Exploring the determinants of retail corporate branding

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Abstract

Corporate brands are an increasingly important element of organizational and marketing strategy. The globalization of the corporate world has recently seen a shift in marketing emphasis from product brands to corporate branding. corporate branding has emerged to be a key element of differentiation strategies and a vital source for competitive advantage. Among the many dimensions of brand management, retail branding has emerged to be of interest to many academics, though has had only limited contribution towards its conceptualisation. The rise of the retailer as a brand is one of the most important trends in retailing. Retail branding has been termed different to an extent from the concepts of product branding due to its multi-sensory nature of service marketing. This thesis draws on this notion of difference of retail branding and sets to explore the concept of corporate branding within the retailing context. the aim of this thesis is to bring the two concepts of corporate branding and retail branding together, and develop a more robust framework for understanding the phenomenon of retail corporate branding. A review of the literature on corporate branding shows a growing body of conceptual work, but also highlights that much of the recent work in the field has not focused on identifying key elements that would contribute particularly to the concept of retail corporate branding. there is, therefore, a clear need to understand how a retail corporate brand is defined, developed and communicated. Exploratory research is conducted using case study interviews to provide an in depth understanding of the phenomenon of retail corporate branding and what elements contribute towards it. This involved conducting in depth interviews with corporate managers of uk’s largest retail organizations, examining their corporate branding and addressing a set of research questions. The findings offer both new insight to academics, and a set of guiding principles and practices for managers engaged in managing corporate brands at an organizational level. The conclusion and central contribution of the study offer a conceptual model which identifies the constituents of retail corporate branding and indicates the interplay amongst these elements. the exploratory findings from this research make a conceptual contribution by identifying and adding new dimensions to the extant literature. Future research can take these findings as a starting point and investigate them further to broaden our understanding of an emerging research phenomenon.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)30-42
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Marketing at Retail
Volume1
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2011

Keywords

  • Retail brands
  • Corporate branding
  • Employee brands
  • Corporate identity

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