Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Research

Brand death: A developmental model of senescence

Michael T. Ewing a,⁎, Colin P. Jevons a, Elias L. Khalil b
a
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia
b
Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Victoria, 3800 Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Drawing on literature underpinning brand management in marketing, product life cycles in economics, fads
Received 1 June 2007 in sociology and aging in biology, this paper argues that brand demise is inevitable and not necessarily
Received in revised form 1 February 2008 caused by managerial incompetence. Rather, this demise is a natural part of a brand's developmental process,
Accepted 1 April 2008
instigated by consumers seeking to satisfy not only their material needs (constitutive utility), but also their
self-image (symbolic utility). This paper presents a model of brand senescence to explain this phenomenon
Keywords:
and concludes with a discussion of the implications for managerial practice and marketing theory.
Brand death
Constitutive utility
Crown Copyright © 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Symbolic utility

1. Introduction
Strong consensus seems to exist that managing brands for the long
run is both possible and desirable (e.g. Keller, 1999), but little work
examines the limits to brand longevity. Indeed, in response to the
failings of inappropriate interpretations of the product life cycle,
Plummer (1990, p.26) even asserted that “only…poorly managed
brands have a finite life cycle…if a brand turns out to have a finite life
cycle, it is not the brand that failed but the people who managed it”.
The implication is that brands should be immortal and only manage-
rial incompetence results in brand death. A considerable amount of
work has examined brand revitalization (for example, Wansink, 1997;
Lehu, 2004). Groucutt (2006, p. 106) proposes an alternative view,
arguing that while brand life expectancy can be increased by
innovation and repositioning, “organizations must recognize when
the brand has genuinely reached the end of its life span”. This article
takes the notion further and develops a model to show that for many
brands, death is inevitable.
Failure is a fundamental, if unwelcome, feature of social and
economic systems. Governments persistently pursue policies that are
against their own long-term interests, such as quixotic military
invasions (Tuchman, 1984), suggesting that self-destructive activity
is a human characteristic. Species fail and become extinct, brands fail,
companies fail, public policies fail (Ormerod, 2005). Even children from
the age of four understand animal and human death (Barrett and
Behne, 2005). The mathematical relationship that underpins the link
between the frequency and size of the extinction of companies is
virtually identical to that which describes the extinction of biological
species in the fossil record; only the time scales differ (Ormerod, 2005).
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9903 2563; fax: +61 3 9903 155.
E-mail address: Michael.Ewing@BusEco.monash.edu.au (M.T. Ewing).
For the most part, marketing scholars and consultants have paid
scant attention to failure and death — concentrating instead on
contemporary brand success stories. The received wisdom appears to
be that firms can, and should, manage brands for business eternity.
However, as Golder (2000) has pointed out, much of this received
brand wisdom is quite simply wrong; for example, the widely
perpetuated myth that 19 out of every 25 market-leading brands
had maintained their leadership for at least 60 years. The researchers
of that study had carefully selected the 25 ‘leaders’ for their longevity
from a group four times larger. Thus, the sample was highly self-
selected and biased. Golder (2000), however, attributes various
suggested causes for brand demise, but all of the causes he suggests
are failures of management rather than being market-driven. This
paper argues that not just supply side, but also demand-side factors
contribute to brand demise, and this paper presents a model of these
demand-side factors.
For the sake of simplicity, the commonly-known and well-
understood American Marketing Association (2004, p. 18)'s definition
of “brand” is adopted in this article: “a name, term, design, symbol or
any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct
from those of other sellers”. This paper uses the phrases brand
senescence and brand death to resonate with the underlying biological
metaphor used to clarify the argument. Technically speaking, brands,
unlike living organisms, cannot actually die. Withdrawn or disused
brands may be dead in a commercial sense, but in a legal sense, they
really just go into a coma (to pursue the metaphor) and businesses
now exist that revive some of these so-called “orphan” brands (Mazur,
2004), finding value in familiar names that big consumer product
companies could not.
This article employs concepts from biology and modeling techni-
ques commonly used in economics. As Gigerenzer (2000, p. 95) notes,
interdisciplinary exchange has fuelled the development of some of the

0148-2963/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright © 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2008.04.004
 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
most influential new metaphors and theories in the sciences. Sheth et al.
(1988) point out that half of all marketing theories have an economics
foundation, while more recently Vargo (2007) reiterates that economic
science provides the foundation for marketing science. This demonstrates
ample support for the use of economic theory and methods to model
marketing phenomena. Indeed, marketing has used theoretical modeling
since the early 1980s (Moorthy, 1993). See Rust and Chung (2006) and
Chintagunta et al. (2006) for recent examples of models in marketing
based on the familiar assumption of optimization, by either consumers or
firms. The model developed here follows this line of reasoning by
proposing a framework for thinking about the demise of brands.
The use of biological metaphors, or any kind of metaphor, is a
double-edged sword. When an author uses a metaphor, the author's
thesis becomes clear and crisp, provided the metaphor is clear and
crisp in the mind of the reader. On the other hand is the danger of
hiding behind the metaphor and wrongly assuming that the metaphor
is in itself the argument to justify the thesis. Accordingly, the
biological metaphor is not an argument per se, but shorthand for
the thesis. The metaphor is not a substitute for the argument, that is,
why brands age. This avoids a common misuse of metaphors, namely,
what Khalil (2000) calls the “identificational slip.” Two phenomena
can be similar for different reasons, for instance a superficial similarity
or a substantive similarity. For instance, the inflation of balloons and
the rise of prices of goods share the superficial similarity of expansion
of numbers. Such a similarity affords the use of the metaphor
“inflation” — but only in the superficial sense. On the other hand, the
use of the term “wings” to denote the forelimbs of sparrows and eagles
amounts to a substantial similarity. To misunderstand a superficial
similarity as a substantial similarity would be an identificational slip.
