Brand Building

MBA education in India is facing the same challenges as business. Upheaval of technology, changing customer expectations, global  competition, online courses and societal responsibility are the major concerns. Failure to adapt to these challenges will question the academic contribution to business practice. Business school (B‐school) branding is crucial to distinguish the services provided by one B‐school from another. Considering the importance and relevance of adapting to the changing market forces, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of brand‐building for Indian B‐schools. A range of published literature related to the topic is thoroughly searched. The paper examines the viewpoints of various scholars with regard to the role of a student in a B‐school. The services marketing perspective is analyzed and the gaps are identified through a robust literature survey. Based on the literature survey, an original conceptual model for brand‐building for B‐schools
is proposed. Some B‐schools have adopted certain branding activities, but extant literature review reveals that B‐schools in India do not practice an organized holistic approach to branding activities. The proposed conceptual model is stage one in the process of understanding what goes into building a B‐school brand. Stage two would empirically test the proposed conceptual model of brand‐building. The proposed model is holistic, considering the role of important stakeholders such as students,
faculty and corporate. This conceptual model will help B‐school management to understand the role and importance of branding B‐schools. It will provide an insight into the various parameters on which
a B‐school brand has to be built.

В данной работе представлено исследование, касающееся технологий построения медиабрендов в Литве. В ходе написания работы впервые был проведен анализ наиболее крупных игроков современного литовского медиарынка. На его основании было выделено десять особенностей коммуникационного взаимодействия медиабрендов, являющихся важными для бренд-билдинга в Литве. Это связано с тем, что наиболее успешные и сильные литовские медиабренды вынуждены сосуществовать в группах в связи с экономическим положением рынка.

Purpose
Previous research has shown that business-to-business (B2B) brand image has positive effects on customer loyalty. However, the results have been inconsistent because they have highlighted that B2B brand image has either direct or mediated effects on loyalty. Drawing on the framework of service transition, this study develops and tests a model that reconciles previous findings. This model suggests that goods-related and service-related B2B brand images coexist in customers’ perceptions and impact customer loyalty in different ways.

Design/methodology/approach
A model was developed and estimated using covariance-based structural equation modeling. The data used in the analysis were collected through a survey in the Italian healthcare industry, focusing on the relationship between hearing aid manufacturers and audiologists.

Findings
Both goods-related and service-related B2B brand images have positive effects on loyalty. However, while the effects of goods-related image on loyalty are fully mediated by satisfaction, service-related image has both direct and mediated effects on loyalty.

Research limitations/implications
This study reconciles previous work arguing that B2B brand image has either direct or mediated effects on loyalty by focusing on the transition from a goods-oriented logic for branding to service branding. In particular, the analysis focuses on the role of the brand in the co-creation process, suggesting that a service-related brand image reflects the value unfolding over time through co-created experiences. However, additional research needs to be conducted in other industries before the results can be generalized.

Practical implications
The findings provide managers with insights for the co-creation of their B2B brand images. In particular, the results urge managers to integrate the traditional goods-oriented approach to branding with service branding, showing that enriching B2B brand image with service-related aspects will have a direct and positive effect on loyalty. However, brand image cannot be created or changed unilaterally by the firm as it is determined by the customer based on co-creation experiences.

Originality/value
This is the first study to explicitly and separately consider the effects of goods-related and service-related aspects of B2B brand image on loyalty. It also one of the first studies to apply service logic to B2B branding issues.

Tourism industry is undergoing a considerable extent of research in recent times due to its high relative influence on the economy of nations. The area is subject to multiple studies done by
scholars as well as practitioners. All destinations provide a unique style of experience to every leisure traveler who has a unique perspective about country that is influenced by destination
brand image. This study develops a variable interaction model that assist in forming destination brand image in context to UK’s tourism industry. It also identifies opportunities of further
improvement in enhancing UK's brand image as a tourist destination.

Increasing tourism demand for destination brands raises the competition for tourism destinations to develop and project them as a promising tourism destination which bifurcates from others to gain the competitive advantage. Based on the argument, explored from the extensive literature review, the present study was framed and tested for understand the whole concept of destination brand building. The major objectives of this research study were identified and analyzed the brand building elements and their contributions towards destination promotion, destination branding and the overall phenomenon of destination brand building. The brand building elements were identified and selected according to their relevance in tourism sector. The survey area for this study was one of the promising tourism destinations of North India i.e. Jammu. The self-structured survey instrument was developed and distributed in the form of questionnaire to 130 tourists who completed their tour to Jammu. The assembled instrument was empirically validated through the valid responses of 108 tourists. The descriptive analysis and correlation tests were performed by using SPSS 17.0 to identify the inter-relationship between various constructs used in the study. Although there were significant relationships between brand building elements vis-à-vis destination branding, destination promotion and destination brand building. But, the results suggested that in Jammu, the implications of brand building elements toward building Jammu as a promising tourism destination brand, somehow, in an infant stage. Furthermore, there have to do more work for pushing these elements for building Jammu as a premium destination brand.

