Today all around us, we hear words like recession, economic meltdown and global downturn. This is the time when every firm is trying to take steps with utmost care, so that it can overcome this precarious situation. As they say—“necessity is the mother of invention”—the prevailing business environment requires the manager to come out of the box, take calculated risks and innovate. This issue of The IUP Journal of Brand Management introduces new theoretical insights and concepts, which would inspire both the academicians and corporate managers to think beyond the obvious and pursue innovative strategies.

The first paper, “A Conceptual Study of Brand Communities”, by Harsh Arora presents the concept of brand communities and its positive and negative facets, emphasizing its management perspectives for the international brands. The author claims that brand community is an emerging concept and it has gained momentum among many multinational companies, like Harley-Davidson, Hummer, Apple Computers, Nikon, etc. Since this concept is at a nascent stage, many eminent scholars and researchers are studying its various dimensions. Though the concept is very popular internationally, in India a lot is yet to be done in creating awareness about the concept of brand communities.

The second paper, “Internal Branding: Aligning Human Capital Strategy with Brand Strategy”, by Bilal Mustafa Khan delves into the process of internal branding in organizations and crafts a strategy for application in organizations for superior performance. The author claims that internal branding is important because employee commitment and capabilities have a significant and measurable impact on the customer experience which, in turn, has a major impact on brand equity and shareholder value. Hence, for every firm—large or small—the management should take the steps to align their human capital strategy with the firm’s branding strategies.

The third paper, “Does Entry of Global Financial Services Brands Influence Commercial Borrowers in a Lesser Developed Economy?”, by Bhaskkar Sinha addresses the question—Is global financial service brand, a valuable intangible asset when it enters a local market? From the literature review the author does not seem to get any definite answer, hence he empirically examines the impact of the entry of global brands on the regional firms. The author’s empirical analysis shows that a globally recognized brand filters out the unknown regional consumers in the credit market. This results in the commercial borrowers suffering a decrease in credit access whenever a global brand in the financial sector becomes prominent.

The fourth paper, “The Brand Relationship Cycle: Incorporating Co-Branding into Brand Architecture”, by Per E Åsberg and Henrik Uggla presents and explains a model as to how can co-branding be integrated into the brand architecture and how it can be strategically leveraged from different sources in a system of brands. The authors claim that their model adopts a more balanced perspective than existing models that tend to make an artificial dichotomy between co-branding and brand architecture. Also, they believe that their model will enable assessing co-branding options in relation to brand architecture in the context of brand relationship cycle.

The case study, “Acer vs. Lenovo: Asian Brands’ Global Ambitions”, by Saradhi K Gonela deals with the rise of two relatively new players in the global personal computer map. The detailed discussion of the major strategies adopted by these two rival brands will enable the reader to understand the competitive dynamics, shaping the global PC industry which, in turn, will make the reader appreciate the significance of brand building in a highly commoditized industry.

- Nitin Gupta
Consulting Editor