British heritage brand Yardley was bought by Indian multinational Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting Group in the year 2009 from UK based Lornamead group for USD 45.5million. The task of reinventing the magic of the British heritage brand in contemporary India was not easy. Brand Yardley was perceived as a “grandmother’s brand” given the history and memory of its existence since centuries. In order to connect with young Indians, the company hired Bollywood actor Katrina Kaif (with British lineage) as their brand ambassador to evoke nostalgia of British era in India and promote heritageness of brand Yardley. However, this communication strategy failed to connect with the consumers. This research paper attempts to understand the significance of heritageness, nostalgia, unique positioning and functional benefits as influencers in creating consumer-brand relationship leading to buying intention by the consumer in the personal care category, using heritage brand Yardley as the pivotal point. This research was conducted in three phases. In phase one, qualitative research approach was used with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions after which variables for the study were generated. In phase two, an elaborated questionnaire was developed. The first part of the questionnaire included demographics like gender, age, occupation and income. The second part of the questionnaire related to recognizing brand Yardley among five print advertisements featuring Katrina Kaif as a model but not revealing the brand for which Katrina Kaif had modeled for. The final survey was conducted with 16 assessing questions for four factors namely, heritage, unique positioning, functional benefits, nostalgia and buying intention. The study was pilot tested once (n=89) and revised once (n=235) for clarity and accuracy. Three questions were revised and reduced. The scale used was Likert type (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). The sample unit was within a university campus in Mumbai as the young residents were the target audience for the brand. The outcome of the survey resulted in high Cronbach alpha of .87 and clear rotated factor structures. In phase three of the research, a set of competing brands of soaps with respect to Brand Yardley was generated from the focus group discussions and multidimensional scaling by direct method was carried out using two attributes (functional benefits and unique positioning). The research approach employed was both symmetric and asymmetric analysis to provide analytical outcome using multiple regression analysis, structural equation modeling and application of complexity theory for contrarian cases and could be the first to formally examine tenets of complexity theory in personal care category research contexts. The research outcome revealed that functional benefits and unique positioning of brand Yardley should be crystallized using sensory branding and storytelling format that weaves around the evolution of its heritageness to evoke nostalgia resulting in buying intention.

The limited available empirical evidence indicates that consumer ethnocentrism does not have a uniform effect on consumer buying (e.g., Klein, Ettenson & Morris 1998; Suh & Kwon 2002). The paper comes to address this gap by investigating the inconsistency of ethnocentric behaviours and the factors underlying such inconsistencies. More specifically, brand, product category and country of origin (COO) effects are examined for their impact on behavioural consumer ethnocentric bias. Contrary to the main stream of research in this area, which concentrates on general attitudes towards the products or buying intentions (e.g., Balabanis & Diamantopoulos 2004; Poon et al. 2010; Sharma etal. 1995; Shimp & Sharma 1987; Verlegh 2007; Wang & Chen 2004) this paper focuses on behavioural outcomes of consumer ethnocentrism. In addition, it adopts a more focused approach and examines the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on the purchase of specific brands, rather than the impact of consumer ethnocentrism on general product categorisations or simple foreigndomestic product dichotomies. Hypotheses are developed to explain observed differences in the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 468 US consumers involving purchases in 10 product categories, 432 brands and 22 countries of origin. Results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of consumer ethnocentrism. Consumer ethnocentrism was found to have an impact on the purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than the frequently purchase convenient items. There is also some limited evidence regarding the moderating role of globalness of brands on the relationship between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase behaviour. The cultural proximity of the country of origin of foreign brands was found to have no effect on the purchasing behaviour of ethnocentric consumers.