We are witnessing a very dynamic phase of the Indian economy. On the one hand, we have various positive events taking place like the government’s coming out of the self-imposed policy paralysis, sectors like aviation looking up, etc. But on the other hand, there is a whole list of negative news-items like the increase in trade deficit, struggling of the automobile sector, and the lowest growth in manufacturing in the last two decades and other such pessimistic news. In such a vibrant phase of the economy, which can tilt either towards growth or towards recession, corporates are always looking for newer ways to survive, sustain and develop. Through our journal, we enable the managers to get a grip of the latest happenings in the brand management environment. This insight helps them to devise cutting edge contemporary strategies for survival, sustenance and development. In this issue, we present four such contemporary and insightful research works.

The first paper, “Does Emotional Appeal Work in Advertising? The Rationality Behind Using Emotional Appeal to Create Favorable Brand Attitude”, by Tapan K Panda, Tapas K Panda and Kamalesh Mishra, attempts to assimilate the current thinking on the use of emotional appeals in advertising, positioning and communication in order to build a favorable attitude towards a brand. They identify products and services for which emotional advertising appeals will be more suitable and also elaborate on the risks involved in using emotional appeals. The factors influencing the effectiveness of emotional appeals are discussed in detail and guidelines are drawn for effective use of emotional appeals. The authors have also suggested the future direction of research in the area of use of advertising appeal and its influence in brand attitude formation.

In the second paper, “Measuring Customer-Based Brand Equity Through Brand Building Blocks for Durables”, the authors, Rinalini P Kakati and Smritishikha Choudhury, have evaluated global and Indian brands in the consumer durables sector by using Customer-Based Brand Equity Model (Keller, 2001). The findings reveal that global brand’s brand strength is much higher than the Indian brand’s. In the empirical analysis, the Indian brand has scored significantly less in ‘brand preference’, and consequently ‘brand strength’ has been much lesser than the global brand. The authors claim that their empirical findings show that there exists a positive relationship between brand trust and brand affect with attitudinal and purchase loyalty for both global and Indian brands.

The third paper, “Building Private Labels into Strong Brands”, by K R Senthilvelkumar and P David Jawahar, presents the findings of an empirical research among consumers in Coimbatore. The empirical analysis has revealed that the buyers of private labels, based on their perception of private labels and intention to buy private labels, could be classified into three and two clusters respectively. The authors claim that private labels can assume vital roles in helping Indian retailers attract customers, generate adequate revenue and create strong customer loyalty.

The last paper, “The Effect of Repositioning on Brand Personality: An Empirical Study on BlackBerry Mobile Phones”, by Mukesh Kumar Mishra and Dibyendu Choudhury, focuses on measuring the brand personality of BlackBerry mobile phone, to find out the changes in brand image after repositioning and targeting youth, and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aaker’s brand personality scale. The authors suggest that the company should project sophistication as an important brand personality dimension for BlackBerry mobile phone rather than competence after repositioning the brand, while targeting the Indian youth.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor