The Robins Center: Is Less More?

The Robins Center at the University of Richmond, home of Richmond’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, had hosted a Presidential debate in 1992, but at 38 years old it was time for a major renovation. In mid-March 2011, based on the success of the men’s basketball program over the past two seasons, a generous donor had agreed to contribute the total amount needed to renovate the Robins Center. In late April, Jim Miller, Richmond’s Athletic Director, had to make a presentation to the board of trustees and the university president with his proposed renovations. One of his major decisions was whether or not to reduce the seating capacity of the Robins Center. The architects had presented three options for the renovations and two of the three featured reduced seating

Drivers of Brand Value, Estimation of Brand Value in Practice, and Use of Brand Valuation: Introduction to the Special Issue

Brands constitute the largest asset for many firms, and brand valuations are increasingly being seen as an important performance metric both for companies and managers.1 In addition, components of brand valuation models have been found to positively impact financial market performance, so it is critical that managers understand clearly what brand value is, and how they can create and appropriate (capture) as much of that value as possible.2 Due to resource constraints, firms are forced at any given time to emphasize either value creation or value appropriation based on strategic priorities. Research shows that the stock market rewards increased emphasis on value appropriation over value creation,3 but it is obvious that value must be created before it can be appropriated. This special issue on Brand Value and Valuation presents the latest research and ideas related to the diverse drivers of long-term brand value, strategies for appropriating brand value, valuation methodologies, and uses of brand valuation in practice

Postscript: Preserving (and Growing) Brand Value in a Downturn

We have taken the opportunity provided by the current worldwide recession to further explore the implications of the relationship between brand equity and brand value that we proposed previously,1,2 and our analysis reveals that companies have one of two strategic options for surviving. The “Just Good Enough” strategy maximizes current value, potentially hurting brand equity and appropriable value (or potential future value) in the process, while the “Altered Amortization” strategy offers an opportunity to chase current value while maintaining brand equity with current prospects and activating latent equity with potential prospects, which may increase appropriable value. Anything between these two is a non-viable long-term strategy and companies hoping to ride it out “in the middle” may not make it. We explain both of these strategies below and offer a framework for analyzing which one is right for your brand

The Theoretical Separation of Brand Equity and Brand Value: Managerial Implications for Strategic Planning

During the past 15 years, brand equity has been a priority topic for both practitioners and academics. In this paper, the authors propose a new framework for conceptualizing brand equity that distinguishes between brand equity, conceived of as an intrapersonal construct that moderates the impact of marketing activities, and brand value, which is the sale or replacement value of a brand. Such a distinction is important because, from a managerial perspective, the ultimate goal of brand management and brand equity research should be to understand how to leverage equity to create value

Chasing Brand Value: Fully Leveraging Brand Equity to Maximize Brand Value

Both researchers and practitioners seek to understand how to leverage brand equity to create value. Adopting ‘the theoretical separation of brand equity and brand value’ framework originally proposed in the Journal of Brand Management by Raggio and Leone, this conceptual paper looks more closely at the brand value construct and the implications of the proposed theoretical separation. The authors argue that firms are continually attempting to ‘chase’ the appropriable value of their brands—defined as the theoretical maximum value that a brand could achieve if all brand equity were fully leveraged. Implications for developing measures of brand value are discussed

Making Energy Metrics Relevant to Service Firms: From Energy Conservation to Energy Productivity

Although energy conservation and reduction in environmental impact are on the international and most national agendas, service firms rarely include energy consumption metrics in their strategic decision-making. One reason for the omission is that for service industries, firm level energy utilization is most commonly measured in kilowatt hours per square meter of office space where changes often related to the space rather than the firm performance. The measure also presents several problems for firms in service industries. First, energy conservation and reduction may be counterproductive for service firms that are growing and require energy to sustain that growth. Second, it may not relate to national and international goals which are often focused on the amount of carbon dioxide produced generating energy than the total amount of energy consumed. Third, it treats energy as a utility rather than a resource in firms’ value creation. Results from a field study focused on service firms in Sweden suggests that focusing on energy productivity overcomes the limitations of existing measures and produces positive results. By conceptualizing energy productivity as output per unit of energy, we create a conservation metric that enables service firms to measure their contributions to energy consumption relative to national economic growth. As a result, energy productivity aligns the interests of service organizations with those of policy makers and conservationists