The only way to avoid the identificational slip is to advance the
argument behind the metaphor, as does this paper.
This article aims to establish that brands have a finite life span, and
then to explain why this is expected, and not necessarily caused by
management incompetence. First, this article discusses the life cycle
metaphor and the product life cycle as distinguished from the brand
life cycle. It then reviews fads and provides an explanation of their
origin in reflexive utility. Finally, the paper develops a model of brand
senescence, concluding with a discussion of the managerial and
theory-building implications of the model.
2. The biological life cycle metaphor
The idea that economics should look to biology for intellectual
inspiration is a long-held and distinguished one. Alfred Marshall,
Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter have all variously stressed the
importance of dynamic, evolutionary change in the workings of
human social and economic systems (Ormerod, 2005), and ecology
has provided useful insights for a more holistic view of marketing
(Prendergast and Berthon, 2000). More recently, Woodside (2008)
used the forced-metaphor elicitation technique to understand and
explain human self-behavior in terms of the behavior of animals, and
in so doing supported the use of metaphor as a particular method that
can drive theory advancement; in this case, a biological metaphor.
Brands certainly show many living characteristics; they are born,
they grow, they cross-fertilize (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000),
reproduce through brand extension (Aaker, 1990; Hem et al., 2003),
which could be seen as analogous to the asexual reproduction of
simple organisms, have relationships between themselves and their
stakeholders (Fournier, 1998; Jevons et al., 2005), including reposi-
tioning by management (Ewing et al., 1995) by consumers (Beverland
and Ewing, 2005), exist in communities for mutual benefit (McWil-
liam, 2000; Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001; Algesheimer et al., 2005),
change through acquisition by purchase and renaming (de Chernat-
ony, 2006), become independent of parents through choice or
necessity (Jevons, 2005) — and, although the thought is unpleasant,
almost inevitably die in the long run (Jevons et al., 2007).
333
However, striking as the life cycle metaphor is, the metaphor
cannot be a theory of the life cycle stage of brands. Even biologists do
not have a clear consensus of what causes the senescence of living
organisms, that is, why all organisms eventually age and die (see
Behnke et al., 1978; Finch, 1976, 1991; Finch and Johnson, 1990;
Hayflick, 1965, 1980; Rockstein et al., 1974; Comfort, 1979). Similarly,
this paper does not profess to have arrived at a theory capable of both
explaining and predicting brand death. Rather, this paper offers a
theoretical model to enable scholars (and managers) to begin to
properly conceptualize, accept and understand the brand mortality
phenomenon.
This model does not follow the product life cycle, for the supply
side mainly drives PLC, namely, how competition among suppliers
stimulates innovations and the dynamics of the rise and fall of a
product. Norton and Bass (1987, 1992) pointed out that the product
replacement cycle, where new technology supersedes functional
products rather than replacement as they wear out, compresses the
life cycle process, as shown by Sheth and Sisodia (1999) in the case of
new ICT. Further, several authors have criticized the product life cycle
especially in the erroneous use of the model as a predictive tool (Day,
1981; Tellis and Crawford, 1981; Dhalla and Yuspeh, 1976) and also in
general, with picturesque descriptions such as ‘hokum’ and a ‘myth’
(Plummer, 1990, p. 27). The product life cycle model can provide,
nonetheless, a metaphor of the “cycle of birth–growth–maturity–
death” (Tellis and Crawford, 1981, p. 125). Distinguishing between the
product class, form and brand is important, with product forms
behaving as suggested by the PLC, individual brands being difficult to
model, and product classes having life cycles that are too long to
model conveniently (Tellis and Crawford, 1981). Indeed Simon (1979)
suggested the term brand life cycle to overcome this confusion and to
add cross-price elasticity to the primary demand measured in the PLC.
Both Simon (1979) and Tellis (1988) showed that price elasticity varied
significantly, with greater sensitivity to price in the latter stages of the
brand life cycle; a demand-side metric that provides some support for
the senescence process presented in this paper. In the proposed model
of brand senescence, the focus is on the demand side, namely, how
competition among consumers is the living force behind the rise and
eventual decline of brands. The difference between the product cycle
model and the brand cycle model is enormous. An analogy would be
the difference between the biological model of evolution, driven by
the supply side of innovation as in Schumpeter's (1943) gales of
creative destruction (see also Eldredge and Gould, 1972) on one hand,
and the developmental model of the organism to exemplify the
senescence of brands on the other.
To extend the biological metaphor even further, just as a living
organism cannot choose whether to age or not, neither can a brand
(manager). A brand is subject to market forces that drive a senescence
process rather than being in control of its own destiny. The eventual
death of most brands is inevitable.
Importantly, in modeling an explanation of brand demise, the role
of supply side – the possibility of mismanagement – is not used. The
supply-side account of mismanagement cannot provide a theory of
brand demise for the simple reason that just as mismanagement may
occur, so too may “super-management.” That is, if managers have a
tendency to mismanage, they could also have a tendency to manage
very well, which of course is an obvious and desirable goal. At best, a
supply-side account would be anecdotal — an account of what actually
or accidentally took place with regard to one brand or a few brands.
Haig (2003) and Groucutt (2006) provide some excellent examples of
these. The approach followed in this paper is purely theoretical and
focuses on the inevitability of brand death. As such, a focus on the
demand side is appropriate.
