EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Planning pre-launch positioning: Segmentation via willingness-to-pay and means-end brand differentiators

Charles E. Gengler () and Michael S. Mulvey ()
Additional contact information
Charles E. Gengler: City University of New York
Michael S. Mulvey: University of Ottawa

Journal of Brand Management, 2017, vol. 24, issue 3, No 2, 230-249

Abstract: Abstract Brand positioning is effective only to the extent that it aligns with prospects’ needs and interests and is viewed as worth spending their money on. Accordingly, marketing needs research tools that are capable of identifying the criteria that consumers use when choosing a brand in a given category. Yet all too often, studies ask consumers to rate brands with pre-specified attributes and benefit lists that may be at variance with the standards that come to mind naturally without cued prompting. Moreover, such methods may fail to capture the elusive – yet crucial – salient higher-order social and psychoemotional reasons that lend importance to an individual’s decision and willingness-to-pay. This research builds on and extends the means-end approach to brand positioning that looks at brands through consumers’ eyes by developing a latent class segmentation model that examines preference heterogeneity and identifies segment-level differences in decision themes and reservation prices. Using data from an empirical field study, the model detects three distinct segments of potential high-end adopters of a next-generation cellphone with innovative design features. The results offer insights to guide go-to-market branding strategy, and related product line, pricing, and positioning decisions. Implications for customer value assessment, benefit-based market segmentation, and innovation management are discussed.

Keywords: brand positioning; means-end theory; innovation adoption; customer value-based pricing; segmentation; latent class regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41262-017-0030-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:pal:jobman:v:24:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1057_s41262-017-0030-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41262

DOI: 10.1057/s41262-017-0030-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Brand Management is currently edited by Joachim Kernstock, Shaun M. Powell, Mark Davies and Ur a Golob

More articles in Journal of Brand Management from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:pal:jobman:v:24:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1057_s41262-017-0030-z