In Brands We Trust? A Multicategory, Multicountry Investigation of Sensitivity of Consumers’ Trust in Brands to Marketing-Mix Activities

Abstract

The essence of a brand is that it delivers on its promises. However, consumers’ trust in brands (CTB) has declined around the world in recent decades. As a result, CTB has become a major concern for managers. The authors examine whether CTB is influenced by marketing-mix activities (i.e., advertising, new product introduction, distribution, price, and price promotion) implemented by brands. The authors propose and show that the sensitivity of CTB to marketing-mix activities is moderated by consumer, category, and country characteristics, using a multisource data set consisting of a survey of 15,073 respondents and scanner panel data on 589 brands in 46 CPG categories across 13 countries (including the four largest emerging markets), which collectively account for half of the world’s population. The authors find strong positive effects for advertising and new product introduction intensity, weak positive effects for price and distribution intensity, and a minor negative effect for price promotion intensity on CTB. Furthermore, the authors find that the effect of marketing-mix activities on CTB is moderated by consumers’ personality traits, consumers’ reliance on brands in a category, and countries’ secular-rational and self-expression cultural values.

The Rise of Online Grocery Shopping in China: Which Brands Will Benefit?

“…Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp (2019) describe strategies on how to achieve this, including product innovation and advertising. Although advertising has no direct effect on BOI, it can have an indirect effect through increasing brand trust (Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp 2019). Fun brands can expect lower BOIs.…”

“…Average of two items that were rated from 1 ¼ "very strongly disagree" to 7 ¼ "very strongly agree" (Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp 2019) Item that was rated from 1 ¼ "very strongly disagree" to 7 ¼ "very strongly agree" (Voss, Spangenberg, and Grohmann 2003): Brand b is a fun brand.…”

“…through increasing brand trust (Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp 2019). Fun brands can expect lower BOIs.…”

“…Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) already distinguished between the cognitive and the experiential aspects of brands and brand consumption. We tap into the cognitive aspect of brands using brand trust (Chaudhuri and Holbrook 2001; Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp 2019), and we capture the experiential aspect with the construct of brand fun (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982). Hernandez (2002) argues that brand trust plays a particularly important role in the decision process of online consumers.…”

Global Brand Building and Management in the Digital Age

“…By relying on the brand name. A strong brand instills confidence in consumers that it will deliver on its promises (Rajavi, Kushwaha, and Steenkamp 2019), and many of these strong brands are global brands, because the global availability and acceptance of a brand signal quality (Steenkamp 2019a). Thus, the digital world may favor strong global brands.…”