Early philosophers who studied the human condition pointed out
the inherent instability of existence; for example, the Roman Stoic
philosopher Seneca, in the first century AD, urged his adherents to
premeditate that “nothing is stable; we live in the middle of things
334 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
that have been destined to die.” He argued the fundamental
importance of conquering fear and premeditating death, and most
importantly from this article's perspective, that learning to die was the
best preparation for life. Elements of this philosophy may appro-
priately apply to the managers of brands in business.
3. Developmental model
How can one explain the death and rise of new brands? The
evolutionary model of Schumpeter (1943) in relation to innovation, the
sociobiological concept of the selfish gene (Dawkins, 1976), the
punctuated equilibria model of macro-evolution (Eldredge and Gould,
1972; Gersick, 1991), and neo-Lamarckian models of the inheritance of
acquired characteristics (Landman, 1991) are not suitable models for
brand senescence. These models, despite their differences, all focus on
the supply side, that is, the generation of innovations. However, the life
of a brand involves a symbiosis of the consumer and the producer, where
the brand mediates such a symbiosis. Therefore, a proper theory of
brand mortality would emphasize more than just consumption.
Nonetheless, consumption is the driving force behind the rise and
decline of brands. When a consumer buys a product, he or she is not
only seeking material utility, but also seeking affirmation of his or her
own self-image. Thus, the hypothesis lies in the distinction between
the satisfaction of material needs, called here “constitutive utility,”
and the satisfaction of self-respect, self-confirmation, and self-image,
called here “symbolic utility.” For instance, a shirt satisfies both needs.
The warmth or practical utility (constitutive utility) that the shirt
provides differs from the sense of self-respect or sense of achievement
(symbolic utility) that the shirt may deliver. This symbolic utility
relates back to one of the earliest branding concepts, that “people buy
things not only for what they can do but also for what they mean”
(Levy, 1959, p. 118).
The terminology “constitutive utility” and “symbolic utility” is
relatively new to the literature. Mainstream, neoclassical economists
have largely focused on constitutive utility. But more recently, with
the rise of behavioral economics, economists have begun to pay
attention to the role of self-esteem, self-image, internal motivation,
the need for self-confirmation, or what is called here for short
“symbolic utility.” For instance, Goldsmith et al. (1997) call symbolic
utility “psychological capital.” Bowles et al. (2001a,b) use the term
“incentive-enhancing preferences”, explaining differences in income
that cannot be explained by human capital. In this regard, James
Heckman (in Heckman and Krueger, 2003) refers to “noncognitive”
capital, as a distinction from cognitive capital acquired through
education. Bruno Frey (1997a,b) was among the first economists to
show how incentives that rely heavily on pecuniary rewards, that is,
appeal to constitutive utility, crowd out internal motivations, which is
called here “symbolic utility” (see also Fehr and Gächter, 2000a,b;
Bénabou and Tirole, 2002, 2003; Ostrom in Gintis et al., 2005). The
value of any proposed terminology is in the consequences, or insights,
added to the phenomenon. The literature sometimes presents the
quest for symbolic utility as the quest for status and social rank, and
consumer research has clearly shown that possessions help to define a
personality (Belk, 1988). Although symbolic utility has an important
social aspect, social dynamics are not the key to the modeling of
brands or symbolic utility. Rather, the key is the consumer's quest for
feeling good about oneself, and the social circle is secondary. The
consumer actually chooses the social circle (reference group) as a
mirror to facilitate the validation of his or her own standard of success,
or feeling good about oneself.
Otherwise, if the entry point of the analysis of symbolic utility is
social interaction, the implication is that humans feel driven to
demand symbolic utility because they live in society. That is, symbolic
utility is the product of social interaction or the attempt to attain
status in the eyes of others. However, social interaction involves many
other variables, one of which is the need to exchange goods because of
the benefits of division of labor and the need to send signals in order to
gain the trust of others. Another aspect of social interaction,
elaborated below, is the need to enhance the experience when
individuals consume a product, such as films or restaurants, by
consuming together with friends. People try their best not to go to the
movies or restaurants alone.
A central thesis of the theory of brands advanced here is that
human need for symbolic utility drives brands and symbolic utility
differs from individuals' social needs to consume goods such as
movies together. Therefore, to avoid conflating symbolic utility with
the social need to consume goods, social interaction is not the optimal
entry point to theorize about brands.
To elaborate on the social need to consume goods together, which
is often confused with symbolic needs, the drive for individuals to
consume in the company of others is a desire to enhance the
experience. To continue with the film example, people prefer to see a
film upon release, rather than wait for the DVD. This preference is
because apart from the additional product-based values of wide
screen, excellent sound and crisp-clear picture, people also want to
talk about the film with their friends while the memory is still fresh.
Likewise, sport is an important element in modern society, allowing
people to socialize and remember the same experience together.
People prefer to watch what others are concurrently watching
because they can re-experience the pleasure with small talk in the
elevator, coffee room, or at checkout counters.
The fun is less, ceteris paribus, in seeing a film or a replay of an old
sports game if no one else is likely to be talking about the event. The
argument here is that the consumption of the film or the game
through remembrance amounts to a constitutive utility, in particular
constitutive reflexive utility to stress the basis of remembrance of some
original consumption. The consumption via remembrance might not
be as vivid or as sharp as the original consumption. Nonetheless,
reflexive utility is constitutive utility and, hence, it is not possible to
model it in the same manner as a model of symbolic utility, although
the social interaction could also facilitate the utility.
Becker and Murphy (1993) also treat reflexive utility (which they
call social interaction) as constitutive utility, that is, not different from
the original consumption. They argue that consumers watch adver-
tisements about automobiles, even after they have just purchased an
automobile, in order to re-enjoy the experience of their own purchase.
