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.

The brand-related theories had been valued in recent year. Brand position has been viewed as the core of brand identity, and at the meantime of establishing brands of Taiwan corporations who neglected the importance of brand position. This thesis focused on Taiwan¡¦s mobile service industry and tried to analyze and discuss the ways of establishing brand position of TransAsia Telecommunications Inc. This thesis made the conclusions as followed: (1) Discovering the variable could be differentiated at brand analysis. (2) Choosing and prompting the target-position, which could differentiate itself from other brands¡¦. (3) Communicating the consistent tone of the brand and drawing the attention through being the subject of a talk. (4) The strategic turn of brand position after been merged. Through the discoveries of this thesis, hope it could give some suggestions of building the brand position for practice. Keywords: Brand Position, Brand Identity, TransAsia Telecommunications Inc.

<p>Having studied the literature on the issue of corporate brand identity our group found different points of view towards it and its components. The major ideas discussed in all the sources studied are the corporate brand identity, corporate brand personality, corporate brand reputation and corporate brand image. But the interconnections of those and the possible ways to influence them differ from source to source. As a result, our group managed to create a cumulative model of the structure of corporate brand identity and the factors that influence it as a whole and its components separately, basing on the idea of logical clearness and overall simplicity.</p><p>After that our intention was to test the relevance of our model and we needed an example of a successful company with a strong corporate brand that has recently started dealing with the issues of maintaining and strengthening its corporate brand identity, due to the fact that we assumed the information to be rather “fresh” and interesting to analyze. Scania turned out to be a perfect example.</p><p>Taking advantage of the qualitative research method, accompanied by the case study approach, we have conducted interviews with the Scania officials, using a semi-structured type of interviews in order to get a broader and more detailed view of the situation. As a result of the analysis of the data gathered we tested our theoretical model and brought up a real-life model of Scania’s corporate brand identity and the factors influencing it, which can be generalized for any single-branded corporation. Our model proved to be correct at its core with only a few differences from the Scania model.</p>

The concept of university branding has received considerable attention over the past decade, with numerous studies being conducted on university image, reputation and identity. However, few research studies have focused exclusively on the brand personality construct in relation to universities. This study develops a theoretical framework for the measurement and evaluation of university brand personality. Forty American universities were evaluated based on a set of personality traits by 209 college students and alumni from the United States. Five dimensions of university brand personality were observed: Sincerity, Prestige, Excitement, Distinctiveness and Ruggedness. This framework serves as a research tool to investigate brand personality characteristics, and facilitates the comparison of different institutions on a uniform scale. Numerous applications exist in the areas of brand strategy, positioning and crisis management. / text

