FISCHER, MARC, FRANZISKA VÖLCKNER, and HENRIK SATTLER. “How Important Are Brands? A Cross-Category, Cross-Country Study.” Journal of Marketing Research 47, no. 5 (2010): 823-39. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.redlands.edu/stable/20751546.

The article that I chose for this research example is called, How Important are Brands? A Cross-Category, Cross-Country Study, and it was published in the Journal of Marketing Research. I chose this article because previously I was looking for research already done regarding my specific research question, which was difficult to find. I was not focusing on the larger picture, which is about the social significance of brands overall. This article and the research discussed proved to be very valuable to my own reseach.

The main topic of this article explores the importance of brands across different countries and different categories of items. In other words, it focuses on the measurement of overall importance of brands for consumers’ decision-making processes. The measurement is something called “brand relevance in category,” or “BRiC,” which the authors tested across multiple countries and categories, in order to find out whether or not brand importance matters. The type of data needed to answer this research question is reports of acts, behavior, or events. In order to collect this data, the authors sent out a 19-item questionnaire to a sample of 578 graduate students from France, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The method of data analysis was qualitative, because the data was non-numerical. I would assume this article’s topic is “brand importance” and the question is “How important are brands in the decision making process of consumers across multiple countries.”

This research is the first I’ve come across that measures the importance of brands to consumers across multiple countries, so I was very intrigued and interested throughout the entire article. I think it is valid research and logically makes sense. The creation of a measurement called BRiC makes the data more legitimate because the authors have distinct areas in which they are measuring. I think if given more time and a larger budget, the authors could have surveyed more people since they wanted to make determinations about five different countries, rather than just one like the United States. I don’t think 578 people is a large enough sample, but overall the research and data are still significant. Additionally, I also think the authors could have expanded the survey in order to collect more data.