There is an old saying "You are what your identity is". We all know that brand is an identity of a product or a service. A customer will have a positive, negative or neutral attitude towards a product based on what perception he or she holds about the brand that is associated with the product. It takes ages for a marketer to build a brand. Once the brand name has been established in a market, marketing strategists will leave no stone unturned to extract the maximum benefit from it. Hence we see that the implementation of brand extension strategies have become a norm. The companies try to leverage on the existing good will of the brand and use the same brand for introducing new products into the market.

The first paper in this issue throws more light on this strategy of brand extension. Dhananjay Bapat, in his paper titled "Brand Extension for Bank Brands: An Experimental Study", looks into issues such as category similarity, brand association of master brand, brand affect and the success perceptions in creating favorable consumer evaluation in case of a bank brand. The author makes some insightful conclusions on the present vis-à-vis hypothesized future brand extension strategies of the ICICI Bank and the State Bank of India.

According to Henrik Uggla, many companies today are focusing on brand endorsement as a potential strategy option for the future. This concept of brand endorsement is analyzed in-depth by the author in his paper, "Brand Endorsement: A Framework for Analysis". The author positions the brand endorsement strategy in relation to other strategic options among the brand architecture strategies. He provides a theoretical overview of brand endorsement and introduces a new model, which he calls the Brand Endorsement Framework.

Besides brand extension and brand endorsement, this issue also consists of a paper that deals with another contemporary phenomenon of our times—the diffusion of innovation process. Sukanya Ashokkumar and Shilpa Gopal in their paper, "Diffusion of Innovation in Private Labels in Food Products", identify the important factors that determine the buying behavior and the factors that help expedite or slow down the diffusion of private labels in food products. According to the authors there are three major factors that contribute to the diffusion of innovation of private labels in food products. These factors reflect the curiosity and interest aspect, the overall positive inclination aspect and the likelihood of purchase of private labels in food products.

In the last paper in this issue titled "Brand Personality and Perception Measures of Two Cities: Surat and Ahmedabad", Ravi Vaidya, Pikesh Gandhi and Jayesh Aagja have used content analysis and David Aaker's five dimensions of brand personality to know the personality of two major cities of Gujarat—Surat and Ahmedabad. The analysis done by the authors has brought forth some interesting insights that can be used by business houses to develop their marketing strategies for these regions.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor