Managers of premium brands face a perennial dilemma. How do you grow a premium brand without killing its soul – the unique brand cachet that attracts its core high price paying customers – even as you seek to expand sales to the masses by offering lower prices? In recent years, outlet stores located hours away from glitzy shopping districts, selling off-season and lower tier merchandise at a fraction of regular retail prices, have proliferated and become significant sources of revenues. The conventional wisdom is that relying on revenues from outlet stores can destroy the brand’s cachet over time. But according to a forthcoming study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, a leading scholarly marketing journal, outlet stores may actually help improve the brand’s cachet.