Brand building is a highly researched phenomenon when it comes to large enterprises in product oriented industries. However, when it comes to small firms and especially the service industry branding is a relatively new topic. This article explores the field of small service firms and their efforts in building their brand. The starting point rests on the creation of an organizational identity which is the values and beliefs that concurrently creates the foundation for the firm´s internal procedures. The purpose of this study is to get an understanding on how small service firms build their brand. Therefore, this article uses a qualitative approach with multiple cases with responding firms ranging from 2 to 12 employees. This was done in the effort of finding patterns on how brand building is conducted in small service firms. The findings shows that brand building is an important aspect that small service firms place great efforts on and that despite shortages in resources they build their brand by using alternative methods that are less resource intensive. The respondents argue that they have the organization as a base when creating their marketing activities. Important characteristics are consistency, honesty, creativity, integrity and heritage. Together they build a foundation for a unification of the firm that is presented through the brand. A unified organization is then used as a way of branding themselves towards new customers with the help of both reputation gained and word-of-mouth.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-5220 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Hägg, Gustav, Jonsson, Niklas |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET), Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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