Brand Equity

For deeper, more loyal customer relationships and enhanced profit margins, companies must actually "live" the brands they sell. This approach is called "integrated branding" and it's not just a communications strategy. It is a way of operating, an overall way of doing business, and a way to make certain a company's products are based on two mutually reinforcing concerns: what do customers value and what does the company do best in relation to what customers want? The tools to accomplish this are called "drivers." LePla and Parker show clearly and comprehensively how drivers work and how to apply them. Marketing professionals will find this essential, as will corporate strategists and others who make decisions that ultimately determine the organization's future.

The successful advertisers of the 21st century must understand the importance of diversity in American Society. A number of characteristics must be considered such as: gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. Today over a quarter of Americans identify themselves as something other than white and people over 50 make up the largest group in the US.

Emotion is one of the defining forces in our lives. It lies at the very heart of many of our most important experiences and memories. Not surprisingly, the worlds of business and marketing have long drawn on the power of emotion to influence consumer impulses and brand loyalty. Yet beyond the obvious emotions evoked by an inspirational Nike ad or an affecting Hallmark commercial lies an emotional universe that is less conspicuous, even transparent, yet no less influential. In this definitive work, two marketing experts provide a highly original, entertaining and anecdote-rich account of the marketing power of emotion. The primordial force behind motivation and persuasion, emotions enter into all decisions involving tradeoffs and are thus especially relevant to consumer decision-making. The Marketing Power of Emotion traces the manner in which companies rely on emotion to connect with consumers, develop new products, improve their strategic position, and increase brand recognition. Synthesizing key research in a variety of scientific fields, the authors cover the role of mood in persuasion; affect-driven consumer behavior; choice processes; associationism (how consumers develop positive and negative associations with a product); the importance of consistency; response prediction; and emotional response manipulation, among a host of other topics. Importantly, the centrality of emotion in developing brand loyalty is explored in depth. Essential reading for executives and middle management alike, as well as all students and scholars of consumer behavior, The Marketing Power of Emotion is the most authoritative statement yet on this critically important aspect of business strategy.

The goal of this book is to help business managers and academic researchers understand the means-end perspective and the methods by which it is used, and to demonstrate how to use the means-end approach to develop better marketing and advertising strategy. The authors discuss methodological issues regarding interviewing and coding, present applications of the means-end approach to marketing and advertising problems, and describe the conceptual foundations of the means-end approach. This book is of interest to academic researchers in marketing and related fields, graduate students in business, marketing research professionals, and business managers. It is intended as a reference book containing ideas about the means-end approach and its applications.

Eastman has assembled this exemplary volume to spotlight media promotion and to examine current research on the promotion of television and radio programs. The studies included here explore various types of promotion and use widely differing methods and approaches, providing a comprehensive overview of promotion research activities. Chapters include extensive literature reviews, original research, and discussion of research questions for subsequent study. Research in Media Promotion serves as a benchmark for the current state of promotion research and theory, and establishes the role of promotion as a primary factor affecting audience size. Appropriate for coursework and study in programming, marketing, research methods, management, and industry processes and practices, this volume offers agenda items for future study and is certain to stimulate new research ideas.

This book offers a thorough examination of rumors and proposes strategies for organizations to use in combatting rumors that occur both internally and externally. Author Allan J. Kimmel explores the rumor phenomenon and distinguishes it as a distinct form of communication. He looks at psychological and social processes underlying rumor transmission to understand the circumstances under which people invent and circulate rumors. In addition, he examines how rumors are spread--both interpersonally and through mediated processes--and offers strategies for organizations to respond to rumors when they surface and methods for preventing their occurrence. Numerous examples are provided of actual rumor cases for which managers either successfully or unsuccessfully coped, including such companies as Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, Snapple, Pepsi-Cola, and Gerber.Intended to serve as a comprehensive compendium of strategies, this book was written with two objectives in mind. The first is to shed light on the often perplexing phenomenon of rumor by integrating disparate approaches from the behavioral sciences, marketing, and communication fields. The second is to offer a blueprint for going about the formidable tasks of attempting to prevent and neutralize rumors in business contexts. With these dual goals in mind--one theoretical, the other applied--this book will be of equal interest to both academics and managers in a wide range of professional contexts. In addition, it will guide organizational and marketing managers in their efforts to combat the potentially destructive consequences of rumors.