The rapid advancement of technology has created unprecedented opportunities for brands to engage with their existing and potential consumers through digitally enriched products. One such technology that enables the digital enrichment of analog products is augmented reality (AR). Through AR, consumers are able to directly interact with brands, for example, by scanning a product to unlock animated digital content that prompts them to take reciprocal actions. Recognizing that technologies that fail to actively engage consumers may struggle to realize their full potential, our study incorporates consumer brand engagement as a key factor of investigation. Consumer engagement with the brand signifies a higher level of commitment and aids in building lasting and beneficial relationships, as well as enhancing brand knowledge, ultimately positively influencing consumer-based brand equity.

Throughout recent years, many physical establishments were forced to close, and events were canceled due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Consequently, brands, especially luxury brands, saw their contact with consumers greatly diminished and revenues decreased significantly (D’Arpizio et al., 2021). On the contrary, the global gaming industry saw its demand, exposure, and revenues increase. In fact, this industry is expected to exceed $200 billion by the end of 2023 (Gilliland, 2020), and there were more than 2.6 billion players worldwide in 2020 (Palframan, 2021). Thus, in 2020, many luxury brands opted to significantly upsurge their investments in the world of online gaming. The adoption of game advertising also represents a way for the luxury industry to adapt to its current target, as 81% of Gen Z and 77% of Millennials are gamers (Jain, 2021). By 2025, both generations are expected to account for 50% of the market, making them important players in the sector. However, there is still little empirical research regarding consumers’ perceptions of game advertising in the context of luxury brands. Thus, this research aims to study the impact that brand credibility and the use of game advertising have on the perceived coolness of luxury brands and, subsequently, on their equity.

This study aimed to identify sub-dimensions of the authenticity and fictionality of a brand story and analyze the effects of authenticity and fictionality on customer-based brand equity. Data were obtained from a group of 213 males and females in their 20s and 30s living in Korea using an online survey institute. Results showed that the authenticity and fictionality of a brand story are composed of reality, excitement, exaggeration, fictional symbolism, influence, sincerity, relativeness, mysteriousness, and unreality. Of these, sincerity, excitement, reality, influence, and mysteriousness had significant effects on brand imagery; sincerity particularly exerted a relatively more substantial influence on brand imagery. Also, influence, mysteriousness, excitement, and relativeness impacted performance positively, and exaggeration impacted performance negatively. This indicated that a well-constructed brand story with authenticity and fictionality had a positive impact on the brand image. Excitement, mysteriousness, reality, relativeness, sincerity, and influence of a brand story had significant effects on brand judgement. In contrast, only excitement and influence positively impacted brand feelings, and unreality had a negative impact on feelings. The exciting and influential brand story impacted brand attitude. Also, brand image and attitude positively impacted sharing and purchase intention, while brand performance did not affect recommendation intention. These findings contribute to identifying a brand story’s attributes, authenticity, and fictionality and provide insights for marketers on creating brand stories to increase brand image and attitude and to build customer-based brand equity.

This study examines the effects of the public’s perception of emergency medical service (EMS) on the public health system’s brand equity and the moderating effect of governance on this relationship using Keller’s customer-based brand equity model. It uses four EMS functions: rescue/first-aid and transfer activities; disaster prevention, preparation, and response activities; educational activities in urgent situations; and medical treatment in emergency rooms to examine the effects of them on brand meaning of the public health system. Our findings are important for understanding the public as customers of the public health system and devising and/ or adapting healthcare policies and marketing strategies to develop brand equity and increase customers’ loyalty to the public health system.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors driving parasocial relationships and their effect on brand equity. A conceptual model including the following variables is proposed: opinion leader attributes, parasocial relationship, brand equity and the moderating effect of endorser-brand congruency. The proposed research model is analyzed using a survey of 301 Chinese consumers. Structural equation modelling is employed to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables. The findings show that the opinion leader attributes of expertise and exploration positively affect the parasocial relationship between consumers and the endorser, and the parasocial relationship and brand equity are positively associated. Furthermore, endorser-brand congruency acts as a moderator on the relationship between opinion leader attributes and the parasocial relationship. The implications, limitations, and discussions are provided.

