Darbe siekiama pateikti performuotą „Viči“ prekės ženklo vystymo strategijos pasiūlymą, pagal skirtingus kainų lygius. Teorinėje darbo dalyje remiantis moksline literatūra nagrinėjama prekės ženklo samprata ir funkcijos bei jo vertė, aiškinamasi nuosekli prekės ženklo vystymo schema ir jo komunikavo galimybės, apjungiant prekės ženklo architektūros modeliais ir jų pritaikomumu. Analitinėje baigiamojo darbo dalyje pristatoma pasirinktos „Vičiūnų“ įmonės veikla, jai priklausančio „Viči“ prekės ženklo, asortimento rinkoje, valdymo atvejis. Atliktas aprašomasis kokybinis (giluminis asmeninis interviu) ir aprašomasis kiekybinis (vartotojų apklausa) tyrimai. Pastebėta, kad didžiosios daugumos produktų žymėjimas, tuo pačiu „Viči“ prekės ženklu, nekuria produktų išskirtinumo, unikalumo, tad toks esamas strategijos pasirinkimas gali pradėti kenkti įmonės prestižui. Projektinėje darbo dalyje pateikiamas rekomenduotinas, moksline literatūra ir atliktais tyrimų rezultatais paremtas, „Viči“ prekės ženklo performavimo pasiūlymas bei galimos jo komunikavimo priemonės. Atlikto tyrimo rezultatai gali būti naudojami tolimesniems prekės ženklų strategijos ir jo architektūros tyrimams atlikti. Rekomenduotinas prekės ženklų performavimo pasiūlymas gali būti naudojamas „Vičiūnų“ įmonės vadovų, priimant sprendimus tolimesniam prekės ženklų vystymui, valdymui ar strateginiam perorganizavimui. / The thesis aims to provide a reshape proposal for “Viči” brand development strategy, according to the different price levels. The theoretical part of the work based on the scientific literature of the brand and the concept of function and its value, examines a consistent brand development scheme and the possibility of combining the brand architecture models and their applicability. The analytical part of the thesis presents selected “Vičiūnai” company activities ant the case of owned “Viči” brand range in market management. Performed descriptive qualitative (personal interviews) and descriptive quantitative (consumer survey) studies results are introduced. It is observed that the vast majority of product is marketed in the same “Viči” brand, because of this reason, brand don’t create exclusivity, uniqueness and it may begin to undermine the prestige of the company. In the project part, according to the theoretical framework and research results, the recommended are given. These recommendations are for “Viči” brand reshape proposal and its possible means of communication. The results of the survey can be used for further brand strategy and architecture research. Recommended brand reshape offer can be used by “Vičiūnai” managers in taking decisions for further brand development, management and strategic reorganization.

Ekonominė krizė atnešė sunkius laikus į įvairias rinkas, vartotojai perka tik produktus su ypatingais pasiūlymais ir nepastebi prekės ženklo ar jo žinutės vartotojams. Ekonominio nuosmukio metu, marketingo strategijos ir atitinkami veiksmai prekinio ženklo atžvilgiu turėtų būti stiprūs, pasiekti kiekvieną vartotoją, ypač tuos, kurių sumažėję pajamos. Darbe analizuojami veiksniai, turintys įtakos šokolado plytelių prekių ženklų pozicijoms rinkoje. Taip pat stengiamasi suprasti, kas skatina vartotojus pirkti atitinkamą prekės ženklą. Ką galima padaryti šiandien, kai prekės ženklai susiduria su ekonominiais, konkurenciniais iššūkiais. Pirmoje darbo dalyje – susisteminta, palyginta bei išanalizuota užsienio ir lietuvių šaltiniuose publikuojama medžiaga apie prekės ženklą, jo valdymo teorijas, modelius, strategijas, jų reikšmę. Antroje dalyje pateikiamas teorinis modelis ir pagrindžiamas tyrimo aktualumas bei apžvelgiamas temos ištyrimo lygis. Trečioje dalyje išanalizuoti atlikti trys tyrimai: įmonės stratego giluminis interviu, kurio metu aptariami strateginiai modelio aspektai, marketingo ir prekybos specialistų apklausa, kurios pagalba išsiaiškinama krizės poveikis korporaciniams ištekliams bei taktiniai sprendimai, norint pasiekti įmonės tikslus krizės metu. Taip pat šokolado plytelių vartotojų apklausa tam, kad nustatyti prekės ženklų strategijų adaptacijų pastebimumą bei nustatyti pačias patraukliausias vartotojui. / This master work examines brand strategy adaptation during economic crisis for chocolate tablets in Lithuania. Objective of master‘s work is to study theoretical studies of brand strategy adaptation during economic crisis and to check empirically hypotheses from theoretical part for chocolate tablets branch in Lithuania. The master works contains of three main parts. The first part of master work includes theoretical analysis of brand, brand management, brand strategy and brand strategy adaptations during economic crisis. The second part of the master work includes theoretical brand strategy adaptation model, methodical rules and empirical research, task, purposes and the suggestions of the research. The third part of the masters consists of research analysis of the qualitative study with corporate strategist and two quantitative data results, one with marketing and sales specialists, another with chocolate tablet users. Also includes result analysis of each study and model development after results.

