The business and economic environment around the world is entering an interesting phase wherein the developed economies of the US and European Union are gaining their lost grounds and the developing economies too are showing an upward swing. In such a dynamic economic environment, the business managers around the world are focusing on formulating new sets of strategic initiatives which would enable them to fulfill their goals and objectives in the near future. Businesses around the world are looking forward to cooperation between developed and developing economies to make the most of this recent opportunity of economic recovery seen all around. Such cooperation would require understanding of diverse cultures and various cross-cultural phenomena initiated by them.

The first paper, “Cross-Cultural Model of Customer-Based Brand Equity for a Tourism Destination”, deals with one such cross-cultural aspect. The authors, Maja Konecnik Ruzzier, Bostjan Antoncic and Mitja Ruzzier, present a cross-cultural model of the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) for a tourism destination, encompassing four proposed dimensions—awareness, image, quality and loyalty. The proposed model is tested on two competitive European tourism destinations—Slovenia and Austria—from the perspective of two culturally heterogeneous tourist groups, Germans and Croatians. The authors claim that the results at different levels indicate that the conditions for configural and metric invariance are fully satisfied, while the conditions for scalar invariance are partially satisfied.

In the second paper, “An Analytical Study of Spillover Effect of Different Branding Elements on Customer-Based Brand Equity”, the authors, Smritishikha Choudhury and Rinalini P Kakati, identify the spillover relationship of different branding elements on CBBE. The study proposes an analytical approach for measuring CBBE, which takes into account five different branding elements—brand uniqueness, brand imagery, brand performance, brand loyalty and brand resonance—and evaluates the spillover effect of the branding elements. The authors use structural equation modeling technique to find the spillover effect of different branding elements on brand equity measured by brand resonance of two brands of consumer durable sector, a global brand – LG, and an Indian brand – Godrej. The findings reveal that the impact of brand loyalty and brand performance is significant in influencing the brand equity of durable sector.

In the final paper, “Determinants of Customer Loyalty: A Study in the Context of Private Label Apparel Stores in India”, the authors, Chirag B Rathod and Nishithkumar H Bhatt, investigate the perceived importance of consumer loyalty with reference to apparel shopping as well as the determinants of loyalty in the organized apparel retail store context. The authors use binary logit model on a sample of 220 apparel shoppers, who were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. The findings indicate that the consumers are very conscious about the apparel category and hence, they consider brand image of apparel as one of the important indicators that influence their loyalty. Thus, the authors suggest that the retailers have to develop new approaches to gain the loyalty of customers towards their stores. According to the authors, the store should focus on strategies which create positive store image and brand image among the customers by improving the store’s pricing policy perception and quality perception.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor