I am born in Oslo, Norway, raised in Notodden, Norway, the Blues Town, also known to be the craddle of Norsk Hydro, and Tinfos. After finishing my military service, I moved to Hoenefoss where I studied at Buskerud University College for six years, graduating with a MSc in marketing in 1997.
I moved on to Bergen, the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), to start my doctoral studies in 1997. Obtained my PhD from Norwegian School of Economics in 2004, including visits to Ohio State University. I came to BI Norwegian Business School in 2000 and have had various positions here. Started as assistant professor in 2000, promoted to associate professor in 2004, and full professor of marketing in 2013. In January 2015, I assumed the role as head of department, department of marketing at BI Norwegian Business School. From 2003 to 2011 I was program director (AD) for the bachelor program in marketing communication, and program director (AD) for the bachelor program in marketing managment from 2013 to 2015. In 2009 and 2010, I took the GCPCL program at Harvard Business School, US.
Research areas
Brand strategy in general could be an easy answer. Brands has allways intrigued me - basically bonding between humans and non-human brands are interesting to me, and it never stops puzzling me how brands tend to play significant roles in our lives (for better and worse I guess). Related to the brand-strategy area, I am very interested in brand growth, brand portfolio management, and brand communication. Over the last few years, I have developed a keen interest in the habitual choices consumers make more often than traditional CB-models assume. Habits' importance in everyday life is underestimated in both academia and business practice, a field I want to pursue in my future research.
Teaching areas
Brand management at Executive level.
Purpose –Brand managers can choose among two fundamentally different brand positioning strategies. One is a broad brand strategy, focusing on many favorable brand associations. The other is a narrow brand strategy, focusing on just a few and thus more mentally accessible associations. Building on associative memory theory, the current article examines which of these brand positioning strategies performs better under dynamic market conditions. Design/methodology/approach – Three experiments test the effect of brand positioning strategy on memory accessibility and competitive brand performance. Study 1 tests how brand strategy (broad vs. narrow) affects defensive brand performance. Study 2 tests how broad vs. narrow brands perform differently in a brand extension scenario (offensive brand performance). Study 3 uses real brands and situation-based attributes as stimuli in a defensive scenario. Findings – The results show that a narrow brand positioning strategy leads to a competitive advantage. Narrow brands with fewer and more accessible associations resist new competitors more easily and have higher brand extension acceptance than do broad brands. Research implications – The article shows how to use accessibility as evidence of associative strength and test how accessibility influences competitive brand performance in a controlled experimental context. Practical implications – Brand managers would benefit from a narrow brand positioning strategy in accordance with the USP school of thought used by many marketing practitioners. Originality – The paper demonstrates that narrow brand positioning performs better than broad brand positioning in dynamic markets, and to our knowledge is the first to do so.
Companies commit considerable resources to building brand associations that resonate with consumers’ identities and facilitate strong consumer–brand bonds. The current research investigates a potential disadvantage of this popular strategy. The results from three studies show that consumers with a high degree of self‐brand connection respond negatively to brand developments (e.g., brand acquisitions and repositioning) that change brand meaning. The authors show that this effect is due to a change in the identity signaled by the brand. The results contrast with existing research, which has consistently found that brand connections promote probrand behavior and serve as a buffer against negative brand information.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that high similarity between a parent brand and an extension category can have a detrimental effect on how a brand extension is perceived to perform on specific attributes. This happens because similarity influences the perceived positioning of a brand extension: lower similarity extensions can be perceived as “specialized” products, whereas high similarity extensions are perceived as “all-in-one” products not performing exceptionally well on any specific attribute. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the hypothesized effect through three experimental studies. The authors manipulate similarity both within subjects (Study 1a) and between subjects (Study 1b and Study 2). Further, the authors test the effect for specific attributes that are physical/concrete in nature (Study 1a and Study 1b) as well as attributes that are abstract/imagery-related in nature (Study 2). Findings High compared to low similarity improves perceptions of overall performance (i.e. performance across all attributes). But as expected, the authors also find that a high similarity brand extension is perceived to perform worse on the attribute on which a low similarity brand extension specializes, even when the parent brands of the extensions possess that attribute to the same extent. This perception of attribute performance carries on to influence brand extension purchase likelihood. Practical implications The degree of brand extension similarity has consequences for how brand extensions are perceived to be positioned in the marketplace. Although high similarity extensions receive positive evaluations, they might not be suitable when a company is trying to instil a perception of exceptional performance on a specific attribute. Originality/value The authors demonstrate a consequential exception to the marketing wisdom that brands should extend to similar categories. Although the degree of brand extension similarity has been repeatedly shown to have a positive effect on brand extension evaluation, the authors document a case when its effect is actually detrimental. This study’s focus on the dependent variable of perceived performance on specific attributes is novel in the brand extension literature.
