Background: Recent years, M&As have increased sharply. Brand as one of the most precious assets has unavoidably been taken into consideration in these deals. Company can gain great benefit when handle acquired brand properly. Responding to rebranding issue, a clear designed rebranding strategy is considered a solution to deal with it, and brand architecture can be a useful tool to help adjusting the relationship between acquiring and acquired brand.  Aim: The purpose of this research is to explore how firms can strengthen its corporate brand after acquired a strong product brand through proper rebranding strategy and well designed brand architecture. Definitions: Brand: a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition. Rebranding: the creation of a new name, term, symbol, design or a combination of them for an established brand with the intention of developing a differentiated (new) position in the mind of stake holders and competitors. Brand architecture: the relationship among and between corporate, company (subsidiary), and product brands. Such relationships embrace products and services, or a mixture of the two across the hierarchy of brands. Results: There are possible options that companies can strength its corporate brand by acquired product brand, when company take brand integration strategy. Moreover, choosing suitable brand architecture during brand integration process is very important for a company

Background: During the last decade, retail businesses have realized the importance of creatinga strong brand to be able to differentiate in a fierce market. However, having a strong brand isno longer enough to survive in the long run and gain a large customers base. Especially in theretail and fashion industry where many products fulfill the same need for the customer, making it important to adapt to changes on the market and stand out in the crowd. This has lead to the wide variety of brands that can be found and an intensified competition. Therefore, the key factor for building a long-term relationship is through customer brand relationship. A literature review showed that the most important variables needed to build this relationship are brandexperience, brand satisfaction and brand trust. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how brand experience, brand satisfaction and brand trust effect brand loyalty in Växjö, Sweden. Hypotheses:H1: Brand experience has a positive effect on brand loyalty.H2: Brand satisfaction has a positive effect on brand loyalty.H3: Brand trust has a positive effect on brand loyalty. Method: This study was based on a deductive and quantitative research approach withempirical data conducted from 239 respondents to either accept or reject the stated hypotheses. Result and conclusion: According to the empirical data, the stated hypotheses were acceptedand imply that 41.2 percent of brand loyalty can be explained by brand satisfaction, brand trustand brand experience. However, for retail businesses within the fashion industry to ensurebrand loyalty from the customers, brand satisfaction is the main focus.

Given its ever-increasing popularity, marketers are keen on exploring the benefits of using Twitter to create branded relationships with consumers. Central to the idea of consumer-brand relationships is the concept of commitment, which requires investment of direct resources, such as time, on the part of the consumer. The present research examines the relationship between time spent per login on Twitter and consumer-brand relationships through the constructs of brand relationship quality and brand attachment. Brand relationship quality is considered using four measures: enrichment, satisfaction, harmony, and trustworthiness. The concept of brand attachment is divided into measures of brand-self connection and brand prominence. Despite marketers’ efforts to keep consumers on Twitter for longer periods of time, results from this study were inconclusive, showing signs of little to no correlation between time and the tested variables. However, due to the limitations of this study, future research is necessary to improve the statistical quality of the findings. / text

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2008.

Increased consumer awareness together with the importance of sustainable consumption is currently a highly debated topic. Frequently, the media reports scandals from strong international brands, revealing information regarding deficiencies linked to the brands social sustainability efforts. As a consequence, some consumers are starting to put higher demands on social sustainability by spreading condemnations. This is to prevent injustices such as child labour and modern slavery. The condemnation can be in the form of negative word-of- mouth or by boycotting the brand. This is something that can affect the brand strongly by damaging the consumers perception of the brand, which can be fatal to the consumer-brand relationship. However, this is something that seems to affect some brands to a greater extent than other brands This study explores the strength of Keller’s brand resonance level as a possible explanation to the above mentioned anomality. It shows that brands resonance operates as a countermeasure against negative information in relation to the brands indiscretions regarding social sustainability. Brand resonance can contradict the consumers ethical values and self-imagery, leaving the consumers perception of the brand unscathed. The results showed that brand resonance can become so strong that it can make the consumer abandon their ethical values, even for consumers whom consider themselves as highly ethical. This study has been conducted by a hypothetically deductive methodology. To determine the significance of the result it has been verified with a Z-test that applied a 5% significance level.

We are a few years into a paradigm shift where mobile Internet usage around the world is increasing fast. Smartphones have in Sweden become the device a substantial proportion of the population have, and companies have seen them as a new way to communicate with consumers. This thesis is a case study of four smartphone applications issued by companies in brand building purposes. The applications are King of the slope by Vattenfall, Körklar? by SalusAnsvar, McWrap Go&Get by McDonalds and Många Sträckor Små by Lantmännen. Empirical materials are gathered through semi-structured interviews with people involved in the creation of each application. Results are then analysed based on what initial goals each issuer had set for the application with the aim of obtain learnings valuable to future application issuers. Findings have shown that the mindset when creating these applications has generally been short-term. This contradicts the nature of a mobile application and its purpose of strengthening a company’s brand, which usually is a long-term process. We advocate a more long-term mindset and a consumer-oriented standpoint instead of product- oriented when creating mobile applications for branding purposes.