Becker (1991, 1996) also notes that people derive extra pleasure from
going to a popular seafood restaurant (Y) in comparison with a less
popular one (Z), even if the two restaurants are identical in every other
respect. People do not only derive the constitutive utility of eating
seafood, but also derive reflexive constitutive utility when they talk
about the experience with a colleague. Discussion of the experience is
easier if the colleague, likewise, goes to the same restaurant — which
makes the restaurant more popular. That is, Y and Z could have started
as identical restaurants in all respects and opened their doors on same
day. But for one simple accident, a large nearby firm could have
booked a huge luncheon for the first week at Y rather than at Z, while
Z was almost empty all week. This booking would have initiated a
snowball effect: people at the firm, and maybe nearby firms, who
want to re-experience the pleasure of dining would tend to go to Y
restaurant more often than Z. As a result of the positive reinforcement
dynamics (related to first-mover advantage) Y becomes more fashion-
able or faddish than Z. This phenomenon is about fads, as
distinguished from brands. The confusion of brand senescence and
fads is easy, given one salient similarity: Brands and fads are
consumption patterns that thrive in reference to groups, social
influence, peer pressure, social conformity, and so on. However, in
one important respect, related to the symbolic effect of consumption,
the two phenomena are distinctly different. Fashions or fads have
their origin in reflexive utility. The fact that consumers start to prefer Y
over Z does not reflect by any means a change in tastes or preferences,
as Karni and Schmeidler's (1990) model shows. Rather, behavior
 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
changes and preference for Y increases over time, simply because as
more people talk about Y, Y becomes preferred for the reflexivity
effect, generated through this word-of-mouth promotion. Therefore,
fashion or fad, although facilitated by social dynamics, is ultimately
about constitutive utility. This paper would urge against confusing
such constitutive utility with symbolic utility. Constitutive utility is
conceptually separate from symbolic utility if the intent is to locate the
driving forces behind brands. Although constitutive utility and
symbolic utility have social dynamics aspects, they are not one and
the same kind of utility.
The marketing literature has noted the social dynamics behind
fashion and fads, called double jeopardy. As Ehrenberg et al. (1990, p.
82) wrote: “Other things being equal, small brands attract less loyalty
just because they are small (i.e., have lower market shares)”. Although
Ehrenberg et al. (1990) use the word brand, they are actually
discussing fashion that arises from reflexive utility. Double jeopardy
arises because people tend to consume less of an inconspicuous item.
Similar to the consumption of restaurant Z or an unknown film, people
cannot talk about their experience and, hence, would derive less
reflexive utility.
4. A model of brand senescence
In the light of the preceding discussion, assume that a consumer
purchases a product that has a well-known brand name. In this case,
the consumer derives two kinds of utility: constitutive utility and
symbolic utility.
Constitutive utility is composed of two effects:
1. The Wellbeing Effect: The primary, welfare-affording utility such as
warmth, nutrition, housing, and so on.
2. The Reflexive (wellbeing) Effect: arises from remembrance, usually
through social interaction or only through mementos, of the
original wellbeing experience. This reflexivity effect is at the origin
of fads.
On the other hand, symbolic utility is also composed of two effects:
1. The Boredom Effect: As the consumer gets used to the symbol of his
success, the consumer becomes bored or less excited over time.
2. The Status Effect: As more relevant people, that is, members of one's
reference group, celebrate their success through the brand, the
consumer refreshes or rejuvenates his or her own symbolic
experience through a quest for status. This status effect underlies
in part the effectiveness of consumer branding.
To show the effects formally, assume the following utility function,
U ¼ U ðC ðW; RÞ þ SðBðt; NÞÞÞ
where C(W, R) is constitutive utility arising from the wellbeing effect
(W) and the reflexive effect (R); S(B) symbolic utility arises from the
consumption of the brand (B). In turn, the brand affords boredom
effect (t, denoting time) and the number of people purchasing the
brand (N). For simplicity, assume an additive form of the U function
and focus on the symbolic effect:
U ¼ C ðW; RÞ þ SðBðt; NÞÞ
dS=dt ¼ dS=dBddB=dt
while dS/dB is constant, dB/dt b 0. The boredom effect (dB/dt) indicates
that the excitement one receives from buying a brand – the perceived
value – starts to decline immediately after the purchase. In contrast,
dS=dN ¼ dS=dBddB=dN;
while dS/dB is constant, dB/dN N 0. That is, the status effect (dB/dN)
indicates that the excitement that one receives from buying a brand
335
increases as one encounters more people, ideally in one's own
reference group, who use and associate with the brand. For the brand
to have some appeal that endures past the first encounter, assume
that:
jdB=dNjNjdB=dtj:
That is, the status effect is more potent than the boredom effect.
However, an important hurdle lies at the origin of why brands are
destined to age and die. This hurdle is that the consumer can
experience the status effect afforded by the brand only if the users of
the brand are only people who are eligible to be in one's reference
group. The reference group, called G, is different for each individual.
Each individual constructs his or her own G as a way to gauge his or
her own achievement or aspiration. G does not need to be a formal
club, such as a country club, a professional association, or a church. G is
actually, and often usually, a virtual group that exists in the mind of
the consumer as he or she tries, everyday, to measure success and set
up goals or ambitions.
The consumer, as s/he sets up G, must first identify the relevant
metric or criterion as determined by the career aspiration — whether
sexual appeal, music composition, culinary success, academic accom-
plishment, or car racing. Two simple assumptions allow us to get at
the core issues. First, the individuals that make up the total relevant
population, that is, the population with regard to chosen metric or
profession, have fixed characteristics. That is, the individuals do not
undergo development in the present model, which of course is not the
case in everyday life. Second, these individuals have heterogeneous
characteristics. That is, no two individuals have identical character-
istics. For instance, if the metric is sexual appeal, and the population is
100 million people, called N, it is possible to line people up according
to this metric, where no two individuals occupy the same rank.
