Until recently, brand identities were built by firms via brand image advertising. However, the flourishing consumer communication weakened the firms' grip on their brands. The interaction between advertising and consumer communications and their joint impact on brand identity is the focal point...

Brands and word-of-mouth (WOM) are cornerstones of marketing, yet, their relationship was largely ignored. In order to explore this relationship we present a theoretical framework whose fundamentals are consumers and what stimulates them to engage in WOM. It argues that consumers spread the word...

Consumers in many markets face a growing variety of products grouped under different umbrella brands, and can access vast amounts of information about these products. This may result in increasing product-level competition between firms. However, some observers argue that the increase in the...