LAURANNE BUCHANAN. CAROLYN J. SIMMONS, and BARBARA A. BICKART* Consistency among the various elements of a marketing program is believed essential in building and maintaining brand image and equity. And yet, a brand's ultimate presentation to customers is controlled more often by the retailer than by the manufacturer. In this research, the authors demonstrate that the retailer's display decisions can negate the equity of an established brand. The authors suggest that this occurs because consumers have expectations about retail displays and the rela- tionship among displayed brands. Display conditions that disconfirm these expectations can lead consumers to reevaluate the brand. Specifically, the results demonstrate that high-equity brand valuations are influenced by an unfamiliar context brand when (1) a mixed display struc- ture leads consumers to believe that the context brand is diagnostic for judging the high-equity brand, (2) the precedence given to one brand over another in the display makes expectations about brand differences or sim- ilarities accessible, and (3) the unfamiliar context brand disconfirms these expectations. Brand Equity Dilution: Retailer Display and Context Brand Effects The ability to build and maintain a strong brand image depends, in part, on maintaining consistency in brand com- munications (cf. Keller 1993; Park. Jaworski, and Maclnnis 1986). Management must ensure not only that there is con- sistency in the brand's positioning over time, but also that each part of the marketing mix reinforces that positioning. That is, the brand's positioning must be supported by prod- uct characteristics as well as by the advertising message, price points, and choice of distribution outlets. A corollary to this point is that inconsistencies in brand communication may lead to reevaluation of the brand and ultimately reduce brand equity. Although brand managers make most of the strategic decisions that influence consumer impressions ofthe brand. *Lauranne Buchanan is Associate Professor of Marketing, Thunderbird. The American Graduate School of [nternalional Managemenl (e-mail: bijchanal@t-bird.edu). Carolyn J. Simmons is Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business and Economics. Lehigh University (e-mail: cjs5@lehigh.edu). Barbara A. Bickart is Assistant Professor of Marketing, School of Business-Camden, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey (e-mail: bickart@crab.njtgers.edu). All authors contributed equally to this research. The authors thank Ratti Ratneshwar and Bart Weitz for their input to the study and the anonymous JMR reviewers for their constructive com- ments on the article. Financial support was provided by the University of Florida Center for Retailing Research, the American Marketing Association, the Marketing Department at the Wharton School, and the Rutgers University School of Business-Camden Dean's Fund. To interact with colleagues on specific articles in this issue, see "Feedback" on the JMR Web site at www.ania.org/pubs/jmr. they do not exercise complete control over the brand's pres- entation to consumers. Retailers, because they determine the context in which the brand is encountered (either physically, in the store environment, or in direct communication,s, such as catalogs), have the potential to influence the overall effectiveness of the manufacturer's strategy for developing and maintaining brand equity. We found, in talking with manufacturer representatives and department store buyers for fashion goods, that product presentation is often a source of conflict in their relationship, precisely because of this concern. Manufacturers who have built equity in their brands want them to be displayed with brands of similar positioning and stature; proximity to lesser or unknown brands, they believe, may cause the consumer to question the brand. In contrast, retailers often prefer to display high- equity brands in close proximity to lesser or unknown brands. They want to leverage the value of the high-equity brand to create sales not only for the brand itself, but also for other brands carried in tbe store. The objective of this article is to examine how inconsis- tencies in brand communications created at the point at which the brand is encountered may lead to reevaluation of the brand and ultimately reduce brand equity. We posit that consumers have expectations about retail displays and the relationship among brands and that display conditions dis- confirming these expectations can lead consumers lo reeval- uate brands. We examine this general proposition in the sit- uation in which a familiar high-equity brand is encountered in the context of an unfamiliar brand. Journal iif Marketing Research Vol. XXXVl (August 1999). 345-355