Given the assumptions, each individual lines up, in his or her mind,
the population from 1 to N, where 1 denotes the highest ranking agent
with regard to one's particular metric or criterion. Each agent in N
does this. For the agent under focus, s/he demarcates his own G, the
reference group that he can use to measure his or her own success. For
instance, a model (which would use the sexual appeal metric) that
works in a primary market such as New York City would have, usually
carved a G that is much higher than a model working in a secondary or
tertiary market in Columbus, Ohio. An examination of Columbus G
reveals more. A person that lies to the left of the Columbus G, such as a
model whose virtual group is the New York G, would not want to
demean him or herself by joining the Columbus G — although the
members of the Columbus G would be highly motivated to include the
New York model in their G. On the other hand, a person to the right of
the Columbus G, that is, such as a model working in Springfield,
Missouri, would achieve her or his dreams to join the Columbus G —
but the members of the Columbus G would try very hard to keep the
Springfield model out. If the Springfield model, given the assumption
of fixed or non-changing abilities, succeeds in trespassing, that is,
entering the Columbus G, the status appeal of the Columbus G
deteriorates.
Put in general terms, if people outside one's reference group (in
this instance people of lower status), start to consume the brand, this
would violate the brand, and tarnish its status appeal.
To express the argument formally, the status effect is positive up to
a threshold, called p⁎. For a given population size, N
pT ¼ NT =N
where N⁎ is the number of people that the consumer considers to be
worthy members of his or her G. For instance, N⁎ would be the person
ranked number 251, starting from the top rank “1”, in the population
(N) of 100 million. So, the G held by the consumer (who could be of
any rank not to the right-hand side of #251) would be defined by p⁎,
336 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
which in this case, p⁎ = 251/100,000,000. Of course, N⁎ cannot exceed
the total population, that is, N⁎ ≤ N. So, by definition, 0 ≤ p⁎ ≤ 1.
The following sums up the basic idea of the aging of brands,
 
dB=dNz0 for pa 0; pT ðpositive status effectÞ
 
dB=dNb0 for pa pT ; 1 ðnegative status effectÞ:
The existence of threshold p⁎ means that the size of G is fixed from
the lower end N⁎. As the number of people who lie to the right-hand
of G, succeed in trespassing, the actual number in G expands beyond
the optimum N⁎. As a result, the status appeal of the brand starts to
decline (dB/dN b 0). Agres and Dubitsky (1996) made some progress
towards this concept in proposing that a brand declines in asset value
as consumer knowledge exceeds consumer esteem. Social psychology
literature (e.g. Lynn and Snyder, 2002; Lynn and Harris, 1997; Lynn,
1989, 1991, 1992b) notes this phenomenon. For instance, Michael Lynn
(1992a) describes the psychology of unavailability, that is, an item gains
value with success in preventing aspirational trespassers from
purchasing.
Country clubs and exclusive neighborhood associations such as
gated communities try to limit trespassing. But maintaining the
boundary of N⁎ with regard to other goods that afford symbolic utility
is very difficult. There is simply no way to prevent social climbers from
purchasing the brand if the brand is available to anyone who has the
money to pay. This is a case very similar to what economists and
ecologists call the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968, 1977). This
conflict between individuals and the common good occurs with the
depletion of a common resource, such as fish in a lake or grass in a
pasture, when property rights either are absent or, if present, not
enforced. Every agent races to consume the resource before someone
else does. The consequence is a prisoners' dilemma: the outcome is
worse than the optimal one that is possible if property rights are in place
and enforced (Khalil, 1997). Even if everyone is interested in restricting
entry, the resource vanishes when the community cannot prevent
trespassers. Should, for example, sufficient Ferrari fans become wealthy
enough to progress beyond owning cheap merchandise such as caps and
T-shirts and ownership of the cars themselves becomes widespread, the
brand value will suffer. The non-excludable nature of brands-qua-status,
likewise, leads to the eventual demise of brands.
But are brands public goods? Public goods, as textbook economics
tells us, are not only common goods. In addition, they are goods that
are non-rivalrous. Goods – such as homes, automobiles, and clothes –
are rivalrous when the consumption of one unit leads to the reduction
in supply of one unit. Goods such as parks, museums, national
defence, lectures, and bus rides are non-rivalrous when the con-
sumption of one unit does not lead to the reduction in supply by one
unit. Brands are rivalrous goods insofar as the goods embody symbolic
effect such as automobiles, watches, and so on. But brands would be
non-rivalrous if goods such as country clubs and exclusive neighbor-
hood associations embody the symbolic effect. In such cases, the
brands would be club goods, defined as exclusive goods because the
association can exclude outsiders below acceptable status and hence
protect the symbolic effect of the brand. As club goods, brands would
not be common goods and hence would not undergo the demise
analyzed here. But then neither firms nor corporations produce such
club goods. Associations protect these club goods, where members
pay fees and hence keep gates locked against trespassers. Therefore,
club goods cannot be brands in the definition provided here. In
addition, common usage does not perceive membership in a club as a
brand. This common usage highlights that the term “brands” denotes
only common goods, that is, where the users cannot enforce property
rights against trespassers. Therefore, social climbers can easily fake
their ability and buy the brand. This faking would increase the
membership of one's reference group beyond N⁎.
