Hans Ruediger Kaufmann

The increasing dynamics between consumers, social groups and brands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a contribution to advancing knowledge on the more recent phenomenon of social brand community.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an extensive interdisciplinary literature review in areas such as sociology, management, and marketing. Three interrelated and consecutively developed conceptualizations resulting from a co‐operation of the researchers over the last three years are presented to explain the influence of the evolution of current social trends on the relationship between consumers and brands in different contexts (socio‐demographic aspects and culture). The conceptualizations have been applied to a qualitative case study on Cypriot consumers, which conducted in‐depth expert interviews and focus groups. The research project has been designed in three stages: the first stage elicited thenature of relationships between consumer, brands and social groups; the second stage was concerned with differentiating consumer behaviour and segment...

Corporate branding and transformational leadership in turbulent times

Purpose – Environmental changes require higher levels of corporate authenticity when communicating with stakeholders. This is achieved by a congruence of stakeholder and brand identities. Focusing on employee identity, the purpose of this paper is to explain relationships of factors predicting brand‐building behavior.Design/methodology/approach – The study pursues a triangulation approach, applying case study and survey as research methods and telephone interviews and questionnaires as research techniques in the respective exploratory and explanatory research stages.Findings – Confirmed by exploratory and explanatory research, the antecedent factors of behavioral branding have been elicited. Interestingly, marketing control reflected differentiated results compared to previous research. It showed the highest level of contribution to explain R square followed by role identity salience and value congruence. This factor also had the highest correlation value.Research limitations/implications – Additional qua...

Exploring behavioural branding, brand love and brand co-creation

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the complex consumer brand relationships by holistically exploring the dynamics between brand love and co-creation, how they are impacted by behavioural branding and their combined impact to brand loyalty.,This is a conceptual paper, based on extensive and thorough literature review on the fields of brand love, behavioural branding, brand communities and co-creation, that leads to the formulation of a proposed synthesized framework.,The authors propose that consumers experiencing brand love are more willing to engage in an active co-creating behaviour in the context of a brand community, especially when brand representatives vividly communicate the brand values and motivate consumers to engage. This process is moderated by the product/service category and level of customer involvement with it, and it produces a combined positive impact on brand loyalty.,The proposed conceptual framework needs to be validated through empirical research. However, even at this initial stage, it may have a significant impact, especially as it highlights the role of brand representatives and how they could drastically moderate the relationship between the brand and the consumer.,This is the first attempt to incorporate the constructs that are significant to the consumer–brand relationship research stream in one conceptual framework. The synthesis of these concepts will contribute to the improved understanding of the consumer–brand relationship, and its dynamics and will equip managers with a novel approach to the central role of behavioural branding.

Explaining love of wine brands

The current study focuses on whether or not customer expertise influences the relationship between brand love of wine and satisfaction, brand image, worth-of-mouth, and loyalty. Findings suggest that wine consumers satisfied with their preferred wine brand and conscious of a good brand image are more likely to love wine, buy it, and encourage others to buy and give advice. As a result, when developing, labeling, and managing a wine brand, wine managers should focus on positive emotions toward the wine, planning for favorable experience with the wine, and creating an image of trustworthiness.

Perception of luxury: idiosyncratic Russian consumer culture and identity

Russia becomes the prime mover of the luxury world market. Whereas most of the studies on luxury consumption focus on the context of Western countries, studies of the topic in Eastern European transition countries are still rare. This paper increases understanding as to the factors that explain luxury consumption of Russian consumers. As in transition countries, the identity of consumers is generally accepted to be in a state of flux, the research question refers to the extent Russian identity influences consumption of luxury. This paper applies a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology approach and reveals that Russian luxury consumption differs from that of Western societies. Positive relationships between identity, status consumption, perceived quality, symbolic/status consumption and uniqueness were found and identity turned out to have a significant bearing on consumption of luxury goods in

Innovativeness of European SMEs: Mission not yet accomplished

Abstract The paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the catalytic role of SMEs in generating innovation as a basis for a competitive economy. It focuses on six European countries, representing both established and transitional settings (United Kingdom, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Greece and Lithuania). The statistical methods used included ANCOVA, multiple regression analysis and chi-square tests. The factors explaining the innovation levels were provided. Innovation and corporate culture indices were created and found to be correlated. Four variables were shown to explain innovation management in the six countries: corporate culture, formal processes/innovation department, company size and review of products. The respective SME perceptions, key factors and levels of innovation management were thus differentiated for the six countries. This comprehensive differentiated approach is an innovative contribution to the field.

A New Organisational Memory for Cross-Cultural Knowledge Management

Purpose – Effectively managing the cultural environment is an important stepping stone towards international business success. Cultural problems, especially between partners coming from diametrically different cultural categories represent one of the key challenges of knowledge management in international business co‐operations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of controversial cultural attitudes on collaboration and the use of most diverse knowledge capital of employees being regarded as a key resource for innovation and competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a comprehensive literature review, the very extensive data collection phase, applying the case study method, was carried out over a 13 month period. It mainly consisted of in‐depth interviews requiring 23 of them to reach theoretical saturation, non‐participant and participant observation (seven), focus groups (four) and fieldtrip notes in two culturally diverse Russian and Austrian research settings. T...

Developing inter‐regional brands

Purpose – The contribution of the present research and aim of the present paper is a provision and discussion of eclectic interdisciplinary concepts constituting a body of knowledge for developing and managing inter‐regional brands, hence contributing to closing the scientific gap as to an inter‐regional brand development conceptualisation.Design/methodology/approach – The research method used was a case study, targeted to develop an understanding of a neglected academic field. Based on a documentary analysis, semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted and interpreted. The InterReg IIIB‐supported RegioMarket project and a case study on Liechtenstein provide the background for the project.Findings – Based on an extensive literature review, the present paper states that interdisciplinary theoretical development of the concept of branding has not kept pace with the increasing practical application of the branding concepts in a variety of sectors leading to application gaps and dissatisfying results. ...

Entrepreneurial co-creation: a research vision to be materialised

Purpose – There are increasing influences of stakeholder relationships in the contemporary entrepreneurial knowledge stream to co-create value, in order to jointly confront the market competition. However, current research implies a dichotomy to exist between the awareness of the necessity of stakeholder-centred strategic thinking and the actual implementation of strategies in entrepreneurial practice. The purpose of this paper is to close this gap, in order to understand how entrepreneurs could, strategically and operationally, enhance their stakeholders’ relationships to reinforce entrepreneurial co-creation. Since, co-creation propels innovation; entrepreneurs’ and their stakeholders’ well-being calls for urgent materialisation of the entrepreneurial co-creation concept. Design/methodology/approach – A constructivist approach is applied to support findings to evolve a synthesis from literature to kick-off an academic debate on future research avenues on how to develop a co-creating entrepreneurial mind...

Internationalization, Market Forces, and Domestic Sectoral Institutionalization

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of micro‐environmental international entrepreneurship and the macro‐environmental market forces on domestic institutionalization of the industrial sector. In doing so, the paper examines the moderating effect of the degree of internationalization on the relationship between domestic market forces and domestic sectoral institutionalization.Design/methodology/approach – Based upon the creation of the item pools “domestic sectoral institutionalization”, “market forces” and “degree of internationalization” derived from previous research, an applied Delphi technique and a representative sample of 149 exporters in Turkey, a survey using a web‐based questionnaire was conducted. All scales were designed and a number of hypotheses were validated. Results were analyzed by the principal components of factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and moderated hierarchical regression.Findings – The empirical analysis resulted in an interaction effect...