Although extensive academic research (Czellar, 2004; Nandan, 2004; Keller&Hoeffer, 2003; Aaker, 2004; Kaputa, 2006; Griffen, 2002) has explored consumer perceptions, little research has assessed the impact of brand identity strategies on consumer perceptions, which was the purpose of this dissertation. Kotler and Keller (2006:275) assert the importance of understanding how the brand is perceived by consumers and what impact a brand identity strategy has on consumer perceptions. These perceptions can be described as a brand image which refers to a brand’s subjective or perceived attributes in relation to other brands. This perceived image of the brand does not belong to the product but is the property of the consumer’s mental perceptions and in some instances can differ widely from a brand’s true physical characteristics. By determining the consumer perceptions of a brand, this dissertation investigated the impact of a brand identity strategy on consumer perceptions. The research problem then exists in the possibility of differences between the perceptions of the brand, namely the brand image (reality) and the desired identity that the company sets out to establish. The literature review demonstrated that it is not only the brand identity strategy (which the organisation creates), but also the consumer’s perceived image of the product (the state of the consumer’s mental perceptions), that has impact on the way the brand is perceived. The closer the perceived image of the brand is to the organisation’s aspired brand identity, the less the differences and more successful the brand identity strategy. These differences constituted the research problem. The primary research objective was to determine the impact of the brand identity strategy of a consumer product on consumer perceptions. The following secondary research objectives were identified: • to determine what desired perceptions the company wanted to establish with its current brand identity strategy, • to assess whether differences existed between the brand image, (the perceptions in the minds of the consumers), and the brand identity strategy (the way the brand managers want the consumers to think and feel about the brand). Taking the purpose of the study and the objectives into account, a qualitative research was conducted, which was exploratory in nature. Text data analysis was the method used to analyse the content and context of the data collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire. The data was collected in two phases. In the initial part of the study, focus groups were conducted among members of the target market to gain an initial understanding of consumer perceptions of the brand. The focus groups assisted the author in developing questions that were used in the open-ended questionnaire in the second phase. In this way, relevant and meaningful data was retrieved ensuring that the research objectives were met. A comparison study was conducted by means of the focus groups to assess whether the responses were of similar nature compared with the responses derived from the questionnaire. It was concluded that a brand identity strategy facilitates the shaping of a mental image by consumers and thereby leveraging it to gain a competitive advantage. According to Dempsey (2004:32), it begins with understanding what the brand means to the consumers (brand image) and what the brand sets out to convey (brand identity) to the consumer. Many organisations know how they want to be viewed and what mental space they want to capture, but find it challenging to maintain a consistent brand identity at all brand contact points. The differences between the brand identity strategy and the consumer perceptions clearly revealed a significant impact of the brand identity strategy on consumer perceptions. Therefore, it can be concluded that the brand identity strategy impacts on consumer perceptions for the specific brand in the study with some brand identity elements having a stronger influence on forming perception than others. Once there was an understanding of how the brand is perceived by target consumers and how the brand is planned to be perceived in the future, the author identified the possible differences that needed to be bridged between the two and offered recommendations and key shifts required to move from the current perceptions to the ideal brand identity. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Marketing Management / MCom / Unrestricted

Branding and the management of brands has become a highly prioritized aspect for com-panies to maintain lasting competitive advantage and to provide meaning to consumption. Therefore companies have adopted an inside-out approach in order to manage their brand. The challenge with an inside-out approach is to align the internal brand identity,what brands communicate, with the external brand image, what consumers perceive. Therefore two questions are crucial to answer; how does the brand want to be perceived and how is the brand actually perceived? There is a risk that gaps occur in the communication of the brand, and these gaps are crucial to monitor and prevent for effective brand management. This paper proposes a method on how to measure and align brand identity and brand im-age, based on existing theories and models regarding brand management. The method is evaluated through a case study, where the difference between Happy Plugs’ brand identity and brand image is analyzed. The method was designed using Kapferer’s Brand Pyramid and Brand Identity Prism. Both qualitative and quantitative data is used to examine how wide the gap between Happy Plugs’ brand identity and brand image is. The Happy Plugs brand is solely used as a tool to apply the designed method and evaluate the validity of it. The findings show that a gap in brand identity and brand image does occur, at higher levels of the brand pyramid, or brand identity. The results from the case study indicate that the designed model is an effective tool in identifying and measuring possible gaps, and is a use-ful approach for companies who wish to align their brand identity with brand image.

