Brands can perform a heist in your mind. They can infiltrate your dreams with subliminal messages, and make you think someone else’s thoughts are your own. And we can totally forget it, as if it never existed.

“Let’s say people get dementia or something like that. Then they forget a brand called Coca-Cola,” says Kiran Pedada, Associate professor of Marketing at the Asper School of Business.

So in the business landscape, the question becomes, can a brand compare to tangible things, like new and improved products?

Pedada addresses the minefield companies must cross when they decide whether to focus more on research & development, or brand in his article “To Acquire or to Ally? The Impact of Strategic Emphasis on Governance Mode Choice.”

Written alongside co-authors Girish Mallapragada (Indiana University), Raghu Bommaraju (Indian School of Business), and Alok Kumar (University of Nebraska), the article was published in the FT50-ranked Journal of Marketing Research.

High risk, high reward

What does “To Acquire or to Ally?” mean?

Say your company wants to grow: you can favour an acquisition (i.e. bringing on a new client) or alliance (i.e. forming a partnership with another entity).

How leaders make this decision is by adapting one of two different mindsets at the strategy stage: value creation or value appropriation.

In value creation, a company creates new services and products by investing in research & development, building on what they offer in the marketplace.

In value appropriation, a company takes what it already has and tries to gain a higher stake in the marketplace by reinforcing their brand through marketing and advertising efforts.

With the paper acting as a guide to decision makers in the business world, Pedada and his team show that if a company places its strategic emphasis on value creation and R&D, they are more likely to form alliances; if the company prefers value appropriation and branding, they will go the acquisition route.

However, the research shows that focusing on acquisitions (brands) is trending down.

When company analysts get involved, they tend to encourage executives that the brand will be safer if they go the alliance (R&D) route.

The growing tendency of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) positions being ousted from the C-suite proves it. “Marketing has had an issue for several years, like, what’s the real impact of marketing at the top level, right?” Says Pedada.

For one, it has always been hard to prove the effectiveness of advertising. But especially when it comes to global brands, “transferability is more challenging.” He says. “They need more adaption. For example, the distribution channels for India are very different compared to Canada or the UK, right?”

And if someone mishandles a brand, he says, “they might misappropriate a brand, and then that could actually lead to negative consequences.”

Be genuinely interested

Pedada’s article serves as an answer to questions he had before taking his PhD.

“Before I started my PhD, I worked in corporate strategy where I was actually sort of working on acquisitions and alliances, especially in the infrastructure industry in India.” Pedada says. He wondered how they decided which route to pursue.

Pedada thinks that the article’s fusion with his personal curiosity (as well as his co-authors) is what gave it the spark that led to it being published in a prestigious journal.

“We’ll invest more time when we are really genuinely interested in something, right?” He says.

Six years and countless reviews later, it’s easy to get the sense Pedada wouldn’t have wanted it done any sooner.

“It’s very satisfying after such persistence. I think the fruit tastes better.”

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The Asper School of Business aims to expand global knowledge and engage in intellectual exploration to advance teaching, learning, and research. Our researchers’ scholarly work is regularly published in internationally renowned publications. Learn more here. 

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Waiting years to rebrand a location after a merger or purchase isn’t uncommon, said Sijie Sun, a University of Manitoba marketing professor. The change will boost Bass Pro Shops’ visibility and may increase brand loyalty among its current customers, he added.

The company risks upsetting customers loyal to Cabela’s, Sun noted.

To read the entire article, please follow the link with the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Pedada has looked at the role of nostalgia in marketing. He said nostalgia can trigger sensory functions, like sight in this case, that can be appealing in short bursts.

“(The statues) bring back memories of the years long gone by. They bring back memories of their childhood and the celebrations that they had with families,” he said.

To read more about the story and about how a UM alum created the statues, please follow the link to the Winnipeg Free Press. 

However, customers seemingly love the products and the previous concerns are “fixable,” she added.

“It’s going to be a big, big effort that these three new owners are going to have to put in to change the memory of what Tiber River … used to be,” Ramachandran said, adding the women have a “strong start” by being open about the leadership change.

The entrepreneurs highlighted their experience in an emailed update to Tiber River clients. Customers need proof that “things are better this time around,” Ramachandran said.

To read the full story, please visit the link with the Winnipeg Free Press.

“I wouldn’t say necessarily that … all brick-and-mortar store closures are terrible,” said Divya Ramachandran, a University of Manitoba marketing professor. “I would rather have the business continue, even if it’s just continuing online.”

Ramachandran teaches mostly Gen Z students. Many prefer shopping on the internet. Some eyeball goods in store before returning home to check if it’s cheaper online.

To read the entire story, please visit The Winnipeg Free Press. 

“Congratulations to these researchers who are probing new directions in social sciences and humanities research,” said Mario Pinto, vice-president (research & international). “The success of these projects speaks highly of the quality of emerging fundamental research at UM.”

UM 2024 Insight Development Grant recipients include:

Namita Bhatnagar, Professor & F. Ross Johnson Fellow, Marketing Department

Sensitive women and rational men: Bridging the gender divide in consumer and employee green behaviours

This project seeks to facilitate greater participation of both men and women in pro-environmentalism by identifying de-stigmatizing strategies in the current discourse. Men may worry about a “green-feminine” or “caring women” stereotype, while women may be hindered by heightened anxiety in male-dominated domains associated with a “tech-savvy men” stereotype. Bhatnagar proposes a multi-phase consumer and organizational exploration of the interplay between varied gender stereotypes and environmental sustainability in contexts that are traditionally homemaking adjacent and those that are affiliated with the contemporary green tech movement.