Veflen, Nina; Storstad, Oddveig, Samuelsen, Bendik Meling, Langsrud, Solveig, Hagtvedt, Therese, Ueland, Øydis, Gregersen, Fredrik Alexander & Scholderer, Joachim (2017)
The aim of this study is to investigate consumers’ reflections and reactions to a food scare news story. Previous studies indicate that risk communication not always is able to influence people’s behavior and that pre-existing attitudes may influence people’s reactions and reflections. In this study, we investigate how consumers critically reflect and emotionally react to a food scare, here defined as risk communication that spirals public anxiety over food safety incidents, and leads to an unwanted escalation in media attention. Fall 2014, a researcher from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said in a newspaper interview that she never touched chicken with her bare hands. This interview was the beginning of a media storm, which resulted in a dramatic drop in sales of chicken. In this study, we explore a small group of consumers’ reflections and reactions to this news article. Data from five focus group interviews with Norwegian consumers of chicken were transcribed, content analyzed, and coded, before we conducted a multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis in JMP Pro 12. The findings indicate that consumers do reflect when confronted with a food scare story. Some question the research behind the news, others compare the food scare’s danger to other risks. Even though consumers do reflect around the facts in the food scare article, their emotions seem to affect their behavior more systematic than their reflections.
Samuelsen, Bendik Meling (2016)
Vaner spiser intensjoner til frokost. Myten om det gjennomtenkte valg
Advertisers face several message options when they position a new brand in well-established categories. Functional benefit claims versus experiential claims represent two options. Functional claims focus on tangible attributes and benefits, whereas experiential claims focus on promises of experiences the consumer should expect from the new brand. In this paper, we present the results from two experiments testing the persuasiveness of ads promising experience versus the persuasiveness of ads promising functional benefits of a new entrant. In the first experiment, we found that involvement moderates the effect of claim type on attitude toward a new category entrant in retail banking. This finding was replicated and extended in a second experiment using ski resorts as the context. Our findings suggest that functional benefit claims outperform experiential claims in high-involvement situations and that the strength of message arguments can be just as important as the framing choice. The research also shows that the two advertising claim types elicit different cognitive responses: functional claims trigger mostly semantic memory, whereas experiential claims trigger more episodic memories.
Dimitriu, Radu-Mihai; Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Warlop, Luk (2010)
Customer Perceived Value in B-t-B Service Relationships: Investigating the Importance of Corporate Reputation
Industrial Marketing Management, 37(2), s. 205- 216.
Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Olsen, Lars Erling (2007)
"Jeg har meninger - sterke meninger - men jeg er ikke alltid enig i dem" om holdninger og holdningsstyrke i merkevareledelse
Magma forskning og viten, 10(2), s. 64- 76.
Samuelsen, Bendik M.; Olsen, Line Lervik, Silseth, Pål Rasmus & Lorentzen, Bengt G. (2007)
Dynamiske perspektiv på kunderelasjoner
Magma forskning og viten, 10(2), s. 25- 44.
Hansen, Håvard; Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Lorentzen, Bengt G. (2004)
Is Being Good Better Than Being Cheap, or is Being Cheap Better Than Being Good?