In many countries around the world, tourism has become one of the key economic sectors of the national economy. Tourism not only brings a great source of income to the economy, creates jobs, develops services and infrastructure, but also promotes peace and cultural exchanges. Today, the national tourism brand becomes one of the most valuable assets of every country, including Vietnam. Therefore, building and promoting the brand in order to establish the country's tourism image widely to tourists around the world is a very important task to confirm the position of Vietnam and its competitive advantage as an impressive tourist destination in the international market.

This paper expands the understanding of a complex area of service brand management. Since the specific nature of services makes it difficult to objectively judge a service prior to its consumption, decisions and the selection of a service brand can be critical for a marketing strategy. Strong service brands possess: distinctiveness, relevance, memorability and flexibility. Elements of a strong service brand (name, logo, symbol, character and slogan) identify the brand and differentiate the service from its competitors.
Research was conducted into the appropriateness of brands within Croatian and Slovenian insurance services sectors. Elements of the 45 insurance service brands (27 Croatian and 18 Slovenian) are analyzed in this paper and evaluated in terms of how and if they meet the criteria of a strong service brand, as well as in terms of their appropriateness for creating desirable, positive and unique associations.

Vietnam is one of the typical countries in the world with a focus on learning. With more than 224 universities, the competition among the schools is very intense to recruit high school scholars into the school. Since then, branding at school is very important. The study shows that the current state of branding of higher education in Vietnam through some famous universities, the need to build a brand, advantages in branding as well as area. pole, thereby also have some unavoidable backlog and some effective remedies.

This dissertation deals with Instagram as an emerging and growing social networking site’s contributes to fashion and strategies that can be utilized by fashion entrepreneurs as a way to build and grow a company economically through Brand Equity and Sales. The paper looks at brand equity, engagement, social media, social media strategies, E- commerce, and social commerce in a fashion context geared toward millennials and urban contemporary brands. Academic research is significantly lacking on Instagram, a popular and widely adopted social media platform in the fashion industry, specifically in the realms of brand equity and as an e-commerce platform. Industry research is also lacking, as many claim to be social media experts, but there is little evidence of solid research and knowledge. The economic impact on the fashion industry, popularity among millennials, and recent changes to the platform, as well as relevant studies on other social media in similar areas, lead the researcher to a Snapshot investigation of Instagram and its effect on brand equity and sales revenue through a focus on urban contemporary middle market range brands.
The researcher used a deductive approach through a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods such as case studies, interviews with experts and consumers, and a survey. This mixed method approach works to create a more complete picture and go deeper into the subject matter than a single method approach would have. Surveys were used to get cognitive, emotional, and behavioural feedback from Instagram using millennials, where semi-structured interviews were used to examine Instagram strategies and key measures and drivers of consumer engagement through talking with social media experts and consumers. Case studies were used to help further inform the study and get a better idea of the complex context Instagram used as a strategic tool for urban contemporary brands geared toward millennials exists in.
This study discusses findings and themes from the data collection and analysis process which point to the importance of a brand community, emphasizing social over sales through content, and encouraging visualization by consumer to increase sales and build brand equity through Instagram acting as a social commerce platform. It also highlights future research areas in regards to Instagram as a brand equity and sales channel and managerial implications of the research.

More the brands looks transparent, devoid of semantics density at its advertising,more are valid to hide the conditions of its product materiel elaboration. In this sense, advertising provide brands of luxury and fashion markets with a special transparece, trying to keep  in secret the inhuman conditions  according with them the respective products are elaborated.

Today’s business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepancy, this study explores the notion of proactive customer orientation and examines the degree to which this capability offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. While research in recent years has explored the role of proactive customer orientation in new product performance, empirical investigation in this stream of market orientation literature is significantly underdeveloped. We assess the impact of the proactive customer orientation construct on value creation by taking a novel approach that examines the proactive customer orientation → value → satisfaction → loyalty chain using data from 800 business customers in India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We find that, relative to other firm capabilities, proactive customer orientation is the most consistent driver of customer value across our multinational data set. Results also show robust effects for the interaction of proactive and responsive customer orientation to create superior value. Several moderating conditions further frame the impact of this capability: intense levels of customer value change, a global relationship scope, and a transnational relationship structure. Overall, findings significantly advance the understanding of the proactive dimension within market orientation and provide marketers with insights for voice of the customer processes.

