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

本研究的目的是从消费者的角度，通过实证确定一种随着时间的推移建立强大品牌的机制，从而发展一种新的品牌管理理论。于2022财政年度，透过从消费者角度思考品牌长寿的意义，进一步完善假设。一个品牌的长期生存意味着它在消费者的心目中一直存在。我们进行了包括市场营销，消费者行为和社会心理学在内的各个学科的文献综述，以确定消费者长期保持品牌的变量和机制。此外，还对Takara Tomy的Rika-chan等长寿品牌进行了案例研究。在文献回顾和案例研究的基础上，我们现在集中讨论三个概念。第一个是fandom。让消费者成为品牌的粉丝，可以有效地让消费者长期记住品牌。有趣的是，在品牌管理中对粉丝的研究仍然很少，特别是在日本以外。第二，我们正在研究情感的多样性，即情感多样性。在品牌体验中体验不同的情感将导致更高以及更长的品牌回忆。第三，我们假设，谈论特定品牌的愿望是品牌留在消费者记忆中的必要条件。因此，我们决定使用“谈论特定品牌的愿望”作为我们未来实证研究的因变量。这两个主题将于二零二三财政年度进一步研究。

The objective of this research is to develop a new theory in brand management by empirically identifying a mechanism for building strong brands over time from a consumer perspective. In FY2022, the hypotheses were further refined by thinking the meaning of brand longevity from a consumer perspective. Long-term survival of a brand means that it remains in the consumers' mind across time. We have conducted the literature review in various disciplines including marketing, consumer behavior, and social psychology to identify variables and mechanisms for consumers to keep brands in their minds for a long time. In addition, case studies on longevity brands such as Takara Tomy's Rika-chan was conducted. Based on literature review and case studies, we are now focusing on three concepts. First is a fandom. Making consumers a fan of the brand is effective for consumers to remember the brands for a long time. Interestingly, the research on fandom in brand management is still scarce especially outside Japan. Second, we are looking into a diversity of emotions, namely emodiversity. Experiencing diverse emotions in a brand experience will lead to higher as well as longer recall of brands. Third, we hypothesized that a desire to talk about the particular brands is a necessary condition for brands to remain in the consumer memory. Thus, we have decided to use "desire to talk about the particular brand" as a dependent variable for our future empirical studies. These two themes will be further examined in FY2023.