Advances in Consumer Research, 31(1), s. 446- 450.
Haugtvedt, C.P.; Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Liu, Kun (2004)
Consumer Psychology and Attitude Change
E. Knowles and J. Lin (eds.): Resistance and Persuasion
Samuelsen, Bendik M.; Grønseth, Bjørn Ove & Sandvik, Kåre (1997)
Kundelojalitet: Effekter av kundetilfredshet og renomme
Beta, s. 36- 46.
Artikkelens fokus er på kundelojalitet. Kundelojalitet er et viktig m ål på markedseffektivitet, og antas å påvirke bedriftens lønnsomhet. Denne stu omhandler hvordan kundelojalitet kan forklares som en funks jon av tilfredshet og renomm#/e, samt indirekte effekter av brukssitu asjon og kundens produktkunnskap. Teorien ble testet på et utvalg av 475 kjøpere og brukere av skiutstyr. Resultatene viser støtte for pos itive effekter av både tilfredshet og renomm#/e på lojalitet. Imidler tid er effekten av renomm#/e sterkest av disse to faktorene. Av indir ekte effekter er kundens produktkunnskaper positivt relatert til tilf redshet og synlig bruk er positivt relatert til bruk av renomm#/e i k jøpssituasjon.
Olsen, Lars Erling; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Peretz, Adrian (2018)
Usikker på Traasdahls teknologiske fremtidsbilde
Dagens næringsliv [Kronikk]
Olsen, Lars Erling; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Warlop, Luk (2019)
Broad vs. Narrow brand positioning: Effects on competitive brand performance
[Academic lecture]. 14th Global Brand Conference.
Olsen, Lars Erling; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Andreassen, Tor W. (2017)
Trøbbel i elfenbenstårnet
[Popular scientific article]. kampanje.com
Olsen, Lars Erling; Peretz, Adrian & Samuelsen, Bendik Meling (2016)
Customer Perceived Value in B-t-B Service Relationships: Investigating the Importance of Corporate Reputation
[Academic lecture]. Johan Arndt markedsføringskonferanse.
Peretz, Adrian; Olsen, Lars E. & Samuelsen, Bendik M. (2007)
Merkevareledelse på Norsk
[Textbook]. Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Lærebok i Merkevareldelse - spesielt tilpasset norske studenter på Bachelornivå og profesjonsmarkedet. Utstrakt bruk av norske eksempler og norsk terminologi.
Hansen, Håvard; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Lorentzen, Bengt Gunnar (2003)
Is Being Good Better Than Being Cheap, or is Being Cheap Better Than Being Good?”,
[Academic lecture]. The 34th Annual ACR-conference.
Olsen, Line Lervik; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Johnson, Michael D. (2002)
Relationship Phases: What does the Customers Go Through?
[Academic lecture]. The 11 Th. Annual Frontiers in Services.
Sandvik, Kåre; Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Hansen, Håvard (2002)
Antecedents and consequences of moral ties in close marketing relationships
[Academic lecture]. Association for Consumer Research Asia-Pacific Conference.
The paper is dedicated to the study of moral ties that might arise in the relationship between a consumer and a service firm. We derive a model that explains how moral ties might mediate effects of service satisfaction and sales rep’s benevolence on customer loyalty. The model is tested in close service relationships between bank clients and their dedicated bank-reps. The results indicate the importance of moral ties in monitoring and developing lasting service relationships. Finally, we discuss implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research.
Johnson, Michael D.; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Olsen, Line Lervik (2001)
Rethinking Services: Integrating Relationship Phases in Customer Satisfaction Modeling
[Academic lecture]. EMAC.
Olsen, Line Lervik; Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Johnson, Michael D. (2000)
Results from the New and Improved Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer
[Academic lecture]. 9 Th. Annual Frontiers in Services Conference.
