The Magnum ice cream brand, best known over the world for its popsicles, demerged in 2025 from its parent company Unilever. Unilever actually spins-off its entire multi-brand ice cream division (valued at €15bn), founding thereafter The Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC). The move started in July 2025 and was completed by the end of the… Read More
Putting the Brand Name in Its Right Place
Companies are often preoccupied with the task of choosing a name for a brand. It can be a delicate task with different considerations to make (e.g., cognitive, legal, cultural). However, there are three basic requirements that a brand name must hold to at the outset: being memorable, having a sound pleasant to the ear, and… Read More
Some Fresh Ideas Towards Multidisciplinary Marketing Thinking & Research
It would be wrong to treat marketing as an isolated field or discipline. It is connected with disciplines of management and economics, the social sciences, mathematics and statistics, and more. In the past twenty years we have seen its growing interaction with digital technology and neuroscience. Marketing has evolved through learning from other disciplines, borrowing… Read More
A Glimpse on New Advances in Segmentation
Segmentation is a fundamental topic in marketing strategy. Appreciation of its importance has continuously grown since the 1950s. Segmentation is crucial to targeting messages, fitting preferences of different consumer groups, or creating other types of differentiated programmes. In consumer marketing, segmentation may be based on demographics, perceptions and attitudes (mental constructs more generally), and behavioural… Read More
Ambivalent Times for Watches
The global market for watches is fluctuating amid shifts in macroeconomic conditions, technological developments, and thereof adaptive changes in consumer preferences. This situation seems to put under strain particularly the Swiss watch industry. The compromising situation for the Swiss watchmakers has been evolving for some time now, at least since 2015, affecting the revenues from… Read More
Getting Closer to Consumers Through Ethnography
Marketing and consumer researchers need to employ a dose of curiosity for understanding, more closely and deeply, groups or communities of consumers that are less familiar and more different from them. It can be sought by observation of individuals from the group of interest, listening to and talking with them, and possibly interacting with them… Read More
Directions for the Future of Research on Consumer Behaviour
There are so many changes and developments that have taken place since the start of the 21st century to talk about — social, technological, and environmental; the social dimension includes both socio-economic and socio-political changes. Consumers are affected by the shifts that surround them, modifying and adapting their behaviours of shopping, purchase and consumption. In… Read More
Listening to Managers and Consumers When Building Marketing Theory
Academic articles in marketing can be very instructive, occasionally eye-opening, on various issues and topics; one can learn from them about theory, research methodology and models, and the findings and conclusions reached from their analyses. Yet, it would not be presumptuous to say that managers do not rush to search for, read and consult with… Read More
On the Verge of Subscription Fatigue
Magazines & newspapers, video (TV) streaming, online shopping, water containers (mineral) or filters, shaving razors, and so on — almost anywhere companies are ready to offer consumers subscription programmes for their goods or services. The monthly or annual subscriptions may be offered by manufacturers (selling directly to consumers), service providers and retailers. The scheme is… Read More
Wake-Up to Your Energy Drink
Every now and then people need a little help to ‘boost their energy’. To the rescue comes the ‘energy drink’ (e.g., Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, and more recently Prime). It is an invigorating, non-alcoholic drink, but one that usually contains high levels of sugar, caffeine, and other stimulants to create its effect. Energy drinks have… Read More
Consumer / Shopper / Customer Behaviour 