Trespassing, that is, the non-excludable nature of brands as
common goods is fundamental to the proposed model of brand
demise. Brand managers might be able to slow down the demise by
erecting high membership fees, such as charging a high price for the
logo. However, they might risk losing income if the membership fee is
excessively high. On the other hand, if consumers' income rises, they
become more able to pay for the high premium. This increased
purchasing ability would lead to the dynamics of the demise of the
brand modeled above. The term “trespassing” can also mean move-
ment of people from one social group to another. For instance, people
can change their affiliation with one church or one artistic group to
become a member of another church or another artistic group. People
tend to attach themselves to clubs or groups as a matter of social
identification that has little to do with ranking or brands. However,
such identification, which may involve potential “horizontal” trespas-
sing, is not a category of interest in this argument. Horizontal
trespassing cannot explain the brand demise phenomenon investi-
gated here. The focus here is on one kind of trespassing, “vertical”
trespassing or social climbing, because according to the hypothesis
developed here the behavior can explain the phenomenon under
investigation. Therefore, the word “trespassing” refers to the narrow
sense of “vertical” trespassing.
In summary, a successful brand attracts aspirational interest from
non-owners, who hold that successful brand in high esteem. As more
non-owners achieve their goal and become associated with the brand
they aspire to, the value for previous owners decreases. In the long
run, the brand ultimately declines and runs out of aspirational
consumers.
5. Discussion
This work attempts to explain why there should be an expectation
that most brands will die in the long run. Of course, the problem is that
most published studies of brands are inherently short-term, not long
run. The brand mortality view articulated in this paper contrasts with
received brand management wisdom. The argument here is that
managers should not concentrate so much on investing resources in
attempts to turn their major brands into immortal blockbuster icons,
but rather, manage all their brands in their portfolios for profitability,
while all the time having a clear understanding that sooner or later
they (or more likely, their successors) will be faced with the
inevitability of brand demise. Planning for this inevitable demise, as
suggested for human beings many centuries ago by Seneca, should
result in more efficient brand management. Of course, managers are
duty bound to avoid this demise for as long as is profitable and
practical. Indeed, the executioner's call can be deftly delayed through
clever revitalization and repositioning strategies (as suggested by, for
example, Wansink, 1997; Keller, 1999; Lehu, 2004). However, in the
long run, the ultimately inevitable demise occurs as the result of
market dynamics and consumer behavior.
Ormerod (2005) demonstrates empirically that most firms will fail
in time, if only because the process of innovation gives rise to new
brands and new forms of business operation that can more
successfully compete in an environment of uncertainty and change.
He points out that business failure can be due to endogenous or
exogenous events, internal vice such as management incompetence,
or external factors such as environmental change. The non-iconic
majority of brands that do not live beyond the first generation are in
the overwhelming majority, notwithstanding people's fascination
with the few iconic (Holt, 2004) exceptions. Their inevitable death
paves the way for their successors. The list of dead brands is
immeasurably long, but just to offer a few examples from three
product categories, consider: Airlines (Air UK, Ansett, British Caledo-
nian, British Overseas Airways Corporation, Freedom Air, Pan Am, Sun
Air, TWA), Automotive (Austin Healey, Alvis, Triumph, Riley, Morris,
Oldsmobile), hi-tech (Atari, Cellnet, Commodore, Sinclair). Of course,
 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
examples in fast moving consumer goods would have even more
pronounced breadth and depth. These examples of brand failures are
disappointing for business people seeking immortality, but of course,
brand management as a profession is very young. Brand managers
have only existed since 1931, the date of the memo by Neil McElroy at
Procter and Gamble that provided a job description for a brand man
[sic] he had recently hired (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000), and
fewer than 80 years is hardly long enough to generate any evidence for
immortality. Over-generalization from a weak theoretical, conceptual
or knowledge base is dangerous (Ormerod, 2005). To think that all
firms in a competitive environment can follow the same simple rules
and prosper is ludicrous, scores of bestsellers espousing exactly that
fill airport bookshops. An important defect with these standard
equilibrium approaches is that they tell nothing of the timescale of the
process of change from one equilibrium to another — even in the
textbook world, in which equilibria exist by definition (Ormerod,
2005). And if this timescale effect holds in economics – a discipline
whose formal academic roots date back at least five times longer than
marketing – the problems in the extant brand management literature,
as a very young and theoretically immature discipline, are likely to
be much greater. By way of example, two of the founders of the
discipline are relatively young; David Aaker only published his first
top tier journal article in the early 1970s and Kevin Lane Keller
received his Ph.D. in the mid-1980s. Thus, it appears the early pioneers
are still driving the discipline of brand management. Moreover, most
empirical work has been cross-sectional. Bottom line: brands have
simply not been studied for long enough to make the kinds of lawlike
generalizations upon which longevity and immortality myths are
grounded. Yet, this absence of rigorous longitudinal research over
many generations has in no way deterred self-styled branding gurus
from making unsupported prognostications about brand immortality
and in isolating managerial incompetence (which they can fix, for a
price!) as the only possible cause of brand demise. Analyzing the past
is of course much easier than predicting the future and the general
business press is replete with stories of people who have become
successful and rich, not the multitude of currently poor people with
bright ideas for future success that may or may not be viable. This
error is a common problem of ex post rationalization and over-
emphasis of success. The argument here is that for businesses to
survive, they must accept the inevitability that their brands will die
over time. After all, Collins and Porras (1996) showed that businesses
that were able to preserve their core values and purpose while
adapting strategies and tactics to suit environmental changes out-
performed the general stock market by a factor of 12 over 70 years.
Brand immortality may well be an elusive chimera.
This work provides some interesting opportunities for future research.
