Brand imitation is viewed as an infringement of the imitated original brand. (Zaichkowsky, 1995). Although brand managers and researchers have looked into ways to fight against imitations, these are still prevalent in today's market. Researchers have found that one of the major reasons for the growing volume of imitations has been consumer demand. Thus, rather than studying ways to reduce imitations, it is first important for brand managers and researchers to understand why consumers would knowingly buy imitations. The major issue is to understand how consumers evaluate brand imitations. Several studies have explored factors that might have an influence on consumer evaluations of brand imitations. However these findings are limited. For example, similarity of the imitation to the original brand is an important factor in consumer evaluations. However, very little research has studied this aspect. Thus, this research is motivated to further investigate the influential factors of consumer evaluations of brand imitations. This study replicates d'Astous and Gargouri (2001), a study that examines a comprehensive set of factors that might influence consumer evaluations of brand imitations. The purpose of this study is to re-examine their hypotheses in various product categories, with a focus on luxury brands. Moreover, this study has extended the d'Astous and Gargouri (2001) study by investigating product similarity which had not been previously explored. However, hypothesis testing did not completely support the hypothesized effects. The results indicate that consumers who purchase luxury brand imitations are heavily influenced by the price and store image. The results show also that the factor of product similarity is unimportant to a customer purchasing imitator brands.

<p>This paper os about how is it relevant for companies to create or extend a brand, and what limits they should respect.</p>

This paper os about how is it relevant for companies to create or extend a brand, and what limits they should respect.

The aim of this research project is to analyze why Tencent QQ developed so fast in China over nearly a decade, how they built the Tencent QQ brand so successfully, and how they maintained that success in China. Also discussed is the degree of influence which Tencent QQ has had in Sweden. Finally, suggestions are made about what Tencent QQ can do to develop and expand within overseas markets.

With the trend of globalization, the Creative industry has become a useful tool to compete in the global market. Fine performing art is definitely included, and dance artists play an important role in this field. A successful individual brand can prosper the dance industry and help dance artists stand out in fierce competition, even in the future when the agency system has a mature market mechanism. The researcher strives to delve into the necessities for the individual brand-building of dance performance artists, and further draws up ¡§The Framework of Individual Brand-building of Dance Performance Artists¡¨ based on Aaker¡¦s ¡§Brand Identity Planning Model,¡¨ McNally & Speak¡¦s ¡§The Inner and Outer Facet of Individual Brand¡¨ and Kaputa¡¦s ¡§Key Elements of Celebrity Brand-building,¡¨ in order to concoct suitable strategies. The research applies literature review, case study and interview techniques to collect niches and factors for the initial strategy framework. Furthermore, the way of evaluation applies Modified Delphi method with an aim to re-fortify reliability, validity and objectivity of the study. Finally, totally 4 main strategies and 14 secondary strategies are presented in the research result. The main strategies are as follows: (1) Analyze the artist personality, work image and the style of body expression, in order to grasp strength and overcome weakness in the process of building individual brands. (2) Build individual brand identity through unique choreography style and consistent characteristic; meanwhile, increase brand awareness through award acquisition. (3) Actively promote differential personal traits to strengthen image competitiveness. (4) Expand the global market and, with perceived quality, maintain long-term brand loyalty among customers; furthermore, achieve more benefits with the individual brand.

Smartphones have become essential to modern people. More and more consumers are using smartphones. However, according to many reports and investigation, they indicate that user satisfaction and brand loyalty will differ from various brands and represent significant differences. This research adopted Bhattacherjee¡¦s (2001) ECT-IS model as the basic research framework to examine relationships among expectation confirmation, user satisfaction, perceived usefulness and brand loyalty of the smartphones. The model was further extended by measuring perceived usefulness with functional, experiential, and symbolic brand benefits proposed by Park, Jaworski & MacInnis (1986) to investigate how they influenced user satisfaction and brand loyalty. The results include the following: 1. Expectation confirmation had a significant impact on user satisfaction and perceived usefulness. 2. User satisfaction had a positive effect on brand loyalty. 3. Different effects on user satisfaction and brand loyalty were found among three smartphone brands, Apple, Samsung, and hTC.