During the past two decades something fundamental has happened to the relationship between manufacturers and distributor organisations in many European countries. Within a number of product markets, distributors have launched their own products, forcing manufacturing companies to compete with shelf space owners in addition to the "traditional" competition with other manufacturers. Theoretical and empirical findings regarding Distributor Own Brands (DOB’S) offer us a number of explanations of the differences between national markets and product categories in terms of DOB penetration. However, much of this literature is deterministic in its approach: DOB penetration is often seen as a direct consequence of different market conditions, rather than as the result of strategy processes involving a number of decision-makers and their perceptions of market-related and organisational factors.This study investigates how an array of organisational and market related factors are perceived by distributor organisations, and how this is expressed in the organisations’ own brand strategies. To investigate this research problem, a theoretical framework that explicitly takes distributor own brand strategy into consideration when examining proposed determinants of DOB penetration is presented. The empirical study is mainly based on interviews with decision-makers within the central organisations of the two largest distributors within Swedish fmcg distribution: the ICA federation and the consumer co-operation KF. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Employer branding is a strategic activity that has grown in popularity over the past two decades. Much progress has been made in investigating aspects of employer branding; however, many facets of the process, as it has been conceptualised in the research literature, remain empirically unexplored. The aim of this thesis is to get a deeper, more grounded understanding of employer branding based on an investigation of employer branding processes in practice. Four papers are presented, each providing a new perspective. In the first paper, industry experts??? perceptions of the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful employer brands are used to arrive at a typology of employer branding success. The typology is managerially relevant, providing a means by which firms may assess their employer branding success qualitatively and quantitatively (based on metrics commonly used in practice). Further, theoretical contributions are made by establishing employer branding as a context distinct from corporate and consumer branding, and by providing a basis for assessing variance between employer brands. In the second and third papers, the mechanisms that shape and perpetuate employer brands are explored. Individual (employee) and firm-related mechanisms drawn from the literature are empirically validated in the second paper using qualitative within-case analysis of four employer brands. The firms are from a broad range of industries and are characteristically successful (a pharmaceuticals and a financial services firm) and unsuccessful (a transport firm and a semi-government public utility). The case analysis results in the discovery of additional mechanisms relating to industry-level factors, not previously documented. These findings are built on in the third paper, where cross-case analysis of the same firms is used to establish a set of conditions that support or erode employer branding success. Importantly, theory perspectives outside the traditional domain of marketing (i.e., human resources, organisational behaviour and strategy) are shown to be critical for understanding the process in practice. A taxonomy of generic market segmentation types is used in the fourth paper to investigate the application of market segmentation to employer branding. Market segmentation is shown to provide a useful link between employer branding and broader strategic planning.

This doctoral research aims to investigate the reputation building process of companies and to examine the applicability of western-developed theories about the uses of corporate reputation in a non-western context. It is the first study that synthesises three theories (value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication) to examine the strategic consequences of the uses of corporate reputation. Corporate reputation is an attribute or a set of attributes ascribed to a firm and inferred from the firm’s past actions. It is the belief of market participants about a firm’s strategic character (Weigelt and Camerer, 1988). Also, corporate reputation is the public’s cumulative judgement of a firm over time (Roberts and Dowling, 2002). The review of theoretical literature indicates the uses of corporate reputation by business organizations can be theorized along six dominant paradigmatic perspectives: 1-public relations; 2-marketing; 3-management, 4-economic; 5-sociological; 6-finance and accounting. The uses of corporate reputation in these six paradigms are comprehensively discussed. The objective of this study is to establish the use of corporate reputation in the development of brand image strategy. A review of the uses of the concept of corporate reputation is discussed in detail in chapter 2. The review of the literature also identified a research gap by showing that scarce research has been conducted on how these three main functions (value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication) affect a company’s brand positioning strategy. The following research question thus is proposed: How do (Taiwanese pharmaceutical) companies use their corporate reputation to develop a brand image strategy? The research hypotheses based on three theories (value-based theory, resource-based theory and integrated marketing communication theory) appear in Chapter 3. The research question is constructed theoretically, and then a conceptual model, which begins with three antecedents of corporate reputation and simultaneously illustrates the outcomes of their use, are discussed. The construct of the uses of corporate reputation has three dimensions: value creation, strategic resources and corporate communication. Each of these three dimensions includes several items. The items were proposed based on the previous researchers’ summaries and the qualitative interview. The researcher will then depict the proposed research conceptual framework and a number of hypotheses that will be further investigated and tested. Then the quantative study was completed by providing the data analysis and the results were explained. A multi-stage procedure was involved in this research. First, data examination and screening to prepare for subsequent quantitative analyses and then the descriptive statistics were presented. Second, a reliability test was performed on measurement scales to ensure that they achieve an acceptable level of reliability for further analysis. The resulting solutions were then re-assessed using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, PLS (Partial Least Squares) was used to test the hypothesized relationships between the research constructs as postulated in the conceptual model, and to assess the overall goodness-of-fit between the proposed model and the collected data set. The researcher then discusses the validation of the measurement model and the research findings. The findings are then further discussed in terms of the contribution to marketing theory and relevance to marketing managers. Then the items of adapted scales were subjected to several rounds of adjustments and were finally found to possess acceptable measurement properties. Reliability and construct validity tests indicated that all scales satisfied widely accepted criteria such as the minimum reliability of 0.7. The results of scale purification will be discussed. And an evaluation of the research hypotheses and their significance are summarized, the findings of all hypotheses testing will be reviewed and compared with previous research. According to the research findings, the hypotheses that value creation, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation, brand differentiation and brand positioning are all accepted. The hypotheses that strategic resource, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation and brand differentiation are rejected. However, the hypothesis that strategic resource, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand positioning is accepted. The hypotheses that corporate communication, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand segmentation and brand differentiation are both accepted. The hypothesis that corporate communication, as one dimension of corporate reputation, has a positive impact on brand positioning is partially supported. Finally, the hypothesis that the (see in Table 5.18) moderating effect of price policy on corporate reputation has a positive impact on brand image strategy is partially but negatively supported. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the study of corporate reputation of firms in the Taiwanese pharmaceutical industry from the robustness of the qualitative and quantitative data collection.