This is a conceptual paper and is an attempt to explore transitional effect of brand building in the era of new area. Transition and mobility has been the law of nature and has been witnessed from the time immemorial. However the current and the future generation are going to witness a transformation which redefines the idea of space and geographical territory. The prime mover of this transformation will been new media. To understand this transition well and to be in sync with the nuances of mobility will be crucial to organizational success in the 21st century. In this paper, I will discuss how organizations can form brand communities on the lines of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities. The paper will also highlight the fact that the phenomenon of mobility seen today is not just a consequence of an information explosion but also a result of the nature of new media (internet and mobile) and its impact on social constructs.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the place brand building process based on multi-stakeholder perceived value. It contributes to an understanding of how place brands are developed, providing diverse benefits, and proposes a conceptual framework for place brand building and value measurement scales. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on the place brand Sud de France. Qualitative data from stakeholder interviews is used to investigate the main place brand value dimensions. A survey of consumers from the Languedoc-Roussillon region is conducted to measure consumer place brand values. Quantitative data is analyzed using structural equation modelling. Findings Results indicate that place brand value is a multiple-perspective and multidimensional construct that includes new measurement scales related to dimensions such as quality of life, a common local identity and local development. Brand identity is not only constructed on place identity, but should also i...

Social Media Market has been a busy space lately. This paper aims to study the evolving scope of this market with an objective to find out the factors which influence the marketing strategies in this arena. A factor analysis has been conducted on the data available from the questionnaire administered to a sample of population among social media users. The data has been reduced to a certain number of components which best explain the deviation in the data. Further, to impress upon the perceptual attributes of the sample, cross tabulations have been done, wherein it was established that maximum number of respondents who were regularly online were using Facebook,Twitter and Youtube as the Social Media Websites and maximum number of respondents were mostly influenced to buy Laptops, followed by Autombiles, clothes and electronics.

The Indian agro chemical industry has grown over decades and is one of the leading exporters of agro chemicals globally. But, as today’s consumers have become more value conscious and due to the increasing competitiveness in the global market, it has become significant for the Indian agro chemical companies to follow efficient and effective strategies to retain their customers as well as to attract new customers in both the domestic as well as global market. Thus, brand building is one such strategy widely followed by the Indian agro chemical companies. It is also observed that, adopting brand building strategies have proved beneficial to the agro chemical companies. The main aim of following such strategies is to sustain in the competitive market. A successful brand retains its potential customers, maintains the customer loyalty and thus gaining a competitive advantage. Thus, the focus of the study is to analyze how the brand building strategies followed in the Indian agro chemical companies gain them competitive advantage. The study also intends to study the strategies adapted by the Indian agro chemical companies in building their brand and how they help in developing competitive advantage. Both the primary as well as secondary data were collected for the analysis. And various brand building practices followed, their benefits and challenges were observed. At the end of the study, strategies to develop the competitive advantage of the agro- chemical companies are also recommended.

This revelatory study focuses on top Financial Times (FT) ranked British business school managers cognitions of corporate brand building and management. The study insinuates there is a prima facie bilateral link between corporate branding and strategic direction. Among this genus of business school, the data revealed corporate brand building entailed an on-going concern with strategic management, stakeholder management, corporate communications, service focus, leadership, and commitment. These empirical findings, chime with the early conceptual scholarship on corporate brand management dating back to the mid-1990s. These foundational articles stressed the multi-disciplinary and strategic nature of corporate brand management and stressed the significant role of the CEO. As such, this research adds further credence to the above in terms of best-practice vis-à-vis corporate brand management. Curiously, whilst senior managers espouse a corporate brand orientation, corporate brand management is seemingly not accorded a similar status in the curriculum. Drawing on general embedded case study methodological approach, data was collected within eight leading (FT-ranked) business schools in Great Britain at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bradford, Cranfield, Warwick, Lancaster and City (London) Universities. Each of these eight British business schools can be deemed as ‘top’ business schools by virtue of their inclusion in the influential Financial Times (FT) worldwide list of top business schools. The primary mode of qualitative data collection was the 37 in-depth interviews with business school Deans, Associate Deans and other senior faculty members and other managers. Key Words: Business Schools; Corporate Brand; Corporate Brand Management;

Abstract Today's business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepancy, this study explores the notion of proactive customer orientation and examines the degree to which this capability offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. While research in ...

