Customer attitude towards change in brands' ownership in the Literature review

Customer attitude towards change in brands' ownership in the automotive industry and how it affects car purchase intentions - Literature review Example The paper tells that with the continued elevation of completion within the current global marketplace because of globalization, introduction of new products has turned out to be a highly risky venture. One factor facilitating such high levels of risk is the implausible high cost of creating brands for product (new products), which can exceed 100 million dollars in some cases. Thus, firms are resulting into line extensions, brand extensions, as well as other new strategies of products, which allow their leveraging of the existing trademark equity with their relatively new products as a measure of minimizing the brand associated risks. Due to the increasing alarming studies about the possible harmful impacts of these, family brands’ extensions, the marketers’ attention has been captured by some recent new approaches. One such approach is the alliances of brands, which this paper seeks to examine in the automobile industry. In the present competitive world, brand alliances are often chosen as strategic options, which assume a diversity of forms ranging from simple advertising to ingredient branding. Some prominent illustrations of such collaborations of brands are evident across the daily life of consumers and spans diverse industries such as high technology, airlines, automobile industry, services, fast moving consumer products, as well as the fashion industry. In marketing, an attitude is a general assessment of products or services created over time. Attitude satisfies personal motives as well as affects buying and shopping habits of the consumers. Consumer attitudes compose of the consumers’ beliefs, behavioral intentions, and feelings about a product or service. This is within the marketing context, usually a retail or brand store. Beliefs, behavioral intentions, and feelings about a product are considered together as they are interdependent. They also represent the forces influencing the way in which consumers react towards an object. Th e consumer attitudes are an advantage as well as an obstacle to a marketer. Selecting to ignore or discount attitudes of the consumers concerning car brands in the development of marketing strategies guarantees less successful of the whole campaign. The perceptive marketers control their attitudes’ understanding in order to predict the consumers’ behavior. Such well-informed marketers understand the exact ways of distinguishing the variations between attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors while controlling all the three in development of effective marketing strategies. Most of the brand alliances or M&A occur between firms from the same nation and across international borders as well as between transnational brands as shall be seen in the automotive industry, which has witnessed a number of mergers and acquisitions. Such transnational alliances of brands allows business entities the permit of marketing as well as learning beyond their domestic scale markets, while maintaini ng high levels of domestic responsiveness. Both parties involved in brand alliance accrue benefits via increasing the rate of success for the product offering in the local markets while strengthening their local brands. This is realized via foreign investment and technology transfer between the alliance partners. However, the successfulness of such brand alliances must consider the attitudes of the customers in the target markets as these determine their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the alliances in the automotive industry. The emphasis is on examining the attitudes of the customers towards the increasing M&A in this industry as well as its impacts on their intentions of purchasing cars. The objective is determination of the relationship existing between the behavior and attitudes of the