Customers expect organizations to deal with cultural alienation. Cultural alienation emerges as the most important psycho-social factor. The other important factors are trust and transparency, quality of products and services, comparative evaluation by customers, appeal of Gandhian semiotics,...

The ontology of marketing, particularly the question of what products and brands are, is still largely unexplored. The ontological status of brands hinges on their relationship with products. Idealists about brands see perceptual or cognitive acts of consumers grouped under the heading ‘brand...

Marketers have shown increasing interest in the use of corporate societal marketing (CSM) programs. In this article, the authors describe six means by which CSM programs can build brand equity: (1) building brand awareness, (2) enhancing brand image, (3) establishing brand credibility, (4)...

Many brands today introduce limited edition (LE) products as part of their product line. However, little is known about the conditions under which a brand should introduce an LE product or the competitive implications of doing so. We investigate this issue using a game theoretic model of a...

The current research suggests that what determines whether a luxury brand is diluted by a successful brand extension is the extent to which the lower-end extension is able to satiate the consumer's desire for the luxury brand experience. We thus propose a theory of dream substitution to explain...