‘We are locally owned’: Measuring and understanding the brand value of local ownership
Abstract
The ‘buy local’ consumer phenomenon has continued to grow in recent years. While consumers’ attitudes towards locally produced products have been well-studied, consumer preferences for locally owned stores (LOSs) have received little research attention. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to understand the potential relevance of localness as an element of a firm’s overall brand by: (a) developing and validating a construct to measure the preference for patronising LOSs, (b) identifying antecedents of the preference, (c) evaluating the prevalence of the preference and (d) testing the performance of the new measure in a study to determine whether consumers with this preference are willing to pay a premium at LOSs. The results indicate that localness may be an important brand attribute to emphasise, as a considerable proportion of consumers consider a store being locally owned to be an important store selection attribute. Three antecedents of the local shopping preference (LSP) are identified, and the localness preference maintains a strong positive relationship with one’s willingness to pay (WTP) a premium at a LOS over what similar merchandise would cost at a national chain (NC). This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.
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Author's Biography
C. Clifton Eason , PhD, is a professor of marketing and the coordinator of the professional sales programme at the Brock School of Business, Samford University. His teaching portfolio includes courses in marketing strategy, analytics and sales. Supporting his work in consulting and executive education, Clifton maintains an active practitioner-focused research agenda covering a variety of subjects in sales and marketing. Prior to earning his PhD, Clifton worked for 15 years in banking and financial services in Birmingham, AL, and Nashville, TN. During that time, he gained experience in many facets of marketing and management, culminating in responsibilities as regional chief financial officer and registered principal of a Fortune 500 financial services company. As an academic with extensive professional experience, Clifton keeps a foot in both worlds and maintains a balance between research and application.
John P. Bentley , PhD, is a professor of pharmacy administration at the School of Pharmacy, The University of Mississippi, with a joint appointment in the Department of Marketing, Analytics and Professional Sales, School of Business Administration. He is the Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management and previously served as the programme coordinator for the University’s Graduate Minor in Applied Statistics and the Chair of the Department of Pharmacy Administration. He is a pharmacist, biostatistician and health services researcher. He received his BS degree in pharmacy and an MBA degree from Drake University, the MS and PhD degrees in pharmacy administration from The University of Mississippi and the MS and PhD degrees in biostatistics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He has been a member of many interdisciplinary research teams, consulted with numerous researchers concerning a variety of statistical methods, published research in over 75 different journals and served on the MS or PhD committees of over 190 students from various disciplines. His research, teaching and professional interests include quality of life assessment and patient-reported outcomes; medication use, misuse and outcomes; pharmacoepidemiology; measurement of adherence to medications; pharmaceutical marketing and patient behaviour; latent variable analysis; longitudinal data analysis; the analysis of statistical interactions (ie moderation analysis) and the statistical analysis of mechanisms of effects (ie mediation analysis).
Scott J. Vitell , PhD, is a professor emeritus of marketing after retiring as the Phil B. Harden Chair of Business Ethics at The University of Mississippi. Dr Vitell is a recognised expert in marketing and ethics and is a former section editor for the Journal of Business Ethics.
Melissa Cinelli holds her PhD degree at the University of Florida in 2011. She is an associate professor of marketing and serves as the Sona Systems coordinator for the Department of Marketing. Dr Cinelli’s research broadly examines the social functions that brands and products serve for consumers, specifically examining how brands and consumers’ identities interact to shape brand evaluations, impression formation and impression management. She is particularly interested in how consumers evaluate authenticity in other consumers’ and brands’ actions.
Nathan Kirkpatrick , PhD, joined the faculty at the Brock School of Business, Samford University, as an assistant professor in the fall 2020 semester. Prior to this appointment, Nathan served for two years in the Nelson Rusche College of Business, Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA), Texas. While at SFA, Nathan served as a clinical instructor of management and marketing and also led the sports business programme housed on SFA’s campus in The Woodlands, Texas (Houston area). Before working at SFA, Nathan led the sport administration programme in the School of Health Professions, Samford University, for five years, and he also worked as an assistant professor of sports administration at the School of Business, Belhaven University. Nathan started his professional career working in college athletics as a director of basketball operations, head men’s basketball coach, academics and eligibility worker and athletic administrator within athletic departments at Colorado State University, Covenant College and The University of Georgia. He played basketball at Covenant College. Nathan received a BA degree in history and secondary education from Covenant College and a master’s and PhD degrees in sport management and policy from the University of Georgia. He also earned a master’s in business administration from Samford University.
