Academic staff

I am the Academic Lead for and Course Director to all Business School apprenticeships, and I teach all around consumer behaviour, cross-cultural buyer behaviour, (international) strategic brand management, research methods, innovation and product management as well as strategic marketing planning at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

My research focusses on small brands, behavioural brand loyalty, competitive market structure modelling and strategic brand management. It seems that marketing theory and real-world marketing are often at odds, and I am keen to ensure that students develop their critical thinking to make logical deductions on the background of dynamic business environments.

My research largely aims to contribute knowledge for a better understanding of how small brands compete. This research involves the scientific replication and extension of empirical norms in purchase behaviour consumer behaviour including benchmarking activities and predictive applications in effective (small) marketing management.

Large and small consumer packaged goods brands in the same category are competing for the same buyers. What is more, although small brands are often referred to as niche, they do not appear to attract the strong loyalty that this word implies. In fact, the reverse is most often the case – they largely suffer from below average loyalty for the category, measured on every common metric.

My research is investigating aspects of this behavioural loyalty deficit, applying a highly generalised model of competitive market structure, the NBD-Dirichlet to benchmark relative purchasing behaviours. Too little is known about how small brands compete, and SMEs tend to rely on the assumption that competitive advantage can be found by appealing to a small segment of buyers with specialised needs and wants, in order to bypass the competitive forces of the wider market. So far there is strong evidence that this is a poor strategy because it restricts rather than promotes brand growth.