A number of FMCG brands in Russia today exploit nostalgia and images associated with national identity to gain legitimacy and win market share. Yet so far very little research has been conducted on this particularly interesting, and significant aspect of contemporary Russian consumer culture. This is the focus of our paper, which looks at how one brand in particular, InBev’s ‘Sibirskaya korona’, represents ‘Russian-ness’ on its packaging and social media pages.

The recent innovation literature has increasingly emphasized the efficient use of knowledge and information not only inside the company borders, but particularly the knowledge locating outside the company borders, such as the knowledge of customers and users. In addition, the co-creation of new knowledge has gained fast in importance. Various types of collaborative web tools and approaches, such as social media, can enable and significantly increase the collaboration, the collaborative knowledge creation and the use of the distributed knowledge both within and outside the company borders. In this paper, we have studied the role and possibilities of social media in the sharing and creation of customer information and knowledge especially from the perspective of business-to-business companies' innovation with an extensive literature review. Business-to-business context was chosen because it is in many ways a very different environment for social media than business-to-consumer context, and is currently very little academically studied.

Abstract. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to identify the key elements of brand building based on a literature review, preliminary surveys and a case study of successful IT brand in Bulgaria. The paper suggests a framework for building brand identity based on M2BC (Multimodal Brand Communication) model. A combined research and development process is conducted in order to derive M2BC conceptual model. This process integrates a broad literature search, incl. analysis of secondary data from Interbrand reports, followed by a different types of surveys based on RepBrand methodology, NetPromoter scale and other techniques for measuring brand reputation and brand identity. A case study of a popular Bulgarian IT brand is used to illustrate the importance of the key elements in building brands in highly competitive markets. The author concludes by discussing the possibilities for building brand identity in highly dynamic markets as well as the opportunities for further research.

Marken müssen heute flexibler agieren, Konsumenten und ihre Bedürfnisse „ernster nehmen“ und mehr Aufwand betreiben, um relevante Markenerlebnisse zu schaffen. Hiermit geht für sie eine Entwicklung weg von der Botschaftsorientierung hin zur Markenhaltung einher. Als Weg zu einer übergeordneten und flexiblen Haltung von Marken schlägt sie die Orientierung an Prinzipien des agilen Prozessmanagements vor, um die Entwicklung von flexiblen Markenökosystemen zu ermöglichen.

We are married to our names, we love it, and we put a lifetime of struggle so that our names mean something to others. We protect and defend it if we have to. But are we doing enough to make sure  that our names outlive us? Are we creating a BRAND?

Albeit often—and fairly—degraded in the world of high culture as a populist and politicised representation of music, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC)—by sheer virtue of the populist and politicised nature of its essence—stands among the most consequential cultural encounters to which post-independence Azerbaijan has been exposed, in that the extent to which Baku’s victory in the ESC-2011—and the further developments this victory has generated—can potentially impact on, and contribute to, the very process of nation-building and national identity formation, with which this post-Soviet Muslim-majority country is currently struggling, is unparalleled by any of the state’s earlier encounters of the kind.  This paper focuses on, and examines, four intimately related ways in which the ESC and Azerbaijan’s successful involvement with the latter worked to interfere with the country’s nation-building: as a dubious factor in the evolution of the Western sense of self among Azerbaijanis; as a unifying force within the structure of the country’s rapidly maturing civil society; as a medium working to open up a channel through which Western popular cultural elements could interfere with the evolving dynamics of, and work to globalise , indeed de-endogenise, indigenous Azerbaijani culture, on one hand, and unify the discursive realm within which the country’s cultural domain is to further evolve, on the other; and, finally, as an important element serving to decouple the evolving processes within the country’s cultural domain from the unfolding dynamics of conflict settlement and hence conducive to the diversification of public discourse in Azerbaijan.

This article explores the relationship between place-branding and creative industries in post-industrial urban landscapes, with a particular focus on Wales’ capital city, Cardiff. It examines the production and representation of place by close reference to BBC Wales’ television production as a case study of place-making. It draws upon original research undertaken for BBC Audience Council Wales that sought to gauge the cultural impact of BBC Wales’ landmark drama production. Questions of ethics, representation and cultural identity are explored through analysis of developers' and broadcasters’ promotional materials, key speeches and interviews with television commissioners, and focus groups with BBC Wales’ viewers and residents of Cardiff and the rest of Wales. Arguing that television is a powerful medium for representing and branding place, the article contributes to debates concerning the relationship between national media organisations and urban regeneration projects.