This study defines Korean wave stars as Korean wave human brands and examines the influence of the characteristics, attachment, and self-congruity of the Korean wave human brand on brand equity. For this, this study surveyed Chinese female consumers in their 20s and 30s who consume many Korean wave products from May 2018 to June 2018. First, human brand characteristics, attachment, self-congruity, Korean wave aspiration level, and brand equity according to demographic characteristics were identified. Second, characteristics, attachment, self-congruity, and the aspiration level of the Korean wave human brand showed correlations with brand equity. However, brand awareness, a sub-factor of brand equity, does not show correlations with self-congruity. Third, characteristics, attachment, self-congruity, and Korean wave aspiration level had a positively influenced brand equity. Fourth, when looking into the mediated effect of attachment on brand equity, both human brand characteristics and self-congruity showed a partially mediated effect. Fifth, when analyzing the adjustment effect in the Korean wave aspiration level, a group with higher Korean wave aspiration level showed more correlations with attachment and brand equity. This study found that attachment and self congruity are important elements in forming human brand and brand equity. This study is significant in that it verified the influence of Korean wave brand power that has been on the rise recently on brand equity and provided a theoretical basis that has allowed researchers to determine that the characteristics, attachment, and self-congruity of Korean wave human brand significantly influence brand equity.

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of brand extensions. Specifically, the study examines how consumers’ perceived fit between parent brand and newly extended brands may help facilitate consumers’ post extension evaluation of parent brand equity and brand concept.

Introduction The concept of brand equity has been receiving considerable interest from academia and practice in the past decades. While mutual understanding exists on the importance of establishing high-equity brands, less agreement among academics and practitioners prevails regarding its conceptualization and operationalization. Many approaches have been proposed to measure brand equity in academic literature and numerous competing companies such as Millward Brown, Interbrand, or Young & Rubicam offer commercial metrics and brand evaluations, which are likely to estimate different values to a specific brand. This study reflects a consumer-based perspective on brand equity, which resides in the heart and mind of the consumer and captures the value a brand endows beyond the attributes and benefits its products imply. Growing calls for the accountability of marketing has resulted in increasing interest in marketing metrics, which includes mind-set metrics to address the “black box” between marketing actions and consumer actions in the market. Theoretical Development One of the most prominent conceptualizations of brand equity is based on the premise that brand equity is “the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand” consisting of brand awareness and brand image as the predominant dimensions that shape brand knowledge. In this model, a crucial role is ascribed to consumer’s associations with a brand as a reflection of its image. Accordingly, brand building and differentiation is based on establishing favorable, strong, and unique associations. Human associative network theory is a widely accepted concept to explain the storage and retrieval of information and has been largely applied in the context of brands. Associative network theory suggests that brand information is stored in long-term memory in a network of nodes that are linked to brand associations such as attributes, claims or evaluations. Consumers use brand names as cues to retrieve associations. Once cues activate corresponding nodes and consumers retrieve information from memory, the activation spreads to related nodes. Consequently, a transfer of associations can also occur through associative chains in a process of attitude formation. Consumer response to a brand can be of attitudinal and behavioral character and research on attitudes supports the general notion that both, affective and cognitive structures, explain attitude formation. The predictive properties of attitudes regarding actual behavior have been acknowledged by prior research and the attitude-behavior relationship has been established. Research Design Operationalization of Brand Equity This study distinguishes between attitudinal and behavioral measures of brand equity. The behavioral measures of brand equity should reflect the attitudinal brand equity components in predicting product-market outcomes. High brand equity should lead to a willingness to pay a price premium, purchase intention and willingness to recommend. Survey Brand equity measures are tested with two waves of data collection2 from online surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016. Respondents were recruited from a professional panel provider to ensure that the same respondents participated in wave two after a year from the first wave. Participants were selected according to a quota regarding age and gender to increase representativeness and were then randomly assigned to one of the three industries beer, insurance, and white goods capturing brand equity from different perspectives and allowing for a more holistic view. Sample The sample for the first wave consists of 2.798 respondents. The sample was matched with the response from wave two and only those respondents were selected who participated in both waves. Given the panel mortality rate, the final sample size for longitudinal analysis is 1.292 observations. The respondents’ age ranges from 18 to 74 with 52 percent being male and 