BACKGROUND A great interest of researchers has been attracted to the phenomenon of country-of-origin (Andéhn et al., 2016). It is argued that companies could increase competitiveness in the market by implementing a COO into the company's branding strategy (Guercini &amp; Ranfagni, 2013). However, prior research on COO has been focused mainly on the investigation of customer perspective, while the producer's (e.g.firm) perspective was not taken into account (Brodie &amp; Benson-Rea, 2016). Thus, the understanding of COO branding has to be expanded. Furthermore, the use of a COO can not be managed as independent marketing activity (Bhaskaran &amp; Sukumaran, 2007) and has to be rationally implemented into the brand (Brodie &amp; Benson-Rea, 2016). This creates a gap in the knowledge of how firms manage the use of a COO and how the COO is implemented into the company's brand identity. This gap can be addressed by evaluating the producer's perspective and the COO's impact on the brand identity and branding strategies. PURPOSE The aim of this study is to extend the understanding of the impact of the COO on the brand identity of Swedish SMEs. Additionally, to investigate the use of Sweden in branding. METHOD To fulfill the purpose of the study, exploratory qualitative research is executed, employing a multiple-case study design where nine cases were selected to develop an in-depth understanding of the research topic. CONCLUSION Based on the research, the COO has a strong impact on the brand identity of Swedish SMEs. As it can be seen from the empirical data, the brand identity of Swedish SMEs is impacted by the COO in terms of personality, physique, and culture dimensions on the key characteristics of the origin. Additionally, the COO is implemented into the Swedish SMEs branding through nine strategies.

<p>Aldrig förr har den svenska konsumenten varit så hälso- och miljömedveten. Ett resultat av detta är att fler mervärdesmärkningar har dykt upp på våra butikshyllor. En av de mest kända mervärdesmärkningarna inom ekologiskt producerade varor är i dagsläget KRAV-märkningen.</p><p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om Uppsala Universitets företagsekonomistudenters attityder gentemot KRAV-märkta produkter stämmer överens med den bild som KRAV vill förmedla. Studenterna har fått ange vilka produktattribut de anser vara av störst vikt vid livsmedelsinköp, vilka sedan har jämförts med hur väl de anser att KRAV uppfyller dessa. Genom detta har vi kunnat urskilja en generell attityd hos studenterna gentemot KRAV-märkta produkter.</p><p>Resultatet visar på att studenterna har en positiv attityd gentemot KRAV-märkta varor. Dock visar undersökningen på att den bild som KRAV vill förmedla inte helt överensstämmer med den bild som studenterna har om varumärket. Den traditionella bilden av KRAV, där samhälls- och miljöansvar står i fokus, anser studenterna att KRAV uppfyller mycket väl. KRAV har däremot inte lyckats med att förmedla att KRAV-märkta produkter numera även står för god hälsa och smak. Vidare kan vi urskilja en tendens mot att studenterna inte värdesätter KRAV:s traditionella värderingar särskilt högt. Samhällsansvar och miljöansvar är inte någon prioritet vid studenternas val av livsmedel.</p><p>Slutsatsen vi kan dra av detta är att om KRAV vill nå ut till studenterna som målgrupp bör de lägga större betoning på de produktrelaterade attributen som studenterna anser vara av störst vikt (smak, nyttigt, kvalité, tillgänglighet). KRAV bör fortsätta sitt arbete med att ladda varumärket med hälsoargument och framhäva de attribut som studenterna värdesätter hög</p>

This research recommends a new approach to brand strategy for Korean professional football teams, focusing on the relationships between team brand identity as the basic element of sports team branding, team brand loyalty as the most desirable goal, and identification between fans and teams as the mediator between identity and loyalty. Nowadays, professional football teams are no longer merely sporting organisations, but organisational brands with multi-million pound revenues. It is vital for football teams to build a relevant brand strategy based on the relationship with their fans. Existing research on sports branding suggests that fans who are deeply identified with a specific team tend to possess extremely high loyalty, holding a particular team as central to their identity. Therefore, managing the relationships between team brand identity, fan-team identification, and team brand loyalty can be the most powerful brand strategy for football teams, particularly for Korean football teams that do not retain strong fan bases and yet desire to gain consumers who identify with them. Through two empirical studies and case study analysis this research investigated a construct of team brand identity in the professional football context. Consumers’ associations with football teams were examined and 13 elements of a team brand identity scale were developed. It was revealed that team brand identity is composed of four identity dimensions which are experience, visual, non-product, and product. Case studies, with a further literature review of team brand identity, clarified and confirmed the first study findings. The final empirical study tested and confirmed the correlated and serial relationships, and provided the basis for the new theoretical model on which to build the brand strategy.