This study explored non-profit organization using a qualitative method (in-depth Interview). The research objective of this paper is to analyze the content of Strong Brand to develop the internet marketing strategies and to establish differential and sustainable competitive advantage to achieve the goal of Sustainable Development of the organization. The study found that the Brand Equity of website of non-profit organization is mainly from constructing Strong Brand of non-profit organization, internet marketing strategies and methods, website design, website experience, emotional connections and trust. For non-profit organization limited in marketing resources, website is helpful to establish ¡§brand awareness,¡¨ ¡§brand image,¡¨ ¡¨loyalty,¡¨ and ¡§reputation of organization¡¨ and to achieve the marketing objectives of resource attraction, resource allocation, and persuasion to enhance the impact and performance of organization on society. Suggestions of the managing brand equity of website of non-profit organization could be made as follows: focus on the social network of internet to build loyalty of website, use the special characteristics of internet to target customers, to produce website experiences, to combine eality and vitality, carefully choose partners to internet cooperation, and improve the integration and innovation capability of information communications technology and marketing communication. The study aims to provide the findings as the reference basis for website operating of non-profit organization and internet marketing strategies developing to assist non-profit organization in more effective resource to expand the virtual market of non-profit organization and use the initial study of Brand Equity of website of non-profit organization for the foundation of the future studies.

Abstract Organizational Identity and Brand Identity are directly related to corporation future competitiveness and is an important factor to its competitive advantage. In a changing environment, an organization that has loyal, excellent and strong Organizational Identity that gain external recognition when reacting positively to this changes, will be able to maintain the organization¡¦s competitiveness. The recognition and value gained by the individual member for his ability to possess the traits or characteristics to be identified with the organization, brand, team or profession out-weights that of his personal characteristics like gender, age or nationality. Researchers have found that employee attitude towards organizational approval has a relation with the organization traits and behaviors. By setting Organizational and Brand Identity as Independent Variables, Employee Efficiency as Dependent Variables, and Organizational and Brand Affiliation as the Medium, this thesis will investigate their relationship in the casual clothing industry. Data were collected through questionnaires completed by employees engaging in sales and marketing activities of 22 brands in Taiwan. The data are analyzed after breaking them down into their respective factor analysis, correlation and block regression. The outcomes of the tests lead to the following conclusions: 1. The strength and fitness of Organizational Identity and Brand Identity have effect on Organizational Affiliation and Brand Affiliation. 2. The strength of Organizational Identity and Brand Identity has effect on employee efficiency. While holding working emotion constant, the fitness of Organizational Identity and Brand Identity has an effect on employee efficiency. 3. While holding working emotion constant, the strength of Organizational Identity and Brand Identity has effect on in addition to employee efficiency. The fitness also has effect in addition to employee efficiency. Furthermore, the fitness of Organizational Identity is not a medium for working emotion but Brand Identity is a medium for working emotion. 4. Other than the test for the effect on corporate citizen, Organizational Identity has greater effect than Brand Identity on the other tests done on employee efficiency. This research reveals that when the organization communicates with its employees, it has to be more sensitive towards the effects of Brand Identity relating to sales activities on its employee. Having considered the organization and brand characteristics, it can adopt the concept of Affiliation in the areas of recruitment, organization culture and personnel development by allowing its employees to improve characters or values. This will help in improving work efficiency.

Most researches done in recent time on the topics of Branding and Organization focus on investigating Brand Identification and Organization Identification, with lesser work done on the relationship between Brand Identity, Organizational Identity and employee efficiency. While Organization Identity has been a widely studied and recognized topic in the west for the past 20 years, it remains an alien name to researcher on organizational behaviors and practitioners in Taiwan¡]®}Þ³§D¡A¾G§BÀ¥¡A2003¡^. Moreover, Brand Identity is the next new-found research topic where western researchers attitude towards it had mostly stop on preliminary narration which was largely supplemented from the experience of sales and marketing area, with little work done from academic investigation. This thesis will investigate Brand Identity and Organizational Identity impact on employee efficiency. Through my experience in the luxury goods industry, branding display a unique characteristic. Its employee displayed certain level of loyalty towards its brand and hoped to identify his character through its brand. This thesis focuses on the apparel industry, drawing data from a major Italian apparel brand, competing brands identified by that Major Italian apparel company and other brands listed on an apparel website www.ApparelSearch.com. The author approaches these 32 brands and collected data through questionnaires. A total of 417 valid questionnaires were returned and data was analyzed with an aim of drawing an opinion towards these hypothesizes: i) Strong Organizational Identity and Brand Identity will have positive effect on Organizational Identification and Brand Identification. ii) Strong Organizational Identity and Brand Identity will have positive effect on employee efficiency (including organization commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, work emotions, job performance, job satisfaction and turnover rate). iii) Strong Organizational Identification and Brand Identification will have positive effect on employee efficiency. iv) The existence of Organizational Identification and Brand Identification weaken the relationship between Organizational Identity, Brand Identity and Employee efficiency. When the relationships weaken to negligible, the relationship between Organizational Identification, Brand Identification and employee efficiency strengthen.

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