Unique Brand Identity Research Articles

Branding a new university: The development of Atlantic Technological University's brand identity

This paper analyses how Atlantic Technological University (ATU) successfully created a unique brand identity for this newly established university located in the west and north-west of Ireland. The opportunities and challenges presented by such a large task are reviewed. Developing a new higher education brand uniting three education institutes, each with over 50 years of history, required a team effort and considerable communication and engagement skills to ensure that all stakeholders supported the project. A strategic partnership between three Institutes of Technology, the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Sligo and Letterkenny Institute of Technology, was formed in 2012 and was known as the Connacht-Ulster Alliance (CUA). The goal of the CUA was to establish a university of size, scale and impact for its region, which would make a substantial contribution to higher education nationally and internationally. Developing a brand for the new university involved dedicated and motivated internal teams supported by an external branding consultancy company. This case study outlines the work of the team responsible for developing the brand identity, along with the lessons learned which ultimately resulted in a successful launch of a brand for a new university — ATU. The approaches and considerations for branding a new institution may also apply to rebranding an existing entity.

Subversion and PersistenceAnalysis of Balenciaga's Innovation Strategy

Balenciaga is a world-renowned luxury brand, and its unique design style and profound historical background make its position in fashion unshakable. However, like all innovators, Balenciagas design style is not always understood and accepted by people. This paper will discuss how Balenciaga maintains its influence in the world fashion through subversive innovation and continuous innovation, and analyze peoples different reactions to its innovative design. The author will deeply analyze and understand the history, design philosophy and specific works of Balenciaga. At the same time, we will combine personal observation and experience to evaluate its innovative way and influence. Balenciagas innovation is mainly manifested in subversive innovation and continuous innovation. It redefines fashion by breaking the tradition, while maintaining its unique brand identity and design concept. Although some of Balenciagas designs may be regarded as ugly in the eyes of the public, it is the embodiment of its innovative spirit and the source of its lasting influence in the fashion world.

The impact of brand love on brand loyalty: the moderating role of self-esteem, and social influences

Purpose The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it aims to clarify the moderating role of self-esteem (SE) and susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) in the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty. Second, the study proposes modeling the mediation role of brand love and outlining how SE and SNI affect the consumer-brand relationship. Finally, the study explores the impact of brand love on brand loyalty: the moderating role of self-esteem and social influences, as the literature regarding this is still lacking. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via an online survey, which yielded 218 responses. Structural equation modeling was used to predict the research model. Findings The findings indicate that both SE and SNI mediate the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty. Additionally, consumers love the focal brands positively relates to SE and SNI. In return, SE and SNI lead to brand loyalty. The tight relationship of SE and SNI affects the connection between brand love and brand loyalty. Research limitations/implications The data has been collected in Vietnam, which creates a limitation regarding the study’s cross-cultural nature and the economic context. Thus, the study should be conducted in different cultures and economies (both developing and developed countries) to enhance the generalizability in consumer-brand relationships. Practical implications Brand managers should conduct more advertising in brand communities to enhance the influence of SNI and emphasize unique features of the brands, to attract consumers through the overlap of SE. Social implications The findings can contribute to enhancing unique brand identity and self-motivation will increase consumer loyalty, increasing the revenue of a specific brand. Moreover, as acceptable peers contribute to making purchase decisions, boosting the brand community will maintain current consumers and attract additional potential consumers from the current consumer relationships. Originality/value This study contributes to consumer psychology by indicating both SNI and SE as the mediators in the relationship between brand love and brand loyalty and how the consumer-brand relationship can be enabled.

Using transit advertising to improve public engagement with social issues

Out-of-home advertising has the potential to facilitate informal consumer learning about important societal issues. To test this idea, the authors developed an in-market, 14-month transit advertising campaign to educate commuters about climate change and influence attitudes and beliefs on the issue. A unique brand identity, fully functioning website, Facebook page, and Twitter account were created to increase the legitimacy of the campaign. Study results find that the campaign was successful in changing climate change beliefs, increasing optimism about climate change mitigation, and driving commuters to the website where additional information about climate change could be found. Beyond increasing our understanding of social advertising, the study also broadens our understanding of how out-of-home advertising works to increase brand and ad recognition and influence behavior over time and in a naturalistic environment. Ad design and execution strategies are offered to improve the persuasive impact of both out-of-home advertising and informal education through social advertising campaigns.

Becoming the King’s Men – the Semiotic Molecule of Luxury Brand Heritage

In a spontaneous comparison, one might come to the conclusion that Savile Row shops sell real luxury, while on New Bond Street they simply sell expensive products. This conclusion includes reasons that can be understood by analyzing a typical traditional bespoke tailor shop with semiotic approaches. In our analysis, we applied Charles Peirce’s semiotic trichotomies to classify the signs of brand heritage, focusing on presented brand identities that appear in a structured construct that we call the molecule of the brand. Hence, the analysis leads to conclusions regarding what kind of signs produce a unique brand identity and how they refer to this identity concretely. Our findings offer a precise determination and evaluation of a luxury brand’s heritage management and presentation as well as a new understanding of heritage branding, the identity of brands, and the context in which they are created.

The Development of an i-Branding Software for Asian Local Products

As Asian local research prototypes which are now stepping into a new dimension of globalization, a structural benchmarking standard needs to be produced to show its real capabilities to formulate a unique brand identity, which is reputably regarded worldwide. Some of the issues faced among scientists are insufficient knowledge about branding, lack of awareness about branding, incompetencies of brand quality, and vague in managing brand structure concerning to commercialize their patterns in the marketplace. The solution of this research project will offer to develop i-branding software as proof of concept by emphasizing brand positioning for local Asian products in the context of Internet branding. This research project will reveal the status and standard of Asian research brands and prototypes as well as how we can project and sustain glocal reputation by improving Asian business in a highly competitive business environment as this software is developed by emphasizing on tangible values such as logo, name dan color and also intangible benefits such as emotion, chic, and moral. It is also considered Asian cultural diversity in understanding Asian market conditions; it can be differentiated from other branding software in the existing market. The focal point of this project is bridging product branding to corporate branding. It is among the first branding software will be developed to cater to the Asian market.

Building a unique brand identity: measuring the relative ownership potential of brand identity element types

A strong brand identity must comprise unique identity elements such as logos, colours or characters that distinguish it from competitors and facilitate recognition and purchase. A critical marketing function is therefore deciding which elements to invest in, to protect and build this identity. Within this paper, a new measure, Competitive Intensity, is proposed as a means to critically evaluate brand identity elements on their uniqueness potential. Results of testing 1281 in-market elements from 13 consumer packaged goods categories in 19 countries show that character, logo and logotypes have the greatest potential for unique brand ownership. Colour, however, is more challenging to develop as a unique brand identifier due to high levels of competitive sharing. Competitive intensity varies for elements of the same type, suggesting that practitioner execution plays a critical role in successful ownership. Being the first empirical comparison of eight element types, this paper provides comprehensive guidance to practitioner decision-making.

Circulation of loyalty: Relationships between mobile instant messenger and offline character emoticon store

Mobile instant messenger (mIM) service providers are extending their online services to the offline platform. Asia's largest mIM service providers, LINE and Kakao, are brining life to its signature characters such that they appear not only on the text screen but also on offline character flagship stores. This study investigates mIM users' motives in visiting the store and identifies the role of mIM characters in facilitating users' loyalty toward the mIM service provider. To comprehensively understand users' motivations in visiting the offline flagship store, the study conducted a focus group interview and used the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to identify seven key motivations. The empirical findings are drawn from 332 Korean respondents that use the mIM service and have experience in visiting the character flagship store. The study finds that users who actively use mIM services and emoticons are likely to visit the store due to the identified factors. A virtuous cycle of loyalty from online to the offline platform, and vice versa was also found. Findings of this study confirm that mIM character flagship stores are a strategic way for mIM service providers to communicate with users and create their unique brand identity.

Corporate brand identity measurement - an application to the services sector

Authors commonly agree that the identity of a brand is internally connected with staff and externally connected with the consumers and the rest of the stakeholders. Brand management studies are much focused on the external part, mainly on consumers. This research follows a different agenda exploring the brand identity dimensions by measuring the brand identity prism developed by Kapferer, both internally and externally. The measurement of brand identity is scarce in brand management literature. A reliable, valid and unique brand identity scale that empirically establishes the construct's dimensionality has yet to be developed in a highly consumer involvement context. This paper reports the findings of a research conducted at 235 engineering higher education students. Data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis. Findings reveal that the brand identity prism is moderated by brand culture. This research also gave important insights regarding the theory proposed by Kapferer regarding the external brand identity.

Brand names and unconventional spelling

This article explores the creative use of unconventional spelling in brand names. Using insights from the indexical approach to the linguistic construction of identity, it demonstrates how unconventional spelling produces a myriad of effects and meanings, which in turn help construct brand identities. First, it identifies the various strategies of unconventional spelling, investigates their potential to convey distinctiveness, and examines other effects and meanings that they produce. It then presents a case study to further illustrate how unconventional spelling works with other marketing materials to create a unique brand identity. Unconventional spelling, because of its polarizing nature, can be a risky resource for constructing brand identities. Not only does this study contribute to an under-researched area in the sociolinguistics of orthography, but it also broadens the range of identities and linguistic resources examined in the sociolinguistic investigation of identity construction.

A behavioural approach to university branding: An exploratory study

Branding of universities is attracting increasing attention, as educational organisations strive to succeed in a more competitive environment. Though many universities are now adopting branding, which is operationalised as conscious development and management of the university's identity, there is little literature and research on university brands, and how they can be created and managed. This contribution explores the subject of university branding as a means of generating sustainable competitive advantage. This article concludes that success in a competitive environment will depend on effective brand differentiation based on the identification, internalisation, delivery and communication of unique brand identity that appeals to both internal and external stakeholders. Based on in-depth interviews conducted among industry experts and university administrators in Ghana, a conceptual framework is proposed for university branding, through behavioural management.

