Corporate Brand Management

Résumé ou Introduction

Interest in corporate brands and corporate brand management has risen significantly in recent years. Corporate brand management has moved to the key strategic agenda not only for owners/shareholders and top management but also for other stakeholders. The major factor behind that is the modern shareholder value movement. As a result, the main task of management is to maximize shareholder value and consequently, the majority of big companies have shifted to the adoption of shareholder value as the criterion for evaluating strategies and manager’s performance (Doyle, 2008, p. 22).

Therefore, the main objective of the dissertation is the conceptual and empirical analysis of the corporate brand management process. The study focuses on three industries: Higher Education Institutions (HEI), Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), and Automotive (AUTO). The reason behind the research of such a diverse group of industries is the intent not to show how a corporate brand works in a certain industry but rather to analyze the common factor: the corporate brand in the process of brand management.

In order to fulfill the above stated objective, the thesis will answer the following three research questions: 1) What is the role of the corporate brand in brand management?; 2) How important is the corporate brand for the major stakeholders: company and customers?; 3) What are the most important factors in corporate brand management?

In this thesis, mixed method research is used which, on the basis of a thorough literature review, combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. This is more than just the mixing of these approaches; it involves the combined use of the approaches. The research first collected qualitative data (19 interviews with senior managers involved in brand management), followed by quantitative data gathering (sample size: 134 respondents for HEI, 152 respondents for FMCG, and 156 respondents for AUTO).

Relying on the adopted theoretical background and taking into account the gaps in the extant research and the results from the literature review as well as qualitative research, a proposed theoretical model with six hypotheses for each industry (altogether 18 hypotheses) was created. The survey data was analyzed with the help of multiple regression. Furthermore, another outcome of the thesis was the proposal of an extended analytical framework for the brand management process for the corporate brand.