The main objektive of this thesis is to analyze the market position of floorball brand Canadien and to suggest improvements for marketing conception of Charlies and Co. company (exclusive distributor of brand Canadien in the Czech Republic). The theoretical part analyses czech floorball market, divides it into different segments and presents the results of marketing research specialized on evaluation of the main floorball brands in the Czech Republic. The most important information about the market and the brand Canadien are summarized in Swot analysis. The end of the thesis is devoted to suggestion of appropriate future brand strategy and concrete steps for each part of the marketing mix.

An important concept that has undergone several transformational turns is brand management. A brand name is essential for business operation because all other factors that contribute to the success of businesses rotate around it. The value that accrues to global companies as a result of the proper management of a brand cannot be over emphasized. Toyota is one of the most successful brands in the global market, and the brand success goes beyond the automobile industry. Among the various auto companies in Ghana, Toyota has emerged as one of the big players. This thesis focuses on how companies can create value through proper management of their brands; using the case of Toyota Ghana limited. The work here was to find out the brand management strategies of Toyota and how these strategies have contributed to its success. Several strategies for managing brands were discussed in this work. The findings were that, successful brand management impacts positively on the company's market share.

Branding strategies is an important theme in business research. The purpose of the study was to explore how the growing industry of craft brewing are using branding strategies in order to strengthen their brand. The study was based on the theory of Kapferer’s brand identity prism and Keller’s Brand Equity model. The method used to gather data was interviews with several breweries spread across Sweden that were then analyzed using thematic data analysis. The findings show that craft brewer are using branding strategies to a large extent, however, not all the elements of the models are included in their strategy. The findings suggest that the reason for this is that the craft brewing industry is unique due to co-opetition and the nation’s strict regulations on marketing of alcohol. Organizations can use these findings to strengthen their brand as well as get a general understanding of how the industry is using branding strategies. This can be beneficial for newly established craft breweries or breweries that desire a stronger brand.

Many companies have exploited the power of brand equity in B2C markets as a source of competitive advantage. The trend in B2B, however, seems to be slightly different where many decision makers still believe that branding is not relevant to their business as it is to B2C. This paper investigates the role of brand equity in B2B businesses and shows how long-term investment in brand equity can change the rules of the game radically in favor of those B2B companies who have invested in their brand with a "holistic" approach which conform the overall strategy of the company. Caterpillar Inc. has been chosen as the case study and the role of its brand equity in its superior performance over its competitor, Komatsu Ltd, is investigated. The qualitative part of the research analyses the brand associations and the roles that these associations together with other brand elements play for Caterpillar and its customers. The quantitative part investigates two particular areas of recovery from market difficulties and efficiency in market communications and proves the role of higher brand equity in superior performance in recovery from market difficulties and marketing communications efficiency. The results are then tested further on the second case study which compares Intel to AMD. The results also open up new lines for further research on the subject both in depth and breadth where suggestions are made for generalizability of the research as well as determining the role of brand equity in companies' performances more precisely.

As scholarly institutions enter a new era of hyper-competition, seeking innovative ways to engage with student populations has become central to social media marketing efforts. Developing strategies and tactics to interact with existing student populations presents new challenges for marketing departments, as well as the stakeholders who are often asked to provide user-generated content. Strong ties among stakeholder relationships can enhance communication with effective outcomes; however, it is the weak ties that may have the most impact. This study draws on existing literature regarding Strength of Weak Ties Theory and faculty and student surveys in East Tennessee State University’s Clemmer College were conducted, to explore how ethos, pathos, logos, and Kairos can be leveraged in earned, owned, and shared media. This data is then used to inform future marketing campaigns that use professor-student engagement.