مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد واکنش مصرف کننده نسبت به حذف برند – اسپرینگر 2017

Brands are widely considered to be intangible marketbased assets that contribute significantly to the performance of organizations that own them (e.g., Ailawadi et al. 2001; Keller and Lehmann 2006; Wiles et al. 2012; Sinclair and Keller 2014). Accordingly, a majority of organizations that operate in consumer markets offer a portfolio of strategically linked brands (Aaker 2004; Day 2011). Organizations are always interested in the productivity of their marketing investments (Rust et al. 2004). While the existing research on brand portfolio management has primarily concentrated on the issues related with new-product-development (Mahajan et al. 1990; Fedorikhin et al. 2008; Kim and John 2008) and product life cycle (Avlonitis et al. 2000), an oft practiced ritual of brand deletion has not received sufficient research attention (see also Varadarajan et al 2006, p. 195; Argouslidis and Baltas 2007, p. 475; Mao et al. 2009; Homburg et al. 2010; Avlonitis and Argouslidis 2012, p. 365). Among reasons such as the potential to add monetary value by freeing up resources for utilization in other investments, organizations also find it lucrative to delete brands from their portfolios because they earn more than 80% of their profits from less than 20% of their brands (Karakaya 2000; Kumar 2003). For instance, Procter and Gamble has eliminated more than 1000 brands in the past decade alone (Carlotti et al. 2004). Similarly, Unilever has shrunk its brand portfolio from 1600 brands to 400 brands while Japanese cosmetic behemoth, Shiseido has cut its brand portfolio by 75% (Morgan and Rego 2009). In India, Dabur hired the services of McKinsey to trim its brand portfolio. Despite the importance and widespread prevalence of brand deletion, research on brand deletion is extremely less with most of the existing studies analyzing brand deletion from the organization’s point of view. Specifically, these studies have focused on the brand deletion decision-making process (e.g., Avlonitis 1985; Argouslidis and Baltas 2007) or on the actual withdrawal of the brand from the portfolio (e.g., Saunders and Jobber 1994; Harness and Marr 2001). On the other hand, only two studies explore brand deletion from a consumer’s perspective (cf., Mao et al. 2009 in the B2C context and Homburg et al. 2010 in the B2B setting). If not handled properly, deletion of a brand can cause consumer resistance and alienation (a case is reintroduction of Coca-Cola Classic in 1985), and have a detrimental effect on organization’s image and reputation (Varadarajan et al. 2006). Kumar (2003, p. 88) states that in around 90% of the times, the combined market share of the merged brands is more than the market share of the newly formed brand and therefore, in reality most brand deletions fail.