Samuelsen, Bendik Meling & Sandvik, Kåre (1999)
Antecedents of affective and calculative commitment in consumer-brand relationships
[Academic lecture]. European Marketing Academy Conference.
The paper focuses on two kinds of commitment the consumer may hold to ward brands, namely affective commitment and calculative commitment. The former represents a state of affective attachment, sense of belon gingness, and personal meaning attached to the brand. The latter repr esents the individual's calculative or instrumental assessment of the perceived utility of remaining with the brand, relative to leaving. Previous studies have shown that affective and calculative commitment have different effects on the various kinds of consumer behavior rel ated to the brand. Accordingly, such a pattern makes it important to explore how frequently used brand loyalty strategies affect the two s tates of commitment. To accomplish this research goal, monetary switc hing costs, consumer satisfaction, brand reputation, subjective knowl edge and risk importance are hypothesized as antecedents of affective and calculative commitment. The hypothesized model was tested with a sample of 540 private clients of a regional savings bank in Norway.
Samuelsen, Bendik M.; Troye, Sigurd Villads, Sandvik, Kåre, Rust, Roland T., Samuelsen, Bendik M., Berry, Leonard L. & Brown, Stephen W. (1998)
The behavioral consequences of service satisfaction and customer commitment
[Academic lecture]. Frontiers in Services to lack of alternatives, and service satisfaction on repeat purchase, motivation to switch, and price tolerance. Data for testing the hypoth.
The model presented in this study is based on three key ideas: First, it should be obvious that customers establish relationships with service providers for different reasons andmotives. The nature of the motives may subsequently be reflected in the state of commitment the different customers experience, varying from a strictly instrumental to a more affective one. Second, different states of commitment may have quite different impact on relationship consequences like the consumer's repeat patronage, motivation to switch, and price tolerance. Third, commitment is suggested to require substantial amounts of involvement to arise, but involvement could be scarce in most marketplace choices. On the other hand, for service satisfaction to arise, involvement might not be required. Hence, it is suggested that service satisfaction has a direct effect on behavioral consequences, i.e., that satisfaction asa driver of post purchase behavior may not be mediated by customer commitment. The model consists of 12 hypotheses of the effects of affective commitment, calculative commitment due to personal sacrifice, calculative commitment due
Samuelsen, Bendik M. & Sandvik, Kåre (1997)
Effects of Customers' State of Commitment to Service Providers
[Academic lecture]. European Marketing Academy Conference.
In this paper we address the possibility that consumers' commitment t o service providers may take several forms. We suggest that it is use ful to distinguish between the consumer's affective commitment and ca lculative commitment to the service provider. The two kinds of commit ment may turn out to hold quite different consequences regarding the consumer's repeat patronage, motivation to switch, and price toleranc e. Empirical evidence to support these assumptions will be presented.
Samuelsen, Bendik & Sandvik, Kåre (1997)
The concept of customer loyalty
[Academic lecture]. European Marketing Academy Conference.
The paper contains an analysis of the loyalty concept. Both behaviora l and attitudinal perspectives are applied to analyzing the content o f loyalty. The paper concludes that both perspectives may make a cont ribution to the understanding of loyalty. Moreover, the core of loyal ty might be commitment, which can be found as calculative and effecti ve. It is argued that the two kinds of commitment play different role s as potential dimensions of loyalty, and that they may have differen t antecedents and consequences.
Grønseth, Bjørn Ove; Sandvik, Kåre & Samuelsen, Bendik M. (1997)
Antecendents and effects of brand reputation and customer satisfaction : an empirical study
[Academic lecture]. International Association for Economic Psychologi (IAREP), 21st Annual Colloquium, 11-15th sept. 1996.
In this study a theory of antecedenta and effects of brand reputation and customer satisfaction on customer loyalty is provided. Five hypo theses are proposed, and all obtain significant support. Both custome r experience and public consumption are found to have considerable an d positive effects on customer satisfaction and brand reputation, sug gesting a mixture of personal and interpersonal influences in the for mation of customer loyalty.