The transport sector, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), plays a pivotal role in mitigating climate change. However, the use of lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries in EVs raises sustainability concerns due to their limited lifespan, high costs, potential raw material shortages, and the environmental impact of raw material mining. These concerns necessitate the incorporation of sustainable development strategies into EV innovation plans. With a booming EV market, both luxury and non-luxury brands are being urged to adopt circular economy strategies, such as battery reuse and recycling, to enhance the brand-customer relationship. While the automotive industry has begun implementing these strategies, there is limited research on how they affect customer acceptance and the impact on luxury versus non-luxury brands. This thesis examines the existence of differences and influence of these circular economy strategies on the EV industry, with a particular focus on li-ion batteries, and analyzes their impact on luxury and non-luxury automotive EV brands.

<p><strong>Purpose</strong></p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the current challenges facedby Husqvarna Motorcycles in their brand building process, and todescribe ways in which applying the brand equity principles will enablean increase of the value of their brand.</p><p><strong>Background</strong></p><p>In the complex world of organizations and companies where thecompetitive position plays an important role in successful achievementsof the company, managers seek after building a sustainablecompetitive advantage. Building brand equity is an important focusfor a large company' improvement, since it raises interest of existingand new customers. The process of building brand equity takestime but through this process a company will have a stronger marketposition which creates brand value.</p><p><strong>Method</strong></p><p>In order to answer the purpose, the qualitative method with implementation of semi-structured interviews for collecting data wasused. The data was interpreted and then structured and analyzedusing theoretical framework.</p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p><p>During the research performed it was found out that the managersare facing several challenges in respect to building brand equity.Therefore, five components of building brand equity were implementedto draw the conclusions of how the managers could strengthentheir brand.</p>

Consumer marketing scholars keenly emphasize a proposed paradigm shift toward interactive relationships and lived brand experiences. Yet, little has been done to investigate the link between the two. Until now. This study is an attempt to measure the effects of lived brand experiences on consumers’ perceived relationship with a brand, through testing an academically established brand relationship quality model onto the concept of experiential event marketing. Susan Fournier’s (2000) brand relationship quality scale was chosen as the construct to be tested in the experiential event marketing context. It was through a theoretical argumentation hypothesized that the experiential event intervention would produce positive direct effects within the scale, but that these would decline with time. This was consequently tested through a repeated measurement study, set at an experiential food truck event hosted by the Swedish FMCG brand Santa Maria. Respondents were to rank their perceived brand relationship quality with the brand on three different occasions; directly before, directly after, and two weeks after being exposed to the experiential event. This way, not only the immediate effect, but also the effect over time, could be measured. It could be concluded that all but one constructs produced positive direct effects, but only half of them were significant. In all cases but one this effect declined significantly when being measured two weeks afterwards, and went in several cases back at approximately the same level as in the initial measurement. These findings have important implications for both academics and practitioners. Most notably, we argue that the link between lived brand experiences in form of typical FMCG experiential events and strengthened longer-term brand relationship quality can be invalidated.

Les marques représentent aujourd'hui incontestablement un élément important de la société de consommation. Le nombre de marques ne cesse d'augmenter, créant ainsi une confusion dans l'esprit des consommateurs, et représentant autant de difficultés et de défis pour les entreprises. Chaque année, les entreprises consacrent des sommes importantes à la gestion de leur marque afin quelle soit connue et présente dans l'esprit des consommateurs. Ceci nous a conduits à s'intéresser aux problématiques liées à la construction et à la conservation d'un fort capital-marque pour une firme. Le capital-marque est fortement influencé par des bénéfices symboliques ou intangibles. La marque n'est plus un objet. Les activités de marketing confèrent à la marque une personnalité, une âme. Grâce à cela, la marque devient un partenaire dans la relation avec les consommateurs. Cette thèse se focalise sur la recherche de l'effet de la personnalité de la marque et de la congruence de la personnalité marque-consommateur sur le capital-marque. Elle étudie les valeurs qu'un fort capital-marque peut apporter à la firme par la construction et le maintien d'une bonne relation avec les consommateurs. Toutes nos études expérimentales ont été mises en œuvre au Vietnam. Les résultats obtenus proposent des contributions théoriques afin de mieux comprendre la nature de la relation mutuelle entre le capital-marque et la relation interpersonnelle marque-consommateur. Ils apportent des contributions méthodologiques, relative à la création d'une échelle de mesure de la personnalité de la marque et d'une échelle de mesure du capital-marque dans le contexte vietnamien. Ils fournissent des apports managériaux importants aux entreprises qui veulent commercialiser leurs produits sur le marché vietnamien. / Nowadays, the brands undoubtly represent an important element of the consumer society. The number of brands does not stop increasing, thus creating a confusion in the spirit of the consumers, and resulting in many difficulties and challenges for the businesses. Each year, companies spend a large amount of money on managing their brand so that their brand are known and present in the spirit of the consumers. This drives us to be very concerned by the problems linked to the construction and to the conservation of a strong brand equity for a firm. The brand equity is strongly influenced by symbolic or intangible benefits. The brand is no longer an inanimate object. The marketing activities confer to the brand a personality, a soul. Thanks to that, the brand becomes a partner in its relation with the consumers. This thesis focuses on studying the effect of the brand personality and the congruence on the personality between brand and consumer on the brand equity. It studies the values concerning the construction and the maintenance of a good relation with the consumers that a strong brand equity can bring to the firm. All of experimental studies were implemented in Vietnam. The results bring theoretical contributions for a better understanding of the nature of the mutual relation between the brand equity and the interpersonal relationship between brand and consumer. They furnish methodological contributions by creating a measurement scale both for brand personality and brand equity in the Vietnamese context. They also provide important managerial implications for the companies that want to market their products on the Vietnamese market.