for fighting back store brands, but manufacturers need to design and target these promotions carefully in order to avoid head-to-head competition.

Factors affecting attitudes toward private labels and promoted brands

This work examines whether promoted brands and private labels attract different or similar consumers through psychographics and store image that drive purchase attitudes for these brands. The results using regression analysis demonstrate that these attitudes are driven by differences in psychographics and store image. Attitude toward promoted brands is characterised by positive store image, smart shopper self-perception, need for affiliation, and money attitude regarding power-prestige and anxiety. Private label attitude is characterised by more positive store image, and money attitude regarding retention and distrust. Noticeably, the conclusion of Ailawadi et al. (2001) regarding the indirect effect of demographics on the feasibility of using store brands and national brand promotions via psychographics appears weak, since we conclude that the impacts of demographics on the two types of purchase attitudes are weakly funneled through psychographics.

Antecedents of private label attitude and national brand promotion attitude: similarities and differences

A model that addresses the similarities and differences in conceptual antecedents of attitudes toward private label grocery products and national brand promotions is proposed and tested. The proposed model is tested using a sample of 300 consumers who were recruited from grocery stores, provided behavioral data from sales receipts of their shopping trip, and responded to a survey that contained multi-item construct measures. We predict and find in the study that both price and nonprice related constructs impact both private label attitude and national brand promotion attitude, but the directionality and strength of several of these relationships differ. Implications of these findings for retailers and national manufacturers are discussed.

An empirical analysis of the determinants of category expenditure

Previous research on the effectiveness of promotions by “private label” and “national” brands has focused primarily on its impact on relative market share. This research has documented the asymmetric nature of promotions between weaker (e.g., private labels) and stronger (e.g., national) brands [Blattberg RC, Wisniewski KJ. Price induced patterns of competition. Mark Sci 1989;8:291–309, Fall; Allenby GM, Rossi PE. Quality perceptions and asymmetric switching between brands. Mark Sci 1991;10:185–204, Summer]. This has led to suggestions that private label promotions make little sense since they are relatively ineffective in stealing share from national brands. However, recent research [Ailawadi K, Neslin SA. The effect of promotion on consumption: buying more and consuming it faster. J Mark Res 1998;35(3):390–98, August; Chandon P, Wansink B. When and why does consumer stockpiling accelerate consumption volume? Unpublished manuscript, London Business School, 1999] suggests that promotions can result in category expansion in addition to brand switching — promotions may not simply be a zero-sum game. If promotions can indeed increase total category consumption they may not need to steal share in order to be profitable. Thus, understanding the determinants of category expenditure can be an important part of properly understanding the market interaction between private labels and national brands. This paper explores the determinants of total category expenditure. Building on previous research that has focused on a limited number of categories, this research attempts to produce more general results by using IRI data from 1991 and 1992 to estimate category-level expenditure equations for private label and branded products across 135 food product categories and 59 geographic markets. The results support the premise that national brand and private label promotion can have a significant effect on the level of category expenditure. Furthermore, the results suggest that there can be significant differences across markets and across categories.

Pursuing the Value-Conscious Consumer: Store Brands versus National Brand Promotions

The objective of this article is to determine whether national brand promotions and store brands attract the same value-conscious consumers, which would aggravate channel conflict between manufacturers and retailers. The authors identify psychographic and demographic traits that potentially drive usage of store brands and national brand promotions. They then develop a framework and structural equation model to study the association of these traits with store brand and national brand promotion usage. The authors find that though demographics do not influence these behaviors directly, they have significant associations with psychographic characteristics and therefore are useful for market targeting. Most important, usage of store brands and usage of promotions, particularly out-of-store promotions, are associated with different psychographics. Store brand use correlates mainly with traits related to economic benefits and costs, whereas the use of out-of-store promotions is associated mainly with traits related to hedonic benefits and costs. These differences result in four well-defined and identifiable consumer segments: deal-focused consumers, store brand–focused consumers, deal and store brand users (use-all), and nonusers of both store brands and deals (use-none). Therefore, manufacturers and retailers have the opportunity to either avoid each other or compete head to head, depending on which segment they target.