For example, the long-standing misrepresentation about brand longevity
uncovered by Golder (2000) suggests that a thorough review of what are
current considerations of historical certainties would be well worth the
effort. He generated a great deal of data in comprehensively disproving the
17/25 brands lasted for a century theory. Extension of this data collection
would allow testing of the model outlined here. Commercial databases
such as A C Nielsen's warehouse withdrawals may well have information
dating back far enough to be useful for the present intent. Another
possibility in the short-to-medium term is to use computer simulation —
based on past behavior and theoretically supportable assumptions. Finally,
considerable scope exists for marketers to embrace historical methods of
enquiry — as recently demonstrated by Jevons (2005) and in the context of
Chinese brands and their origins by Eckhardt and Bengtsson (2007).
References
Aaker DA. Brand extensions: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sloan Manage Rev
1990;31(4):47–56.
Aaker DA, Joachimsthaler E. The brand relationship spectrum: the key to the brand
architecture challenge. Calif Manage Rev 2000;42(4):8–23.
337
Agres SJ, Dubitsky TM. Changing needs for brands. J Advert Res 1996;36(1):21–30.
Algesheimer R, Dholakia UM, Herrmann A. The social influence of brand community:
evidence from European car clubs. J Market 2005;69(3):19–34.
American Marketing Association. Marketing definitions: a glossary of marketing terms,
Chicago, American Marketing Association, 1960, 1985, 2004.
Barrett HC, Behne T. Children's understanding of death as the cessation of agency: a test
using sleep versus death. Cognition 2005;96(2):93–108.
Becker GS. A note on restaurant pricing and other examples of social influences on price.
J Polit Econ 1991;99(5):1109.
Becker GS. Accounting for tastes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1996.
Becker GS, Murphy KM. A simple theory of advertising as a good or bad. Q J Econ
1993;108(4):941–64.
Behnke JA, Finch CE, Moment GB, editors. The biology of aging. New York: Plenum
Press; 1978.
Belk RW. Possessions and the extended self. J Consum Res 1988;15(2):139.
Bénabou R, Tirole J. Self-confidence and personal motivation. Q J Econ 2002;117(3):871–915.
Bénabou R, Tirole J. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Rev Econ Stud 2003;70:489–520.
Beverland M, Ewing M. Slowing the adoption and diffusion process to enhance brand
repositioning: the consumer driven repositioning of Dunlop Volley. Bus Horiz
2005;48(5):385–91.
Bowles S, Gintis H, Osborne M. The determinants of earnings: a behavioral approach. J
Econ Lit 2001a;39:1137–76.
Bowles S, Gintis H, Osborne M. Incentive-enhancing preferences: personality, behavior
and earnings. American Economic Review. Papers and proceedings; 2001b. p. 155–8.
May.
Chintagunta P, Erdem T, Rossi P, Wedel M. Structural modeling in marketing: review and
assessment. Market Sci 2006;25(6):604–16.
Collins J, Porras J. Building your company's vision. Harvard Bus Rev 1996;74(5):65–77.
Comfort A. The biology of senescence. New York: Elsevier; 1979.
Dawkins R. The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1976.
Day GS. The product life cycle: analysis and applications issue. J Market 1981;45(4):60–7.
de Chernatony L. From brand vision to brand evaluation: strategically building and
sustaining brands. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann; 2006.
Dhalla NK, Yuspeh S. Forget the product life cycle concept! Harvard Bus Rev
1976;54(1):102–12.
Eckhardt GM, Bengtsson A. Pulling the white rabbit out the hat: branding advances in
Imperial China. In: Susan Cottam, Leslie De Chernatony, editors. Proceedings of the
Third Though Leaders' Conference on Brand Management; 2007. Birmingham:
April.
Ehrenberg ASC, Goodhardt GJ, Barwise PT. Double jeopardy revisited. J Market
1990;54(3):82.
Eldredge N, Gould SJ. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In:
Schopf TJM, editor. Models in paleobiology. San Francisco: Cooper & Co; 1972.
Ewing MT, Fowlds DA, Shepherd IRB. Renaissance: a case study in brand revitalization
and strategic realignment. J Prod Brand Manag 1995;3:19.
Fehr E, Gächter S. Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. Am Econ
Rev 2000a;90(4):980–94.
Fehr E, Gächter S. Do incentive contracts crowd out voluntary cooperation? Working
paper no. 34, Institute for Empirical Research, University of Zürich; 2000b.
Finch CE. The regulation of physiological changes during mammalian aging. Q Rev Biol
1976;51(1):49–83.
Finch CE. Longevity, senescence, and the genome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press;
1991.
Finch CE, Johnson TE, editors. Molecular biology of aging. New York: Wiley-Liss; 1990.
Fournier S. Consumers and their brands: developing relationship theory in consumer
research. J Consum Res 1998;24(4):343.
Frey B. Not just for the money: an economic theory of personal motivation. Cheltenham,
UK: Edward Elgar; 1997a.
Frey B. The cost of price incentives: an empirical analysis of motivation crowding out.
Am Econ Rev 1997b;87(4):746–55.
Gersick CJG. Revolutionary change theories: a multilevel exploration of the punctuated
equilibrium paradigm. Acad Manage Rev 1991;16(1):10–36.
Gigerenzer G. Adaptive thinking: rationality in the real world (evolution and cognition).
USA: Oxford University Press; 2000.
Gintis H, Bowles S, Boyd R, Fehr E, editors. Moral sentiments and material interests: the
foundations of cooperation in economic life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2005.
Golder PN. Historical method in marketing research with new evidence on long-term
market share stability. J Market Res 2000;37(2):156–72.
Goldsmith AH, Veum JR, Darity Jr W. The impact of psychological and human capital on
wages. Econ Inq 1997;35(4):419–42.
Groucutt J. The life, death and resuscitation of brands. Handbook of Business Strategy;
2006. p. 101–6.
