Brand Resurrection: A Study on Determinants of Reviving Dead Brands in a Emerging Economy

Abstract

With the technological advancement, rapid pace of innovation and changing customer taste and preference, the normal life expectancy of many brands have declined unpresidently in the the marker in 21st century. This uncertainity is facing by almost all brands in the world irrespective of their current and past market size. The survivability of the brand or the longevity of the PLC is highly depends on how successfully these brands can touch their customers emotionaly, connects their inner selves and find new ways to reconnect. Mostly those brands vanish which fail to deliver a conctrete value to the customer and are very rigid in their approaches. Customers are more connected with the intangible attributes rather than physical or tangible attributes. Marketers must not forget that if a brand vanish or fail in a market, it must be because of certain specific and a number of other secondary factors. Changing trends or a poor marketing plan can also be a reason prime reason for any failure in the success. So, it could imply that a brand can return back strongly at any time if it gets proper timing, suitable trend and fashion. We have quite a few evidence that a few brands have effectively restored their names and revitalized their brands. Ultimately, a brand seeking to shed its past mistakes and forge ahead needs to examine its brand story to decide what connective elements should be carried forward, and what should be left behind. But there is a little research done in the area related to understanding the consumer desire to participate in brand resurrection and its ever-growing importance (Cattaneo, 2012; Dion, 2016). The study highlights the fact that several dead brands are being revived or are in the process of revival by organizations due to consumerbrand co-creation and resurrection movements. The main objective of the study is to explore factors that drive consumer participation in resurrection. The design of the research can be classified as both descriptive and exploratory; a survey method using a structured questionnaire is being used for data collection. The results of the study indicate that functional and social-adjustive utilities along with perceived brand superiority are not significantly associated with participation in brand resurrection. Further, we find partial support for the moderating effect of nostalgia. The relationship between functional and socialadjustive utilities and participation in brand resurrection is significant when moderated by nostalgia. The relationship between value-expressive utility and participation in brand resurrection is significant. There is a significant interplay between the value-expressive utility and nostalgia which suggests that both intentional and unintentional factors can explain customer motivation to participate in brand resurrection. Finally, the result indicates that nostalgia positively moderates all the factors like functional utility, social-adjustive utility, value- expressive utility, and brand superiority of a brand towards the resurrection movement. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide a more comprehensive look at the factors that can determine brand resurrection in Indian and Northeast Indian Context.