Brand management is very similar to other disciplines in management sciences on one phenomenon and that is change. Change over a period of time, change due to external and internal forces, change to infuse new life in a brand, change to defend one’s brand position, etc., are all the different dimensions of change that keeps a brand manager busy throughout his or her professional life. Interestingly, though change is certain, how it would occur and what would be its consequences are never certain. Our endeavor, through this journal, is to help the brand managers and academicians to keep themselves abreast with the latest issues, strategies, insights, researches and other relevant aspects which would aid them in this dynamic arena of brand management.

The first paper in this issue, “Effective Brand Community Management: Lessons from Customer Enthusiasts”, by Utpal M Dholakia and Silvia Vianello, addresses a leading question in the area of brand management—How can companies manage their brand communities effectively? Here, the authors explain five important reasons—why companies are missing out on harvesting all the benefits of brand communities. The authors also explain five important lessons which would assist the managers in creating and running a vibrant and influential brand community of customers. A major conclusion that authors make through their research is that brand communities which are run on a voluntary basis by customer enthusiasts with nonexistent or shoestring budgets are ultimately the ones that engage customers and develop into vibrant social collectives.

The second paper, “Consumer Evaluations of Product Line Brand Extension”, by Joji Alex N, addresses the issues pertaining to the impact of brand loyalty on product line Brand Extension (BE) attitude in highly competitive markets with plenty of fairly close substitutes. In this study, the author has considered product line BE attitude among users of the brands Maruti 800 and Dove soap. The author concludes that brand loyalty is a diminishing entity when the market is flooded with fairly close substitute products. However, in separate models, brand loyalty is found to mediate the relationship between brand trust and BE attitude.

The third paper, “A Comparative Study on Consumers’ Attitude Towards Private Labels: A Special Focus on Ahmedabad and Surat”, by Amit R Pandya and Monarch A Joshi focuses on determining and comparing customers’ attitude towards national brands vis-á-vis private labels with respect to different attributes in two major cities of Gujarat. The authors’ research has brought forth the importance of pricing as an attribute in influencing customers’ acceptance of private label brands. It is expected that this study would be useful to retailers in formulating strategies to make products, other than the national branded ones, acceptable in the market. The fourth paper, “Customer Perception of Brand LIC: An Empirical Investigation”, by Timira Shukla, deals with how customer satisfaction can provide business opportunities to Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). Through the use of SERVQUAL and GAP model, the author shows that LIC is focusing on dimensions which are not important to customers and that LIC needs to make substantial investments to improve their score on tangibility dimension as it is an important criterion for customer service.

Finally, this issue contains the case study, “Oprah Winfrey’s ‘Celebrity Brand’: Will it Work Wonders for ‘The Oprah Winfrey Network’?”, by Debahuti Kashyap and Deepti Srikanth. The case study attempts to analyze many interesting questions like—Would Oprah be successful in recreating history with her new network? Is Oprah trying to overstretch her brand power? etc. The main focus of the case study is on celebrity branding and its influence on the success of brand extensions.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor