Advances in National Brand and Private Label Marketing by Francisco J. Martínez-López Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad & Alexander Chernev

Author:Francisco J. Martínez-López, Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad & Alexander Chernev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

3 Research Methodology

To contribute to the research about brand and branding in the digital era, we conduct a multiple case study analysis of events concerning consumers’ activities that are not aligned with the best interests of the brand. Specifically, our objective is to understand why consumers assume such adversely behaviours and how brand managers react when their brand is attacked.

We preferred a case study analysis because this qualitative method can be utilised to investigate “a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clear evident and it relies on multiple sources of evidence” (Yin 1994, p. 13). Thus, this technique helps researchers to answer ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions, verify a theory or build new theoretical constructs, advance previous research in a specific field (Eisenhardt 1989; Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007).

Regarding the number of cases to include in a research project, we opted for a multiple cases study rather than a single case. The first and foremost step in the case study research design is the sampling logic. The sampling technique consists to choose cases that are likely to replicate or extend the emergent theory, from a minimum of four to a maximum of 10 (Eisenhardt 1989). We designed this study with literal replication logic (Yin 1994) in order to explain similarities as well as variance in root causes of and reactions to consumers brand attack. We used the following protocol to select our sample. First, the selection of a case was based on prior knowledge, such as information assimilated from the press and social media. Second, we searched information on Google using keywords such as “Epic fail”, “Brand attack”, “Consumer complaint”. Third, on the base of our prior knowledge and web data collection, we selected interesting cases (e.g., contrasting and extreme cases; cases which belong to different industries) instead of typical, average cases in order to explore cause changes in the characteristics and specificities of the object study.

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