‘We are locally owned’: Measuring and understanding the brand value of local ownership

C. Clifton Eason, John P. Bentley, Scott J. Vitell, Melissa Cinelli and Nathan Kirkpatrick
Additional contact information
C. Clifton Eason: Professor of Marketing, Brock School of Business, Samford University, USA
John P. Bentley: Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management, School of Pharmacy, The University of Mississippi, USA
Scott J. Vitell: Professor Emeritus of Marketing (Retired), The University of Mississippi, USA
Melissa Cinelli: Associate Professor of Marketing, School of Business Administration, The University of Mississippi, USA
Nathan Kirkpatrick: Brock School of Business, Samford University, USA

Journal of Brand Strategy, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 259-285

Abstract: The ‘buy local’ consumer phenomenon has continued to grow in recent years. While consumers’ attitudes towards locally produced products have been well-studied, consumer preferences for locally owned stores (LOSs) have received little research attention. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to understand the potential relevance of localness as an element of a firm’s overall brand by: (a) developing and validating a construct to measure the preference for patronising LOSs, (b) identifying antecedents of the preference, (c) evaluating the prevalence of the preference and (d) testing the performance of the new measure in a study to determine whether consumers with this preference are willing to pay a premium at LOSs. The results indicate that localness may be an important brand attribute to emphasise, as a considerable proportion of consumers consider a store being locally owned to be an important store selection attribute. Three antecedents of the local shopping preference (LSP) are identified, and the localness preference maintains a strong positive relationship with one’s willingness to pay (WTP) a premium at a LOS over what similar merchandise would cost at a national chain (NC). This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

Keywords: local; locally owned; localness; brand attribute (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/10438/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/10438/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jbs000:y:2025:v:14:i:3:p:259-285

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Brand Strategy from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().