48 percent female. Analysis Panel regression is used to estimate models assessing the relative importance of various brand equity metrics regarding the three outcome variables for the three categories included. The results suggest that no universal brand equity metric dominates that can be applied to predict behavioral outcomes across categories. Yet, category-specific brand equity metrics prevail across outcomes. Consumers seem to evaluate a strong brand as an entity they can personally connect to in the insurance category. In the beer category, consumers’ evaluation of strong brands reflects deep affect and the perception of product quality. High equity brands relate to loyal consumers with strong affective evaluations in the category of durable household products. Moreover, the results indicate that brand equity measurement can be simplified to a small subset of metrics without risking loss of model fit and predictive power. Discussion While a plethora of brand equity metrics exists, the results of this study suggest that brand managers can apply a small subset of available metrics to track their brands’ equity and predict behavior without implementing long surveys that require considerable time and effort from increasingly overloaded consumers. Yet, adjustments to the composition of brand equity metrics might be inevitable in light of category-specific effects. Moreover, the results reveal that a consideration of metrics capturing affective components such as brand self-connection and deep feelings such as brand love is indispensable for brand equity measurement. Including emotional measures and extending established brand equity metrics that are deeply rooted in extant research might provide a considerable advantage when it comes to measuring brand value in different product categories. References are available upon request.

Introduction Brand equity has been receiving utmost attention in academia and practice over the past decades and continues to be of significant interest. Brands have been identified as one of the most valuable assets and firms try to leverage brands in increasingly complex brand portfolios. A large body of literature exists on spillover effects with regard to brand extensions. However, little is known about how corporate branding within product brand communication impacts brand equity. Therefore, this study examines to what extent product brand attitudes spill over to corporate brands. Furthermore, it investigates how corporate branding affects corporate brand attitude. Finally, the role of product brand familiarity, corporate brand familiarity and involvement in brand leverage and dilution is assessed. Method and data Answers to these questions are provided with a sample of 407 subjects that participated in an online experiment and were presented with a print ad either for brands in the FMCG or pharmaceutical category. The experiment included a 2 (corporate brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (product brand familiarity: high or low) x 2 (category involvement: high or low) x 2 (corporate brand presence: yes or no) factorial design. Measures included brand attitude, attitude towards the ad, brand familiarity and category involvement. Analysis of covariance is employed to test for main effects and interaction effects, pairwise comparisons to test for group differences and multigroup analysis by means of structural equation modelling and path analysis to test for differences in effect sizes for the spillover between product brands and corporate brands. Summary of findings The study provides evidence that corporate brand presence in product brand communication affects corporate brand attitude and that a significant effect is observed for the affective component of corporate brand attitude. No significant effect is found for the cognitive component. Other than expected, the findings demonstrate that corporate brand presence of familiar corporate brands in the high-involvement category (FMCGs) leads to affective corporate brand dilution. Consistently and irrespective of category, the results indicate that corporate brand presence leads to affective corporate brand dilution when corporate brand familiarity and product brand familiarity are low or when product brand familiarity and corporate brand familiarity are high. A tendency for affective brand leverage is indicated for unfamiliar corporate brands when product brands are familiar, which however requires further investigation. Moreover, the findings indicate that the degree of spillover effects differs for the two categories as hypothesized. Stronger positive effects occur in the high-involvement category of FMCGs. Key contributions The findings reveal that corporate brand presence affects corporate brand attitude while differentiating between an affective and cognitive component. Such a differentiation is indispensable as affective effects prevail. Furthermore, this study sheds light on category-specific effects. While corporate brands in the FMCG category evoke stronger positive spillover, the negativity effect of corporate brand presence supersedes and results in brand dilution irrespective of product brand familiarity. Independent of category, when product brands and corporate brands are either low in familiarity or high in familiarity, corporate brands suffer from brand dilution. However, brand dilution is not observed when unfamiliar corporate brands appear with familiar product brands indicating potential for brand leverage. The findings of this study provide new insights into the interplay between product brands and corporate brands and offer valuable guidance for brand communication in both categories. Although corporate branding within product brand communication is increasingly being practiced, these results should encourage brand managers to carefully consider whether corporate brand presence enhances brand equity or presents a liability.

