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. 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. 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.

During centuries, places – nations, region and cities – have tried to make themselvesmore attractive, productive, lucrative and secure. This strive has accelerated due toglobalization and other external factors. Today there is fierce and global competitionbetween cities regarding promoting exports, convincing firms to invest as well asattracting tourists and inhabitants. The place brand, and the meaning of it, is key forsuccess. However, place branding is challenging. It includes the involvement of allstakeholders – possessing different agendas and target markets – and the coordination ofthose while simultaneously making sure that conflicting messages, harming the placebrand, are avoided. There is a disagreement among researchers whether to prefer asingle brand identity – contributing with a clear and trustworthy message, or if amultiple identity approach – enriching and diversifying the place brand, is desirable.The described conflicts above create the problem background on which this study isbased. Place branding is a relatively new but growing field of research. The topic ismultidisciplinary and we consider it advantageous to study place branding from astakeholder and coordination perspective. In this thesis, the Stakeholders are viewed asthe actors that engage in the act of Coordination to successfully undertake the process ofPlace Branding in order to develop a strong Place brand identity. Based on the purposeand research problems of this thesis, we aim to produce a better tool for analyzing brandidentity development. A theory based preliminary framework was developed with theintention of testing it on the case Place brand Umeå.For this qualitative research, a single case study design is used and nine keystakeholders are identified for the data gathering – using semi-structured interviews,secondary data and observations as data collection methods. The preliminary frameworkis used as an analytical tool and gives guidance to the research. For the analysis,categorization and pattern matching techniques are employed. The main finding of thisstudy is that the theoretical framework of place brand identity development holds andcan be used for the understanding of the process of identity development. The keystakeholders develop the brand identity through individual and common goals andactivities. Coordination can be managed through common activities within areas ofinterdependencies, hence the framework emphasizes the correct identification of keystakeholders, goals and activities. All components of the brand identity developmentprocess are affected by external factors. For the case of Place brand Umeå, theframework was slightly modified according to the empirical findings. We identifiedcoordination problems between the key stakeholders of Place brand Umeå and offeredrecommendations to manage the issues. The main contribution of this research is thetheory-based framework laying the foundation for a general theory on the topic, thuscontributing to theory. Our study also fills other research gaps by contributing with anunderstanding of the stakeholder’s role, prerequisites for coordination and by studyingplace branding in the context of a mid-size city. With regard to the empiricalcontribution, this study offers a range of insights for Umeå and the findings can beregarded as a starting point for brand managers working to develop the place brandidentity in other contexts.

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

Smell is one of the least used senses in advertising and/or marketing strategies. This study analyzes the conditions for the implementation of the odotype in the brand identity. A qualitative research approach and Grounded Theory method are using to develop an explanatory theory about the concept “odotype”. A semi-structured interview guide was designed according to the categories proposed in the research: odotype and brand identity. This research shows that odotype and sensorial marketing are different concepts; providing a definition for each concept. The Peruvian market is still at an early stage with respect to the aroma and odotype.

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.