The future of many companies lies in brands.By using brands as a starting point in the formulation of company strategy, an important precondition for a new direction – brand orientation – is created. Established brands have a great potential for increasing the ability of companies to compete as well as generating their growth and profitability. Awareness of this potential will make brands important in the formulation of company strategies as a source for sustainable competitive advantage.
The purpose of this article is to illustrate the transition from product focus to brand orientation. Managing a brand-oriented company involves organizing and controlling the operations in such a way that an attractive added value can be created. The aim is that this should be accomplished with unchanged or increased total brand equity.
Today the division of responsibility within many companies is not clearly defined with regard to brand-related issues, for example, product, positioning and corporate identity. Moreover, decisions in this area are often made on a low organizational level, leading to lack of overview and coordination. Therefore, the brand issues should be coordinated and given higher priority and the strategic decisions be promoted to the company management or board level.
In this article a basic model of a brand oriented company is presented based on empirical research, carried out during the period 1990-1993. All citations in the article are from interviews conducted by the author. The purpose of the model is to give an overview of the value adding process through an analysis of the fundamental relationships between product, trademark, positioning, corporate name, corporate identity, target group and brand vision – the essence of the brand-oriented company’s strategy.
Source: Metro-AS
Author: Mats Urde
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