Introduction Aim Research in the Swedish retail sector 2017, shows that 37% of the public in Sweden has attitudes and behavior that make them part of the Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability group (Lohas). Lohas is a method (see Lohas.se) to measure sustainable living in a global context (Swedish Sustainability Ranking 2017). This make Sweden in the forefront. Furthermore, the Swedish government has issued a new law (entered into force in 2017) that demands Swedish companies with more than 250 employees or a certain turnover to annually report their sustainability efforts and how it connects to their business model. This is the background for our study investigating different industry sectors in Sweden. In this environment, retailers such as IKEA, Apoteket, Max Burger, Clas Ohlson, and H&M, followed by others, have gained recognition regarding their strong brands as well as good practice within sustainability. Sustainability has recently become more relevant to study. In Sweden repeated surveys, (2004-2017), have shown that Swedish retailers are perceived as the most reputable and sustainable of all companies. What is the background that makes retailers so trusted and sustainable among the general public and customers in Sweden? The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the underlying factors which give retailers in Sweden such a high sustainability scores over time i.e. what factors are important to achieve sustainable brand equity in the Swedish retail sector. A detailed comparison will be made of two large surveys carried out in 2016 and 2017. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the branding framework Customer-Based Brand Equity as well as Points of Difference (POD) and Points of Parity (POP) in a projective retailer sustainability perspective, Keller, Apéria and Georgson (2012). The overall customer brand equity framework is developed by Keller (1993). PODs is defined as unique associations, strong and favorable, linked to a brand. POPs are associations that can be shared with other brands, Keller, Sternthal, and Tybout (2002). Ailawadi and Keller (2004) discuss the importance of measuring retailer brand equity. According to the researchers brand equity has been one of the most challenging and important issues for both academics and managers. The chosen framework and the analysis for the study is the corporate brand level. A sustainability index, developed by Apéria, has been developed and tested during the period 2015-2017. The sustainability index measures four dimensions of sustainability: environment/climate, society/ethics, longterm/future perspective, and openness (see figure 1). The index is inspired by the Triple bottom line approach. The data comes from the Swedish Sustainability Ranking, the largest survey on sustainability in Sweden. More than 18,000 online surveys were carried out in 2016 and 25,000 surveys carried out in 2017. The panelists participating in the survey were recruited in order to be representative of the Swedish general public, age 18-74 years. 190 well-known and visible consumer companies were measured in 2016 and 200 companies and organizations in 2017. These companies were selected because they are well-known, salient and represent important categories from a consumer point of view. Our view of salience is based on Ehrenberg, Barnard and Scriven (1997). A pre-study was carried out in 2015 in order to understand consumer criterias for choice of retailer. In 2016, 32 retailers where measured in a specific retailer frame of reference. 4,225 surveys where carried out among general public who participated in the study. In the 2017 survey, 35 retailers were measured and 3,416 surveys were carried out, also in a retailer frame of reference targeting the general public. All respondents taking part in the study initially ranked companies with product, brand, and sustainability attributes. The respondents ranked these retailers with approximately 35 brand- attitude questions (Likert scale from 1-7). In the second part of the interview each respondent also indirectly, through a projective approach, described the retailer. The perspective of reputation and sustainability metrics has traditionally been used in a strict rational point of view. One example of reputation metrics is the RepTrak model described by Fombrun, Ponzi, and Newburry (2015), and van Riel (2012). Chun and Davies (2004) and J. Aaker (1997) have also discussed corporate character and brand personality from a rational point of view. Ailawadi