Credibility and Price Premium-Based Competitiveness for Industrial Brands

Extant research on brand competitiveness concentrates on the B2C contexts, yet it remains poorly understood in the B2B contexts, especially for industrial brands. This current research aims to investigate how seller credibility potentially drives organizational buyers' willingness to pay price premiums (WTPP) through customer-company identification and buyer long-term orientation. In particular, we argue that buyer WTPP represents the industrial brands' competitiveness since buying firms express such strong preferences for the industrial sellers’ products and services compared to competitors that they are willing to pay price premiums. Based on data from 454 US-based industrial buyers, our findings generally support the proposed hypotheses. Our research sheds light on how industrial sellers can build their brand competitiveness. Actionable insights for research and managerial practice are provided.