Correspondence: Charles S. Areni, Marketing Department, Economics and Business Building (H69), The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006 Australia. E-mail c.areni@econ.usyd.edu.au

¹is an assistant professor of Marketing in the School of Business at the American University in Dubai. He earned his PhD in Marketing from the University of Sydney in 2007, and has published several papers on Branding Strategy in leading journals.

²is a professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Sydney. He earned his PhD in Marketing from the University of Florida in 1991, and has published numerous papers in leading marketing and psychology journals.

³is the managing director of The Agency Register. His extensive experience in Branding Strategy was acquired through brand management positions at Warner Lambert and American Home Products and creative advertising roles at DDB (Toronto) and JWT (Toronto). Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, PepsiCo and Bristol Myers are among his previous clients.

Received 16 January 2009; Revised 16 January 2009; Published online 15 May 2009.

Abstract

Some researchers argue that the 'company is the brand' for services, emphasising the pre-eminence of corporate brand image, whereas others advocate developing strong sub-brands for specific service offerings. This research explores the debate using the open-ended associations elicited by brands in two service categories. The results indicate that within a given industry, the parent company is sometimes the most prominent source of associations, but in other instances the sub-brand dominates. Moreover, in the latter case, the pre-eminence of the sub-brands often reflects specific marketing strategies to differentiate the service from competitive offerings. These results suggest that the failure to develop meaningful sub-brands for services often reflects missed opportunities at product differentiation, rather than any inherent characteristic of the service.