Corporate claims as innovator or market leader: impact on overall attitude and quality perceptions and transfer to company brands

The research described in this paper examines two corporate ability (CA)associations at both company and product perception levels through the use of two category exemplar cues, market leadership and market pioneership. The research investigates the directionality and degree to which company claims as being either a market leader or pioneer impact upon consumers' perceptions of the company and also the products produced by the company. Results show that describing a company as a pioneer or market leader leads to a more favorable attitude toward the company but does not trickle down to its products. In addition, it has (as hypothesized) no impact on quality perceptions. In addition, it was shown that when a company is designated as a market leader it is significantly more likely to be perceived as having the potential to introduce the market leading brand in a new category relative to when no such designation is made. No evidence was found that a designation as an innovative company leads to the perception that the company can pioneer a new category. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed