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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present different naming, packaging, and pricing strategies adopted by private label (PL) retailers in India. This study also aims to identify preferred private label brand (PLB) categories, factors influencing their selection, and the importance of cues in evaluation of PLBs. The overall purpose is to identify important areas for future research of PLBs in the wake of organized retail growth in an emerging economy (India is the context here). Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on in-store observations of major Indian retail chains, longitudinal analyses of customers’ shopping bills, qualitative analyses of consumer interviews, and focus group discussions. Findings – The results indicate that retailers primarily adopt “Sub-branding” (using the store name along with a separate brand name) and “House of Brands” (using a separate brand name only) strategies to sell PLBs in the Indian market. Groceries, food and beverages, and apparel are the preferred categories in PLB. Price, quality, and convenience are the major factors influencing PLB. Taste, ingredients, packaging, price, brand name, and store name are the main factors that are used to evaluate PLBs. Research limitations/implications – Due to the qualitative analyses and interpretation, there are limitations to this study which need to be empirically validated. Practical implications – This research has implications for organized retailers in understanding the various strategies used for PLBs in India. Originality/value – This study is a novel study for documenting the PLB strategies adopted by organized retailers in India. It also uses a longitudinal exploratory approach to further understanding the consumption of PLBs in India.

We conducted a content analysis on 203 comparative print advertisements in India. We found that as hypothesized, direct comparative advertisements were used more (vis-à-vis indirect ones), differentiative claims were used more (vis-à-vis associative ones), maximal claims were higher than minimal claims, multibrand comparisons were greater in number (vis-à-vis single-brand comparisons), positive valence is preferred to negative valence, and underdog brands used more comparative advertisements than top-dog brands. Contrary to expectations, we found that hedonic and utilitarian products used comparative advertisements equally. We offer a snapshot of the state of comparative advertisements in India that would be useful to managers and researchers.

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Research on brand naming has recently taken center stage in marketing literature. This study formulates a comprehensive classification of brand names that incorporates frameworks from existing literature and current naming methods used by practitioners. A content analysis of the top 500 global brand names based on manifest content, across 11 product categories, was conducted to understand the current brandnaming trends. The results confirm extensive use of the promoter's name and place of origin (39.7 per cent of all brand names coded), compounding (34.1 per cent), abbreviations (18.2 per cent) and blending (7.9 per cent). Category-wise analysis indicates that certain categories, such as durables, follow the aggregate pattern of 61.5 per cent semantic word names, 53.0 per cent invented word names and 23.6 per cent non-word names. FMCG brands, on the other hand, show differing patterns because of disproportionately low abbreviations in the distribution. Further, χ 2 tests using equal expected frequencies of the three dimensions; semantic, invented and non-word names, showed that there appears to be significant differences in frequency between these dimensions. Practitioners may consider using these newly defined categories, such as semantically related acronyms, in creating distinctive brand names. This study also analyzes the use of sound symbolic names for brands.

PurposeCollaborative filtering based recommender systems (CF–RS) are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preference similarity. Recommendations by CF–RS merely provide suggestions as “people who bought this also bought this” while, consumers are unaware about the source of these recommendations. By amalgamating CF–RS with consumers' social network information, e-commerce sites can offer recommendation from social networks of consumers. These social network embedded systems are known as social recommender systems (SRS). The extant literature has researched on the algorithms and implementation of these systems; however, SRS have not been understood from consumers' psychological perspective. This study aims to qualitatively explore consumers' motives to accept SRS in e-commerce websites.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of frequent online shoppers. SRS are currently not very widespread in the Indian e-commerce space; hence, a vignette was shown to respondents before they responded to the questions. Inductive qualitative content analysis method was used to analyse these interviews.FindingsThree main themes (social-gratification, self-gratification and information-gratification) emerged from the analysis. Out of these, social-gratification acts as an enabler, while self-gratification along with some elements of information-gratification act as inhibitors towards acceptance of social recommendations. Based on these gratifications, we present a conceptual model on consumer's acceptance of social recommendations.Originality/valueThis study is an initial attempt to qualitatively understand consumers' attitudes and acceptance of social recommendations on e-commerce websites, which in itself is a fairly new phenomenon.

Comparative advertising is widely used as a persuasion tool. Contemporary advertisers employ both direct (e.g. “Total Corn Flakes have more nutritional ingredients than Kellogg Corn Flakes”) and indirect comparative advertisements (e.g. “Total Corn Flakes have more nutritional ingredients than other corn flakes”) in their campaigns. Consumers process ads predominantly either through analytical (using reason and semantics) or imagery (using nonverbal, sensory representation of perceptual information) modes of processing. Drawing on extant research in advertising and information processing, we posit that direct comparisons are better suited for analytical processing while indirect ones are more amenable for imagery processing. Using a 2*2 factorial design (comparison format—direct/indirect; mode of information processing—analytical/imagery), we show that direct (indirect) comparative advertisements are more effective in reducing perceived manipulative intent, enhancing attitude toward the advertisement, and increasing the perceived differences between the brands for consumers using analytical (imagery) information processing modes. We add to the comparative advertising literature by identifying a moderator (mode of information processing) that influences the effectiveness of direct and indirect comparisons. Further, we study indirect comparisons when most extant research considers direct comparisons. Managerially, our work suggests that advertisers using comparative advertising should use direct comparisons under analytical processing conditions and use indirect comparisons under imagery processing conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Purpose Extant research on comparative advertising has focused only on “market leader” comparisons (a brand targeting the market leader), whereas in the marketplace, “multi-brand” comparisons are more prevalent (Kalro et al., 2010). Moreover, most research focuses on direct comparisons only. Hence, this research aims to investigate the interplay between comparison ad strategy (“market leader”/“multi-brand” comparisons) and comparison ad format (direct/indirect comparisons) on the effectiveness of comparative advertising. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses four 2 × 2 fully crossed factorial designs (comparison ad format: direct vs indirect and comparison ad strategy: market leader vs multi brand) with established and new brands in two categories: powdered detergents and smart phones. All studies were conducted in metropolitan cities of India. Findings By and large, the experiments indicated that direct (indirect) comparisons lowered (heightened) perceived manipulative intent and enhanced (reduced) attitude-toward-the-ad for multi-brand (market leader) comparisons. Practical implications Findings suggest that when advertisers use comparative advertising, they may use direct ads when using multi-brand comparisons and use indirect ones when using market leader comparisons. It could also be argued that when advertisers use multi-brand comparisons because of fragmentation in the marketplace, they may directly compare against these multiple brands. When advertisers need to compare against a market leader, they may do so indirectly. Originality/value This research is among the first to investigate multi-brand comparisons that are widely used in the industry and that too in the context of both direct and indirect comparison formats.