June'20
The IUP Journal of Brand Management
Focus
and the developing economies too are showing an upward swing. In such a dynamic economic environment, the business managers around the world are focusing on formulating new sets of strategic initiatives which would enable them to fulfill their goals and objectives in the near future. Businesses around the world are looking forward to cooperation between developed and developing economies to make the most of this recent opportunity of economic recovery seen all around. Such cooperation would require understanding of diverse cultures and various cross-cultural phenomena initiated by them.
Consulting Editor
Effective Marketing of Mobile Telecom Services Through Brand Personality: Empirical Evidence from Greece
The paper explores the relationship between brand personality and brand image in mobile telecom branded offerings. Further, it explores brand image as an antecedent of both perceived quality and consumer behavior. A survey was conducted using the "positivism" approach, in which 318 consumers participated through a face-to-face handing over. Sincerity, competence and sophistication proved to be the dominant precursors of brand image. On the other hand, brand image suggests a basic aspect of perceived quality in intangible telecom branded offerings. Moreover, customer satisfaction concerns a mediating factor impacting the relationship between perceived quality and brand attachment. Thus, perceived quality does not guarantee brand attachment, and customer satisfaction is the key to achieve that. Hence, fair pricing, low service access costs and consistent Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) are necessary tactics to build brand attachment. The latter, along with customer inertia, lead to favorable Word-of-Mouth (WoM) communication and customer loyalty. The paper provides telecom brand managers with valuable knowhow in order to design "out-of-the-box" strategies and tactics.
Chow Tai Fook: A Chinese Jewelry Giant Changing Tactics
The case talks about the change in tactics adopted by the world's largest publicly traded jewelry chain, the China-based Chow Tai Fook Jewelry Group Limited (CTF), in response to the changing economic conditions in China. The case starts out by describing CTF's early days in Hong Kong and the business practices it followed to revolutionize the jewelry industry there. It then documents CTF's meteoric rise in China, which the company entered in the days following the economic boom in the country in the 1990s. Later, the case describes in detail the strategy undertaken by CTF to combat the poor economic scenario in China in the 2010s. The company not only changed its retail strategy but also adopted a multi-brand strategy to serve newer customer segments. The case then describes how CTF leveraged technology to improve its offerings. It also takes a look at the competition faced by CTF and the measures it was taking to emerge as a global jewelry brand.
Miliraa - Food from the Roots of Our Culture
The objective of the paper is to prepare a strategic brand development plan for a hypothetical brand proposed to be marketed in the real-life Indian context. The scope of work includes presenting the relevance and context for getting into the proposed business and explaining the brand concept, the proposed brand's identity elements (i.e., its name, logo, etc.), brand positioning, marketing programs, plans for the future including possible brand extensions and plans for wider geographical coverage and distribution. The paper addresses these aspects for a hypothetical brand 'Miliraa', which is proposed as a brand that provides food based on traditional and forgotten Indian recipes, as a service to restaurants.