The equilibrium structure of packaged goods markets in Japan resembles that in Western economies: brands compete against each other in largely unsegmented markets, with the extent of consumers’ brand‐switching and divided loyalties between brands largely predictable from the differing...

Purpose – As one rewinds the clock to the early days of the twenty‐first century, it can be quite surprising to realise how much the consumer landscape has changed from what it is today. This paper aims to introduce the special issue and attempts to take stock of the last decade and reflect...

Although market segmentation is widely described as a major marketing tool, questions whether brands which are broadly similar and competitive are bought by identifiably different consumer segments. Notes that few, if any, examples of marked brand segmentation are cited in the literature....