Doctoral work on Brand Typicality and the Adoption of New Products

Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School congratulates Frank Goedertier who successfully completed his PhD defense. He obtained his ICM funded PhD degree in Applied Economic Sciences from the faculty of Economics and Business Administration of the Ghent University.

Since September 2001 Frank Goedertier has been working as a researcher and teacher at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, successively for the Academic Centre for Interactive Marketing, the Vlerick European Centre for e-Business Studies and the Vlerick Brand Management Centre. Frank holds a Master degree in Communication Sciences (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and a Master in Marketing (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School). He has presented his research at the European Marketing Academy and has already published in several journals such as the Journal of Consumer Marketing. His current research expertise and interests are mainly in the field of Brand Management, Marketing Communication, Consumer Behaviour, Employer Branding en Product Innovation.

Title: Brand Typicality and the Adoption of New Products

Date of PhD defense: 25 May 2009
PhD supervisors: Prof Dr Maggie Geuens (UGent) and Prof Dr Niraj Dawar (Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario)

People categorise the objects they encounter to efficiently cope with the abundance of stimuli in their environment. Categorisation research has demonstrated that people organise new information around prototypes. Marketing research has applied this theory to brands and demonstrated that prototypical brands (e.g. Coca-Cola or Pampers) are very salient in consumers’ minds and often preferred over less typical brands.

In this dissertation Frank Goedertier studies how prototypicality processes can enable companies to create a cognitive competitive advantage. Up until now a theoretical framework on this matter had not yet been documented. Nor was it considered whether this advantage can be leveraged by using prototypical brands to facilitate the introduction of new products.