Gratitude Works: Its Impact and the Mediating Role of Affective Commitment in Driving Positive Outcomes

After studying the effects of Louisiana’s post-hurricane “thank you” campaigns, the researchers find expressions of gratitude significantly improve perceptions of Louisiana in the midst of its recovery. Through a national survey conducted November 2006, they find that those who saw or heard a thank you advertisement have more positive attitudes toward the state and its people, a greater willingness to pay a premium for its products, services and travel to the state, and spread positive word-of-mouth, thus justifying the use of public funds to support the campaign. The authors investigate the role of participation on the effectiveness of expressions of gratitude and identify the mediating role of affective commitment in driving the positive results attributed to expressions of gratitude

Expressions of Gratitude in Disaster Management: An Economic, Social Marketing and Public Policy Perspective on Post-Katrina Campaigns

In this article, the authors argue that in the wake of a major disaster, it is not only appropriate but also beneficial for governments to spend public funds to support official gratitude campaigns in response to outside assistance. These assertions are based on results of multiple studies on gratitude from both psychology and marketing that show that expressions of gratitude can offer both economic and social marketing benefits. Evidence demonstrates increased consumer willingness to purchase products produced in the devastated area and intentions to continue prosocial support through volunteerism and financial donations after receiving expressions of gratitude. Evidence also shows that public expressions of gratitude encourage those who did not participate in prior relief/recovery activities to do so in the future. As such, the authors recommend the implementation of a disaster management policy that encourages and rewards private and public groups to partner in similar campaigns. Such a policy leads to both economic and social rewards for the devastated areas and its citizens—and, importantly, the broader society—that outweigh and outlast the expense of the campaign. Specifically, these benefits save those directly affected by a disaster from having to bear the full burden of disaster recovery and rebuilding efforts and could increase the amount of outside economic and social assistance provided

Brand Creation vs. Acquisition in Portfolio Expansion Strategy

Purpose – This paper seeks to address the following question: What causes firms to choose brand creation vs brand acquisition for brand portfolio expansion? Design/methodology/approach – A multilevel interdisciplinary conceptual model is developed with nine factors at three levels of influence: the market, firm, and brand portfolio. Using 125 brand acquisitions and creations for 22 firms between 2001 and 2007, the model is tested using logistic regression to determine which factors significantly influence brand portfolio expansion strategy and whether they encourage acquisition or creation. Findings – Significant factors were found at the market and firm levels, with competitive intensity of the market having the strongest effect, followed by the firm\u27s financial leverage, market concentration, and market growth. Practical implications – Contrary to prior expectations, external factors at the market and firm levels have an impact on choice of acquisition vs creation. However, internal firm factors may serve as moderators of strategy effectiveness. Originality/value – This is the first study to empirically examine factors affecting the brand portfolio expansion strategy via brand creation versus brand acquisition across a variety of industries. From a methodological standpoint, one of the more serious and persistent problems facing prior brand research is the lack of brand-level data, but this paper\u27s approach overcomes this limitation by using media expenditures in the AdSpender database to represent brands within a category/market

How Consumers’ Use of Brand vs. Attribute Information

Prior research has identified that brands have a differential impact on consumer evaluations across various brand benefits. But no work has considered whether these effects are stable over time, or evolve in a consistent way. We address this question by decomposing consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources in order to understand whether brand effects remain stable or evolve over time. With two unique datasets, the first containing cross-sectional data from Kodak across four different consumer goods categories, and another longitudinal dataset from the U.S. and Canada in the surface-cleaning category, covering seven brands over five years, we demonstrate a systematic evolution in brand effects: A general trend is that over time and with experience consumers rely more heavily on overall brand information to develop their evaluations. However, early in a brand’s life, or later when circumstances compel consumers to actively consider the attributes, ingredients or features of a brand, consumers may rely more heavily on detailed attribute-specific information to evaluate brand-benefits. Implications for brand management are discussed