1 Planning pre-launch positioning: Segmentation via willingness-to-pay and Means-End brand differentiators Short Title: Planning pre-launch positioning This is the pre-publication version. The final version is in press and will appear in the Journal of Brand Management. Charles E. Gengler, PhD Dean of the School of Business York College, City University of New York 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd Jamaica, NY 11451 (718) 262-2000 (302) 287-9008 Charles.Gengler@baruch.cuny.edu Michael S. Mulvey, PhD (corresponding author) Telfer School of Management University of Ottawa 55 Laurier Avenue East Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5 Canada (613) 322-8003 mulvey@uottawa.ca Charles E. Gengler (Ph.D., University of Texas–Dallas) is Dean of the School of Business, York College, City University of New York. His research and teaching interests center on positioning strategies, advertising campaign strategies, motivation research, interviewing strategies and associated analysis, charitable giving, and sales training development. Michael S. Mulvey (Ph.D., Penn State) is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. He has held research and teaching positions at Penn State, Rutgers Business School, and the Bucharest School of Management. He is an expert on the topics of branding, marketing strategy, and consumer research and has provided marketing consultation and expert witness services to clients in a wide variety of industries. KEY WORDS: brand positioning, means-end theory, innovation adoption, customer value-based pricing, segmentation, latent class regression