Successful Branding

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: In a highly competitive business world, differentiation is an essential key to success for companies. Branding has been a long discussed method to create such a necessary competitive advantage, however an effective and smart branding approach is necessary to ensure success, as the quote of Richard Branson shows. The American company Persona International, offering consulting tools and methodologies to their licensees, recognizes the importance of branding to stay ahead of competitors. Thus, it was decided to launch a branding initiative. The branding strategy Managing the Customer Experience by Smith and Wheeler was chosen by Persona, which is also sold in form of a tool designed by Shaun Smith, called żCustomer Experience Management CEMż. The idea behind this theory is to establish and reinforce a brand by offering the customer an unforgettable experience with the product or service of the company. Consequently, the brand promise is developed on basis of the customer expectations. As for Persona, two kinds of customers exist, one being their direct partners and the other being the clients of the partners, who are the end-users of the tools. It was decided that the branding initiative should be focused on the partners first, as they are mostly also aware of the needs and expectations of their clients. However, the expectations of some end-users were to be explored by surveys to round up the view on the customer expectations. Is the Customer Experience Management (CEM) theory an optimized approach to branding or can any issues be identified which could be improved? How could any highlighted shortcomings be overcome? The following work examines these questions closer and analyzes them by means of literature and a critical examination in order to find responses and solutions for the posed questions. The link to the business world is established through the empirical testing of the brand development phase. Hereby a part of the CEM theory is applied and expert interviews and end-user surveys are conducted. The aim of the critical evaluation of the branding strategy of Smith and Wheeler is to validate the branding approach and to find suggestions for possible improvements of the CEM theory and by testing one suggestion to facilitate the implementation of an optimized branding strategy for Persona. Having set the aim of this thesis, the second chapter gives an introduction to branding in order to equip the reader with a basic understanding of the matter. It is described how multi-facetted branding can be defined and some historical background of branding is given. Thereafter, numerous benefits of branding are illustrated and finally, additional specific branding terms used in the thesis are explained. Chapter 3 aims at a critical discussion of the Smith and Wheeler theory and to develop improvement suggestions of any shortcomings highlighted. Therefore different branding theories are introduced at first. The approaches differ in their focus during the brand development process and the brand implementation. The orientation can be on sources external of the organisation such as the customer or on internal sources such as the management and the employees. Smith and Wheeler represent such a rather external focus, Harris and De Chernatony propose an internal focus and Davis suggests a balanced internally and externally oriented approach. Subsequently, the three different approaches are compared concerning their views of brand development and the implementation process. On basis of the discussed theories, a critical examination of the Customer Experience Management theory is facilitated, supplemented by thoughts of the author. The empirical part in chapter 4 puts the CEM approach in brand development into practice to validate it. In order to do so, the brand promise for Persona International, an American consulting tools and methodologie...