The theories and concepts propounded in various disciplines of social sciences and management hold good only if their practical application enables the society to understand the various complex phenomena in these fields through the analysis of relevant factors. The discipline of brand management is no exception to this. Only when a certain concept or theory in the analysis of brand management helps practitioners and academicians in the analysis of a given set of circumstances to solve a prevalent management problem, its relevance is acknowledged and accepted. The papers featured in this issue deal with the practical application of such theoretical concepts in the area of brand management.

The first paper, “A Study on Brand-Switching Behavior and Promotional Strategies for High-End Airline Flight Services”, by Mihir Dash and Jacob Alexander, analyzes the impact of different promotional programs on the brand-switching behavior of students with respect to premium flight services to determine the ‘optimal promotional mix’ that service providers should offer. The authors have used Markov brand-switching model in combination with game theoretic techniques to find out the optimal promotional mixes of the two service providers based on the data collected by a sample survey of customers. The results of their study suggest that both the service providers should adopt a combination of promotional offers, and indicate an asymmetric behavior in response to the promotional schemes of the providers.

The second paper, “Brand Preference Factors of Passenger Cars: An Empirical Assessment”, by C Dharmaraj and J Clement Sudhahar, has identified the underlying factors impacting the brand preference of passenger cars in the Indian market. The results of the study indicate that it is all-round features of the car brands, such as reliability, safety, technology, value for money, high resale value, high mileage, maintenance cost, quality, comforts and durability that prove to be the decisive factors in the customers’ choice of a car in the Indian context.

The third paper, “The Benefits and Risks of Strategic Brand Collaboration”, by Henrik Uggla and Per Åsberg, presents and explains the benefits and risks of brand collaboration from a strategic perspective. The authors claim that integrated benefits and risks with co-branding lie scattered across poorly integrated domains. The paper highlights the various risks and benefits that firms can avail of through strategic brand collaboration.

The last paper, “Destination Branding: A Case Study of Hong Kong”, by Aditya Shankar Mishra, attempts to find out the attributes which can differentiate Hong Kong from other prominent tourist destinations. He applies Kapferer’s brand identity prism to establish Hong Kong’s destination brand identity. The author claims that the differentiated destination brand identity of Hong Kong would eventually help the stakeholders of Hong Kong’s tourism industry to position it on unique attributes.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor