A global brand management roadmap

Abstract

The globalization of markets has put global brands (GBs) on the center stage. The evidence is everywhere: on the streets, in stores, in homes, in the media. Global brands are exerting their power and influence within various economic, cultural, and psychological domains. In line with this increased importance, many multinational corporations are allocating more attention and resources to fewer brands with global potential. As the economic clout of global brands increases, decisions about their development, measurement and strategic management become of paramount importance, raising new questions. How can global brands be created, managed, and marketed most efficiently and successfully? Are existing constructs, theories and methodologies capable of capturing the new realities of global brands or do we need to develop new frameworks and theories for academic and practitioner use? Our interest in global brands led to a conference in Istanbul on global branding organized at Koc University, Istanbul in June 2010. The objective was to advance knowledge about global brand management (GBM) by disseminating new research and by encouraging the evolution of new research themes. To this end, top level practitioners from leading multinational companies with global brand development and management responsibilities shared their experiences and concerns and also were exposed to some of the recent academic thinking. In the conference, based on evaluations by a panel of experts we accepted thirty submissions for presentation. After the conference, we published the call for papers for the IJRM Special Issue and encouraged further submissions. We received 28 papers and we used the high standard process in place at IJRM for evaluating regular submissions. We acted as Associate Editors and worked together with Marnik Dekimpe throughout the review process. All submissions underwent IJRM's standard double-blind review process. The result is this special section with 5 papers with an acceptance rate of 18%. We believe these papers provide interesting, valid and new results and extend our knowledge. This section introduces the five articles that appear in this special section on global brand management. The main objective is to