Brand management to sustain corporate reputation and customer loyalty is essential for both multinationals and indigenous fi rms in Africa. This book provides a practical overview of country branding and positioning activities in Africa, based on a broad defi nition of base of the pyramid (BoP) marketing, which includes both goods and services, as well as business-to-business marketing, corporate branding, and country branding. The text highlights branding strategies that can be adopted in BoP markets, as well as marketing mix strategies appropriate for much of the continent. Taking into account the role of social networks, culture, and religion, the book explores avenues for developing and building competitive advantage, and how African countries can leverage country branding as part of the development process. The book is ideal for researchers, educators and advanced students in international marketing, management, and brand strategy who are interested in the unique branding characteristics of the African continent.

Mature businesses across all advanced countries are struggling to find new markets. Indian market has been estimated huge in size, approximately $1.2 trillion in purchasing power parity for the households earning an annual income of less than $4,000. This comes to almost 880 million of Indian population of which 22 percent is urban India and 78 percent rural India. Referred to as bottom of the pyramid/low income/subsistence markets, while these markets offer immense business opportunities they also pose challenges. The needs of this segment have to be addressed by the corporate world but it might need a new approach with new business frameworks for implementation. The companies must understand what constitutes value for this segment, how it is different from other segments and how firms can offer value through their market offerings; accordingly what could be the successful business models. Decoding Customer Value at the Bottom of the Pyramid: An Urban India Perspective answers these questions through a practical, rigorous and research oriented way. This book is a must read for business executives across the globe with an interest in the low income customers in India.

The amount and range of brand related literature published in the last fifty years can be overwhelming for brand scholars. This Companion provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of contemporary issues in brand management research, and the challenges faced by brands and their managers. Original contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars from Europe, US, Asia and Africa, provide a diverse range of insights on different areas of branding, reflecting the state of the art and insights into future challenges. Designed to provide not only a comprehensive overview, but also to stimulate new insights, this will be an essential resource for researchers, educators and advanced students in branding and brand management, consumer behaviour, marketing and advertising.

Loyalty is one of the main assets of a brand. In today’s markets, achieving and maintaining loyal customers has become an increasingly complex challenge for brands due to the widespread acceptance and adoption of diverse technologies by which customers communicate with brands. Customers use different channels (physical, web, apps, social media) to seek information about a brand, communicate with it, chat about the brand and purchase its products. Firms are thus continuously changing and adapting their processes to provide customers with agile communication channels and coherent, integrated brand experiences through the different channels in which customers are present. In this context, understanding how brand management can improve value co-creation and multichannel experience—among other issues—and contribute to improving a brand’s portfolio of loyal customers constitutes an area of special interest for academics and marketing professionals. This Special Issue explores new areas of customer loyalty and brand management, providing new insights into the field. Both concepts have evolved over the last decade to encompass such concepts and practices as brand image, experiences, multichannel context, multimedia platforms and value co-creation, as well as relational variables such as trust, engagement and identification (among others).

This research examined how Prahalad's market framework influenced brand loyalty in the Base of the Pyramid market of the Philippines. Previous economic classification studies described the World Economic Pyramid, defining the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) population segment as having annual incomes up to and including $3,000 USD per capita per year. This BoP market was estimated to hold $5 trillion in consumer purchasing power. Recognizing the importance of the BoP market in the world's economy, Prahalad proposed a market framework unique to the BoP market. Composed of four constructs – awareness, affordability, access, and availability – this framework was labeled Prahalad's 4As. Prahalad proposed that the 4As strategic framework was a more appropriate alternative to the traditional marketing framework of the 4Ps — product, price, place and promotion. To date, limited market research has focused on brand loyalty in BoP markets. The present study was conducted first to examine Prahalad's 4As as a comprehensive set of constructs, and second to measure the impact of the 4As on brand loyalty in the BoP Philippines. Using an online survey, usable responses were collected from 606 Philippine college students. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the relationship between Prahalad's constructs of awareness, affordability, access, and availability, and their combined impact on brand loyalty. Results showed that the four constructs were highly correlated. The two constructs of access and availability collapsed into the combined construct of presence, reflecting the consumers' perspective that the product is present in the marketplace, both in a store and on the shelf. Examining the impact on brand loyalty, both awareness of the branded product, and the affordability of the branded product were found to be positively related to brand loyalty; these findings support previous research studies, suggesting marketing practitioners need to focus on product awareness and product affordability to increase brand loyalty in BoP markets. While presence was not found to be related to brand loyalty, presence was found to be positively related to both awareness and affordability. Managerial implications are discussed, and topics for future research are presented.

This book analyzes the impact of entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation on meeting chronic and recurring social challenges, such as poverty, gender inequality, sustainability and climate change, income disparity, social healthcare, community housing and homelessness, and the drive to cleaner food and water supplies. It discusses inclusive entrepreneurial strategies to meet the above social challenges through transformational leadership in the developing economies. With case studies from Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the chapters highlight the success and failure of entrepreneurship in resolving the social challenges, arguing that effective convergence of strategies related to technology, innovation, and poverty alleviation influences entrepreneurial performance. Connecting different theoretical underpinnings and providing a number of frameworks, conceptual models, and cases, this work advances the conversation among entrepreneurship scholars on impacting the developing world.