Cross-cultural empirical research on managing brands over time: Focusing on moderate inconsistency, memory advantage, and dialectical thinking

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K01740
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 07090:Commerce-related
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University
• Principal Investigator: SUZUKI Satoko 一橋大学, 大学院経営管理研究科, 教授 (20621759)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: brand management / culture / inconsistency / memory advantage / long-term

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The current research empirically examined the mechanism for building strong brands over time. In particular, studies were conducted to examine the effect of minimally counterintuitive brand strategies on consumer memory advantage.
The findings of our study show mixed results. The overall score delayed indicates that minimally counterintuitive product extensions list enjoys better recall after a week. However, there is no difference between intuitive and minimally counterintuitive scores. This indicates that when participants are exposed to minimally counterintuitive product extensions list, after a week, they recall better in general but not necessarily the minimally inconsistent product extensions. Past studies show that a story is an important part of minimally counterintuitive cognitive template. In our next study, we will focus on brand narratives.

Free Research Field

Marketing

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

There has been less empirical work to understand the long-term brand management. The main contribution of the current research is filling this gap. Furthermore, this research extends our knowledge on the benefits of inconsistent branding activities while previous studies focused on consistency.