Empathy as an imperative to the success of Global Brands

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding on what makes certain Brands thrive on a global scale. These Brands are also referred to as Global Brands. Previous research already gave some insights into what determines the success of Global Brands. This research will thus try to find an extension to the already existing literature on this topic. The extension that will be analyzed is called Brand Empathy. What the term Brand Empathy entails and how it could play a role in the already existing model will be explained later in this paper. Information on the already existing model and the Brand Empathy variable will be gathered through a newly created questionnaire. At first, the already existing model will be tested. Second, Brand Empathy will be added to the model both as a fourth determinant of success and as a moderating variable. Third, the model will also be tested on Local Brands to investigate if the model solely works for Global Brands or might work for Local Brands as well. These tests will be conducted on both the sample of the global population as well as on the Belgian respondents. This will be done in order to investigate whether the model also works for respondents of a specific country, region or culture or if it only works when investigating the global population. The overall purpose of this paper is to find out whether Brand Empathy makes a significant improvement to the already existing model on the determinants of success of Global Brands of Van Gelder (2005).