and Keller (2004) have pointed out that brand personality as an area deserves greater attention from research. The authors of this article argue that a complementary perspective is needed to fully understand how consumers evaluate corporate brands and sustainability and the complexity behind this process. The authors propose to add emotional components in the evaluation, as a complement to the traditional rational view. The proposed way to understand the emotional side of a corporate brand is to use projective techniques (Apéria 2001, Apéria and Back 2004, Keller, Apéria and Georgson 2012). An advantage of projective techniques is that they may elicit responses that respondents may be unwilling or unable to give by traditional interview methods. In this retailer study we used projective techniques in order to explore the more emotional aspects of the retailers. Findings The results from the analyze presents Swedish retailers as representing the most sustainable of all company categories in Sweden. During a period between 2004-2017 the retail category have been in top positions of the Swedish reputation and sustainability ranking, measured in a longitudinal study. Apoteket, The Body Shop and Clas Ohlson have been ranked as number one, one time each. While IKEA has been number one eleven times during the period. During the last two years, 2016 and 2017 IKEA was ranked as number one, based on the sustainability index. The analyze has shown that the highly sustainable retailers operating in the Swedish market primarily are characterized by strong brands as well as strong perceptions of sustainability. An interesting example is the local Swedish fast-food company Max Burgers that strongly outperforms McDonald´s both as a brand as well on sustainability. Successful retailers have different personalities, and archetypes compared with other corporate categories. The analysis reveals that the strongest retailers with a high sustainability index are characterized by having strong brand personalities. Furthermore, the analysis also reveals that the archetypes characterizing these retailers are we-oriented archetypes such as: ordinary/familiar, stable/down to earth, but also the ego-oriented archetype focused/specialist. Examples of retailers with a strong brand personality are IKEA, The Body Shop, Stadium, ICA, Zara and H&M. When we compare the data from the study 2016 with 2017 we see the same results. Our results from both studies indicate that local retailers are more positively evaluated than international. We-orientated brands score higher than ego-orientated. Some retail categories are perceived better than others are. Examples of strong retail categories are pharmacies, furniture, food, and sport stores and weak retailer categories are hamburger restaurants, consumer electronics and telecom stores. However, there is always an opportunity for a retailer to be stronger than the category they represent. One example, earlier mentioned is the local hamburger chain Max Burgers that strongly outperforms international competitors such as Burger King and McDonald´s, when we compare their sustainability indexes. The results indicate that both rational and emotional factors constitute an important part of the Sustainable Brand Equity Model. This new model (see figure 2) has been developed and tested during surveys 2015-2017 by one of the authors as a part of the Swedish Sustainability Ranking. Central components of the model are sustainability indexes, corporate brand personality, brand associations meeting need segments which lead to brand loyalty and trust capital. Finally, our survey shows that retailers needs to be strong in both brand and sustainability. It´s not enough to only excel in sustainability. Research limitations/implications The Sustainability survey was carried out both in 2016 and 2017 in a retailer frame of reference including different retailers from different sectors. The authors recognize that Swedes rank retailers as the most reputable and sustainable category of companies every year. In different countries the general public has different opinions about which companies they found most reputable (Apéria, Simcic Brønn, and Schultz, 2004). Originality/value The authors compares the chosen 32 retailers studied in 2016 with 35 retailers studied in 2017 with the same method. In both surveys we used both rational questions and emotional projective questions in order to understand the retailers in-depth. In both surveys a sustainability index was used in order to rank the retailers.

