Corporate branding and corporate brand performance

Abstract

Corporate branding necessitates a different management approach. It requires greater emphasis on factors internal to the organisation, paying greater attention to the role of employees in the brand building process. This paper explores the implications of corporate branding for the management of internal brand resources. We describe a model for managing brands through narrowing the gap between a brand’s identity and its reputation and, building on this, identify three key factors that affect brand perceptions and brand performance. Finally, we review some of the mechanisms that may be used to facilitate greater congruence of brand perceptions within the brand team and communication of a brand’s identity to employees.

Understanding satisfying service encounters in retail banking - a dyadic perspective

“…Hence, when defining their brand identity, banking institutions can focus on aligning it with the benefits and values sought by their customers. Moreover, since employees are described in the marketing literature as 'brand's ambassadors' (Harris and De Chernatony, 2001), their behaviours determine the service experience and thus the values associated by customers with the company brand. Therefore, managers need to clearly communicate the brand's purpose to employees and help them to understand how their roles relate to it.…”

Finding sources of brand value: Developing a stakeholder model of brand equity

“…Likewise, the role of employees, especially in service companies, has long been recognised as an important corporate asset. 62 Likewise the increasing interest in corporate branding builds much of its argument on a human resource perspective of the firm, where external marketing communication is used to build up and maintain a consistent organisational identity. Is employee equity therefore not a relevant concept?…”

The Role Concept in Corporate Branding and Stakeholder Management Reconsidered: Are Stakeholder Groups Really Different?

“…Because corporate branding is increasingly considered an important independent fi eld of research, these contributions are gaining a wider perspective in the context of product branding ( Aaker, 2004 ;Keller and Aaker, 1997 ). Some authors even claim a generic shift of emphasis from line branding to corporate branding ( Balmer, 1995 ;Harris and de Chernatony, 2001 ). A psychological, perception-based interpretation enables us to defi ne a corporate brand as ' a distinctive image (or imaginary picture) of a corporation, tightly anchored in the psyche of the stakeholder, that infl uences the behavior of stakeholders ' ( Meffert and Bierwirth, 2005: 144 ).…”