Tag Archives: Conejo

Marketing

Revisiting the Brand Luxury Index: new empirical evidence and future directions

Francisco J Conejo, Lawrence F Cunningham, Clifford E Young
Journal of Brand Management,Pages: 1-15.
Studies increasingly question the robustness of luxury marketing’s most prominent scale, Vigneron and Johnson’s (J Brand Manag 11 (6): 484-506, 2004) Brand Luxury Index (BLI). However, these studies’ isolated and occasionally obscure nature has kept this issue outside marketing’s mainstream. Given the contextual/methodological differences between these studies, calls to evaluate the BLI further, and the importance of ascertaining this instrument’s robustness, this research is the first to systematically address the issue and provide more conclusive evidence of BLI performance. This paper comprises four studies with US students, Chinese students, US consumers, and pooled data. Results consistently indicate that the BLI is factorially unstable. On average, only 30% of its items operate adequately. The present results confirm growing BLI concerns. We conclude that luxury brand dimensionality remains

Marketing

Addressing Construct Intensity in Entrepreneurship: Log-Transformed Guttman Scaling with Need for Achievement as Exemplar

Francisco J. Conejo, Clifford E. Young, Ben Wooliscroft, Madhavan Parthasarathy
Entrepreneurship Research Journal,
Unlike physical science, entrepreneurship lacks measurement units through which to quantify constructs properly. This study explores the viability of logarithmically transformed Guttman scaling (GS). Need for Achievement (nAch), a quintessential entrepreneurial feature, illustrates the technique’s application. A valid and reliable 10-item Guttman nAch scale is developed, its unidimensionality psychometrically confirmed. Compliant with measurement theory, the scale offers concatenatable units that quantify nAch intensity. GS is a viable complement to psychometric methods, a useful addition to entrepreneurship’s methodological repertoire. Researchers are encouraged to expand their view of entrepreneurial constructs. Also approaching them from an intensity perspective offers fertile ground for future inquiry.

Marketing

Better stories for social media branding

Francisco J Conejo
Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing,Vol. 6, Issue 3, Pages: 228-240.
As frequently touted in books, articles and presentations, storytelling plays a vital role in social media branding. However, perusal of what is done in the field reveals that social media storytelling remains lacking. This paper revisits literary theory, without getting too technical, to briefly address some storytelling fundamentals. It covers key elements such as themes, settings, characters and plots. It also discusses ancillary considerations such as story openings and endings, length, temporal linearity, episodes, sub-plots, rhythm and syncopation, tension, authenticity and transmedia distribution. In doing so, the paper provides broad guidelines as to how practitioners might improve their social media storytelling, and thereby, their branding.

Marketing

Bridging past and present entrepreneurial marketing research: A co-citation and bibliographic coupling analysis

Fabian Most, Francisco J Conejo, Lawrence F Cunningham
Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship,Vol. 20, Issue 2, Pages: 229-251.
Purpose Literature in entrepreneurial marketing (EM) continues to grow in volume and diversity. This paper aims to examine the topical structure of EM’s literature toward guiding research in the field. Design/methodology/approach A four-phase bibliometric research design is implemented, encompassing co-citation and bibliographic-coupling analyses, network analysis, factor analysis and correspondence analysis. Findings In total, 14 EM literature clusters, comprising 7 topical meta-clusters, are mapped and discussed: the 7 clusters are resources and capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), measurement, EO/marketing orientation (MO) integration, MO, international entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Originality/value These topical streams confirm, refine and extend prior bibliometric studies. A more comprehensive, extensive and reliable picture of EM’s literature is provided, the result of using

Marketing

Improving Social Media Brand Personas Using Archetypes

Francisco J. Conejo
Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing,Vol. 5, Issue 2, Pages: 189-202.
Conventional social media brand personas, mirroring target markets, suffer limitations: they lack consistency, uniqueness, genuineness and unity, which affects the overall brand positioning. To improve social media brand personas, Jungian archetypes are advised. Not only do archetypal brand personas overcome the above limitations, but they are particularly suited for the social media context. Stemming from the collective unconscious, archetypal brand personas tap into fundamental patterns hardwired into the human mind since ancestral times. They are more meaningful and engaging, and better able to cut through the current social media clutter. This paper presents an archetypal brand persona development process, and insights as to how it might be better implemented.

Marketing

Exploring Brand Personality Scale Development Using Rasch Modelling

Francisco J. Conejo, Ben Wooliscroft, Andrea Insch
Marketing Bulletin,Vol. 27, Issue 1, Pages: 1-23.
Scales in marketing rarely comply with measurement theory’s unidimensionality, invariance and concatenation requirements. To address this, Rasch Modelling is applied to the Brand Personality (BP) construct, redefined as the set of human mental traits consistently associated to brands across situations and time. Ten Rasch BP scales are developed, positive and negative ones for each Big Five personality dimension. A first step towards actual BP measures, these scales lay the foundations for refinement. Addressing the notion of measurement itself, this paper highlights the importance of considering constructs from an intensity perspective, likely fertile ground for future marketing research.

Marketing

Brands Defined as Semiotic Marketing Systems

Francisco Conejo and Ben Wooliscroft
Journal of Macromarketing, Volume 35 Issue 3, pp. 287-301

Brands are one of marketing’s main foci. But while the American Marketing Association’s official marketing definition continues to evolve, its brand definition has remained stagnant for nearly 80 years. This article argues that the AMA’s simplistic trademark conceptualization of brands is increasingly out of touch with marketing theory and practice. Integrating the consumer culture, marketing semiotics, and General Systems Theory literatures, we re-conceptualize brands as semiotic marketing systems. This follows marketing systems being core to macromarketing. It also obeys marketing systems needing to contemplate their meaning infrastructures given today’s progressively symbolic markets. The antecedents, operation and benefits of this new systems approach to brands are discussed. Brands are re-defined as complex multidimensional constructs with varying degrees of meaning, independence, co-creation and scope. Brands are semiotic marketing systems that generate value for direct and indirect participants, society, and the broader environment, through the exchange of co-created meaning.

Marketing

Personifying brands to improve their design, management and effectiveness

Francisco Conejo
INCAE Business Review, Volume 2 Issue 7, p2-8.

Brands have evolved into complex symbols which are difficult to manage. Personify the brand reconciles brand’s abstract meanings with practitioner’s pragmatism. That is, conceptualizing brands as if they were people, attributing human qualities to them. This approach not only allows the development of more competitive brands.