Introduction With the advent of new technology and progress of globalization, the adoption of offshore outsourcing policies, especially in the service sector, becomes a common practice. The motivation to outsource globally arises from a pursuit for agility to cope with changing environment (Gilley & Rasheed, 2000; Mukherjee, Gaur, & Datta, 2013), cost reduction (Ang & Straub, 1998), and eventually competitive advantage (Kang, Wu, Hong, & Park, 2012; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006). However, recent service research represents outsourcing as a double-edged sword, with both damaging and beneficial consequences (Rasheed & Gilley, 2005), and one of the major concerns of offshore service outsourcing is that customer-based brand equity of the service provider maybe affected negatively. At the moment, few international marketing or business studies empirically test the negative implications of offshore outsourcing on customer loyalty and brand equity. The comparisons between front-end and back-end service outsourcing as well as between BRIC and non-BRIC nations are also missing in the literature. Service providers need strategic information about the possible risks of outsourcing specific types of services to specific countries (Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2005). Therefore, based on the literature of brand equity and country-of- origin (COO) theory, we constructed an integrated framework to explain the outcomes of offshore outsourcing from a service and brand marketing point of view. Theoretical Development COO literature indicates that consumers transfer negative perceptions of a country to perceptions of products (Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2006). This principle should apply to perceptions of outsourced back-end services—an increasingly common tactic by service firms (Blumberg, 1998)—such that outsourcing to an Asian economy has negative effects on brand associations and quality. The better the perception of the country that performs outsourced services, the better perception of brand equity, including both associations, quality perception, and ultimately brand loyalty. Because the front-end service employees have more direct interaction with customers, this influence will be stronger as compared to back-end service outsourcing. Meanwhile, we predicted that consumers should perceive India (and other BRIC economies) more favorably, because of their rapid economic development. Research Design To test the hypotheses, this study probed into New Zealand consumers’ perceptions of outsourcing services in the banking industry to India and the Philippines. We adapted the SERVQUAL scale to measure the perception of outsourcing. Subjects’ COO perception and customer-based brand equity were also collected in the online questionnaire. The survey procedure produced 288 completed and usable questionnaires: 132 with India as the country of origin and 156 for the Philippines. Result and Conclusion An initial analysis confirmed the validity of the research tool. The results from multigroup structural equation modelling showed that outsourcing services, in light of country-of-origin effects, has a long-term negative impact, especially for front-end services, on both brand equity and brand loyalty. Consumers appeared more concerned with the quality of customer service and general administration than information systems and technology. Meanwhile, although subjects’ outsourcing and COO perceptions are negative for both India and the Philippines, the results indicated no significant difference between the two nations regarding the levels of impact of such perceptions on brand equity. Based on the findings from the study, we recommend that organizations should consider outsourcing back-end functions before moving to front-end services, because the back-end services have less impact on brand equity. Managers should also have great discretion about where to send back-end services, because consumers’ COO perceptions do not relate significantly to brand equity for outsourced information systems or technology.

Customer engagement (CE) has commonly defined as a psychological state or process that leads to customer loyalty (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011). CE research has received increasing attention due to its critical role in luring favorable customer experience and outcomes such as brand trust, affection, and future purchase intention (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017; So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016). Despite scholars’ continuous efforts in advancing the CE field of study, several limitations remain unaddressed. First, empirical research focuses primarily on antecedents and consequences of CE that are derived from individual dispositions (Harrigan, et al., 2017); thus, customer actual behavioral outcomes of CE are generally unexplored. Second, most, if not all, empirical research investigates the nomological network of CE based on individual-level factors (Khan, Rahman, & Fatma, 2016; So, King, & Sparks, 2014). Such an individual-level approach is important as it builds the necessary foundation of the CE domain of study. Yet, the roles of organizational strategic position are largely ignored, while organizational-level situational factors are rarely considered. This research aims to bridge the aforementioned research gaps by constructing both individual-level dispositions and organizational-level situational factors into an integrated framework. In particular, this research seeks to explore the roles of two organizational strategic initiatives – service environment and brand equity – on customer engagement and its impact on customer behaviors.