Brand Spillover within the Insurance Ecosystem: An Abstract
Authors: Robson, J., Farquhar, J. and Ashraf, S.
Pages: 207-208
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-42545-6_58
Abstract:Negative events are known to damage a guilty brand and spillover and damage other innocent but close brands. Extant literature on brand spillover has largely been constrained to brand portfolios, competing brands or brand partners/alliances (see for example, Mackalski and Belisle 2015); with very few studies evaluating brand spillover beyond immediate brand partners and consumers (for example Magnusson et al. 2014). This study considers the wider, business context in which firms operate and examines brand spillover within a business ecosystem. A business ecosystem is a dynamic community where members with direct and indirect links to a central organisation actively interact (Iansiti and Levien 2004; Moore 1993). Recent research has applied the ecosystem to marketing (Akaka et al. 2013; Baron et al. 2018) and parallel research in branding has argued for branding theory to be re-envisaged within a wider context (Miller and Merrilees 2013). This study aims to extend theory through an in-depth study of how the negative effects of a brand crisis spillover into an ecosystem. It sets out to address these gaps through an empirical study of brand spillover that draws on multiple data sources to address the complexity of the phenomenon. The study examines brand spillover in UK general insurance and the impact of a series of crises in its business ecosystem. The study makes the following contributions to brand spillover theory. First, brand spillover originates at different levels of the ecosystem and is not limited to close relationships. Second, the role of consumer knowledge as a moderator is identified; where consumers have a low knowledge of industry structure brand spillage is higher. Third, the role of individual ecosystem actors in advancing negative brand spillover is identified. These actors are not the source of the spillover or necessarily affected but play a key role in communication and influencing the attitudes and beliefs of others. These findings have implications for practitioners as brand spillover can only be managed if the ecosystem works together.
Source: Scopus