David Drewes, Associate Professor, Department of Religion

Early Scholarship on Buddhism

Focused on the beginnings of scholarship on Buddhism in the first half of the nineteenth century, Drewes seeks to examine two lesser known but significant sources of ideas and influence. This includes early publications of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the work of Horace Hayman Wilson, the first Boden professor of Sanskrit at Oxford.

Amy Farrell, Assistant Professor, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Ikwe and Amik: Indigenous storying and feminine being within and beyond the Fur Trade, an educational inquiry

Farrell seeks to address the urgent need for Indigenous women’s voices in the history of the fur trade, which have been largely excluded from literature and records. This research employs an innovative Indigenous storying methodology to intricately blend culturally significant Indigenous knowledge and worldview. Using creative fiction to portray collective experiences, the enduring value of women’s roles can be emphasized.

Jennifer Watt, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education

We Interrupt this Programming: Confronting Gender Based Sexual Violence through Critical Media Literacies in K-12 Schools

With this project, Watt and co-investigator Shannon Moore aims to confront barriers to teaching about consent, gender-based sexual violence and support survivors in K-12 schools using popular media as a catalyst for change. This research is urgently needed by educators and school systems to understand how critical media literacies can be harnessed to confront and disrupt the many ways that gender-based sexual violence exists in society. Learn more on the We Interrupt this Programming webpage.

Bruno De Oliveira Jayme, Assistant Professor, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

Social Movement Learning – An Exploration of Quality Education Through Participatory Video

De Olivera Jayme seeks to address the gaps between formal and informal education with actionable steps for more equitable and participatory learning practices. What and how Canadian school system can learn from educational grassroots movements from South America? Working with the vibrant Slum Defense Movement from São Paulo, Brazil, this study uses arts-based participatory action research to identify insights that can inform formal education in North America.

Muhammad Kabir, Assistant Professor, Accounting & Finance Department

Auditor Liability, Firm-level Audit Quality, and Investment: The Effect of the Livent Case on Canadian Firms

This project will test how changes in auditors’ litigation risk affect audit quality and investments in Canada, providing empirical evidence supporting the work of regulators. Kabir will mobilize this evidence to inform how increased liability may positively or adversely affect audit quality and demonstrate how firms respond to their investment decisions as their auditors’ liability changes. Read Muhammad Kabir’s most recent publication on ScienceDirect.

Jody Stark, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Music

Developing and Piloting a Local Music Pedagogy

This collaborative research project engages local music educators along with representatives of various community arts organizations to create a decolonizing framework for music education in Treaty 1 territory. The results of this innovative project will allow the Stark research team to pilot a locally-informed music pedagogy and provide guidance to educators, policy makers and community arts organizations for community-school collaborations as a way to decolonize and Indigenize music education. Read Jody Stark’s publications on Academia.

Jie Yang, Assistant Professor, Business Administration Department

My Turf, My Rules: Investigating the Roles of Customers in Product Categorization

This project will offer a more holistic understanding of product categorization by investigating the roles of individual customers in the categorization process. Product categorization involves assigning one or more category labels to a product. Existing literature has predominantly focused on how producers, for the purposes of capturing monetary value, dominate the categorization of their products. Yang seeks to address the imbalance in category literature by reframing the relationship between product categories and economic outcomes within a customer-centered framework. Read Jie Yang’s most recent publication on SageJournals.

Xiumei Li, Assistant Professor, Business Administration Department

Entrepreneurial Success in Crowdfunding: The Art and Science of Sensemaking

Li employs a mixed method approach to investigate how entrepreneurs develop effective referencing strategies to actively engage audiences and secure necessary resources with crowdfunded ventures. This study will examine popular crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, with a focus on entrepreneurs’ sensemaking around the relative nature of novelty and other key reference points.

The pairing is seemingly a win-win for both companies, said Kiran Pedada, a University of Manitoba marketing professor.

It provides HMV, which Pedada calls a “well-reputed music store,” less risk to re-enter Canada than if it were to open its own brick-and-mortar buildings.

“I think it’s a good part of a comeback from them.”

Read more

“If consumers have to choose between more expensive candy — which is almost a must if you’re celebrating Halloween — more expensive decorations, costumes versus a single one-time-use pumpkin, then you know which one consumers are going to drop from the list,” says Subbu Sivaramakrishnan, the associate dean of the Asper School of Business.

Sivaramakrishnan adds that due to the high inflation rate and cost of groceries, consumers are spending less time at the grocery store, decreasing their chances of purchasing a pumpkin.

Read here

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“There are so many negative consequences in trying to do that,” he said. “Cannibalization is the biggest thing, and as well you can’t really build brand loyalty having two stores with the same parent like that. It is very difficult. Operating two chains of very large stores creates a lot of overhead. I don’t think it makes sense.”

And Pedada thinks the operation of two stores in such close proximity to each other is pretty much a non-starter.

“Customers will chose one store or another but they are confused about which one to go to,” he said. “It creates confusion in the minds of the customer trying to distinguish between the brands.”

Read the full story.