Haig M. Brand failures: the truth about the 100 biggest branding mistakes of all time.
London: Kogan Page; 2003.
Hardin GJ. The tragedy of the commons. Science 1968;162(3859):1243–8.
Hardin GJ. Living on a lifeboat. In: Hardin G, Baden JJ, editors. Managing the commons.
San Francisco: W. H. Freeman; 1977.
Hayflick L. The limited in vitro lifetime of human diploid strains. Experimental Cell
Research 1965;37(3):614–36.
Hayflick L. The cell biology of human aging. Scientific American 1980;242(1):58–65.
Heckman JJ, Krueger AB. Inequality in America: what role for human capital policies? In:
Friedman Benjamin M, editor. The Alvin Hansen Symposium on Public Policy,
Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2003. edited with an introduction
by.
Hem LE, de Chernatony L, Iversen NM. Factors influencing successful brand extensions. J
Market Manag 2003;19(7/8):781–806.
338 M.T. Ewing et al. / Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 332–338
Holt DB. How brands become icons: the principles of cultural branding. Harvard
Business School Press; 2004.
Jevons C. The return of the prodigal brand. 12th Conference on Historical Analysis &
Research in Marketing. Long Beach California; 2005. April.
Jevons C, Ewing MT, Khalil E. Managing brand demise. J Gen Manage 2007;32(4):73–81.
Jevons C, Gabbott M, de Chernatony L. Customer and brand manager perspectives on
brand relationships: a conceptual framework. J Prod Brand Manag 2005;14(5):300–9.
Karni E, Schmeidler D. Fixed preferences and changing tastes. Am Econ Rev 1990;80(2):262.
Keller KL. Managing brands for the long run: brand reinforcement and revitalization
strategies. Calif Manage Rev 1999;41(3):102–24.
Khalil EL. The Red Queen paradox: a proper name for a popular game. J Inst Theor Econ
1997;153(2):411–5.
Khalil EL. Types of metaphor and identificational slips in economic discourse. Res Hist
Econ Thought Methodol 2000;18(A):83–105.
Landman OE. The inheritance of acquired characteristics. Annu Rev Genet 1991;25:1–20.
Lehu JM. Back to life! Why brands grow old and sometimes die and what managers then
do: an exploratory qualitative research put into the French context. J Mark Commun
2004;10:133–52.
Levy SJ. Symbols for sale. Harvard Bus Rev 1959;37(4):117–24.
Lynn M. Scarcity effects on desirability: mediated by assumed expensiveness? J Econ
Psychol 1989;10(2):257.
Lynn M. Scarcity effects on value: a quantitative review of the commodity theory
literature. Psychol Mark 1991;8(1):43–57.
Lynn M. The psychology of unavailability: explaining scarcity and cost effects on value.
Basic Appl Soc Psychol 1992a;13(1):3–7.
Lynn M. Scarcity's enhancement of desirability: the role of naive economic theories.
Basic Appl Soc Psychol 1992b;13(1):67–78.
Lynn M, Harris J. The desire for unique consumer products: a new individual differences
scale. Psychol Market 1997;14(6):601–16.
Lynn M, Snyder CR. Uniqueness seeking. In: Snyder CR, Lopez SJ, editors. Handbook of
positive psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002.
Mazur L. A new home for orphan brands. Mark Lead 2004;26:53–5.
McWilliam G. Building stronger brands through online communities. MIT Sloan Manag
Rev 2000;41(3):43–54.
Moorthy KS. Theoretical modeling in marketing. J Market 1993;57:92–106.
Muniz AM, O'Guinn TC. Brand community. J Consum Res 2001;27(4):412.
Norton JA, Bass FM. A diffusion theory model of adoption and substitution for successive
generations of high-technology products. Manage Sci 1987;33(9):1069–86.
Norton JA, Bass FM. Evolution of technological generations: the law of capture. Sloan
Manage Rev 1992;33(2):66–77.
Ormerod P. Why most things fail. London: Faber and Faber; 2005.
Plummer JT. Outliving the myths. J Advert Res 1990;30(1):26–8.
Prendergast G, Berthon P. Insights from ecology: an ecotone perspective on marketing.
Eur Manag J 2000;18(2):223.
Rockstein M, Sussmen ML, Chesky J, editors. Theoretical aspects of aging. New York:
Academic Press; 1974.
Rust RC, Chung TS. Marketing models of service and relationships. Mark Sci 2006;25
(6):560–80.
Schumpeter JA. Capitalism, socialism and democracy. New York: Harper Perennial;
1943.
Sheth JN, Gardner DM, Garrett DE. Marketing theory: evolution and evaluation. NY:
Wiley; 1988.
Sheth JN, Sisodia RS. Revisiting marketing's lawlike generalizations. J Acad Mark Sci
1999;27(1):71.
Simon H. Dynamics of price elasticity and brand life cycles: an empirical study. J Mark
Res 1979;16(4):439–52.
Tellis GJ. The price elasticity of selective demand: a meta-analysis of econometric
models of sales. J Mark Res 1988;25:331–41.
Tellis GJ, Crawford CM. An evolutionary approach to product growth theory. J Mark
1981;45(4):125–32.
Tuchman BW. The march of folly: from Troy to Vietnam. New York: Alfred A Knopf;
1984.
Vargo SL. On a theory of markets and marketing: from positively normative to
normatively positive. Australas Mark J 2007;15(1):53–60.
Wansink B. Making old brands new. Am Demogr 1997;19(12):53–8.
Woodside AG. Using the forced metaphor-elicitation technique (FMET) to meet animal
companions within self. J Bus Res 2008;61(5):480–7.