How Local/Global is your Brand?: A technique to assess brand categorisation

This paper contends that the logical way to classify brands is to use a methodology based on consumer perceptions rather than academic/practitioner criteria, and that this may enable managers to more accurately define brand marketing strategies for current brands or relaunch efforts. It tests this theory using a quantitative instrument to assess consumer perceptions of local/global brand categorisation, with representative samples. Currently, most of the literature relating to the different typologies of brands (global, local, etc.) has been founded on academic/practitioner categorisations based on objective criteria. Consumers, on the other hand, do not know these categorisations based on objective criteria and may well see the brands differently. Existing research to categorise brands from the consumer's perspective has been conducted with qualitative techniques using small samples, meaning the results obtained are difficult to generalise. This paper relies on the results of an empirical research study based on a survey carried out among Mexican consumers using a new methodology that follows the suggested categorisation principles of Steenkamp and De Jong (2010). The results provide an actual categorisation of leading brands into ‘global’, ‘local’, ‘glocal’ and ‘functional’, based on consumers' perspectives, and reveal important differences in the categorisation of brands vs the traditional approaches found in the literature.