Are Luxury Brands a Distinct Brand Category: A Preliminary Investigation

This exploratory literature review focuses on the relationship between luxury brands and brands in general. It posits that they appeal to a specific type of consumer, the luxury consumer, and are distinguished by their management system which gives them the unique brand identity translated in enhanced brand value in relation to common brands. Finally, the paper identifies the major threats to luxury branding strategy and the problems of counterfeiting.

파티웨어 디자인 개발을 위한 국내 여성 캐릭터 캐주얼 브랜드 디자인 분석

Many efforts to develop the domestic fashion industry have continued under the influence of a rapidly changing fashion industry environment. The fashion industry has emerged as a future growth industry leading lifestyle and as a core industry for the culture biz. Since the 2000's the markets that combined party and fashion wear as a new cultural trend has grown and an in-depth study of design development for party wear is required. This study presents basic materials for design development for the future domestic woman character casual brand prior to the design development by analyzing design characteristics of domestic female character casual brands. In the research methods, nine brands were selected based on the discussion of ten fashion specialists and then the brand concept, target, configuration of items, price, and design characteristics were analyzed. The following conclusions were drawn from this study. First, each brand concentrated the main focus on establishing a clear and unique brand identity that meets the needs of consumers to enhance competitiveness in the woman's dress market. To enhance competitiveness, many character casual brands targeting women aged 20's and 30's (including BEART) held party wear goods exhibitions as the market for party wear has increased significantly. Second, according to study results of the selected nine brand designs, it was found that the style characteristic of each brand varies depending on concept. However, all nine brand designs developed various styles such as feminine and cute style making use of laces, ruffles, A line silhouette, colorful motifs, and a stylish style that used layers with various materials along with unique decorations based on romantic emotions. Third, seven hundred and thirty eight pictures of nine brands were analyzed by items without identifying brands. According to the result of the analysis, the percentage of items used by brands was as follows: a one-piece dress was 34.5%, jacket 25.7%, skirt and pants 15.5%, blouse and shirt 13.6%, and tops 10.6%. The result showed that one-piece dresses accounted for the highest percentage. Frill accounted for 16.6%, the highest percentage followed by ribbons at 16% in regards to detail and trimming.

Dubai's brand assessment success and failure in brand management – Part 1

The purpose of this article is to analyze Dubai's branding management at a macro level. This article aims to brand Dubai as a destination with certain demographic groups. Dubai decision makers establish the city in the upper echelon of international markets including tourism, real estate, business hospitality and learning centers. This study reveals that instead of replicating what other competitive destinations have already achieved, Dubai offers innovative products and services to investors and tourists alike: the indoor ‘skiing in the desert’ facility, the luxury ‘seven star’ hotel on the Dubai coastline, the world's largest man-made island and the world's tallest building are only a few examples of what the city has to offer. Dubai has pursued a well-defined and unique brand identity through a clear strategy including unique value proposition, attraction and brand promise. Developing Dubai's brand image is a key factor in distinguishing it in the highly competitive global environment. Dubai's strategic branding approach provides a rare case that demonstrates the importance of the brand identity and equity on the global stage. Dubai earned itself a track record for making every project a success, regardless of its ambitious conception. Dubai's 13 per cent GDP growth every year since 2000, which is higher than the GDPs of both India and China, proves the realization of the city's successful branding process. This market analysis sheds light on Dubai's competency: brand development that has led to its admired position in the world.

Internal indentity-based brand management : How to consistently deliver the brand promise at the point of sale?

In many well developed economies the number of brands as well as their perceived homogeneity is increas­ing for more than two decades. As a result, more and more brands appear interchangeable to their cus­tomers. To cope with this challenge it is necessary to develop a unique brand identity and to assure that this is being consistently delivered at all brand touch points. The latter requires that everyone who acts as a brand representative behaves according to the brand identity. Common understanding of and commit­ment to the brand are necessary prerequisites. A first model for internal identity-based brand manage­ment intended to fulfil these prerequisites was recently developed at the chair for innovative brand man­agement. The model is explicitly targeted at employees. This paper draws attention to yet another group of stakeholders which influences the brand image sub­stantially: the brands distributors. Empirical research has shown that particularly those internal refer­ence groups1 that have intensive interaction with the customers are able to influence the brand image. The purpose of this article is to assess whether the internal brand management model developed for employ­ees applies to distributors and to extend the existing model for the distributor context if necessary.

The ‘HUGO BOSS’ connection: Achieving global brand consistency across countries

In the quest for globalisation, luxury brands are affected by brand image inconsistencies across countries. With greater regularity of consumer travel and increasing international media, consumers expect brands to deliver the same values on a worldwide basis. In other words, consumers are not disposed to tolerate inconsistencies in terms of the core concept of the brand. Hence, brand image inconsistencies harm the overall brand reputation and need to be corrected. This case study uses HUGO BOSS, one of the leading international fashion groups, as an exemplar in order to provide a simple and exploratory investigation of a brand suffering from a perception gap abroad. Australia constitutes the foreign country for this study. This case outlines the rising demand for global luxury products in Australia and the growth of HUGO BOSS as well as its future perspectives in the Australian market. This empirical investigation addresses the perception gap of the HUGO BOSS brand by examining customers' level of brand knowledge in terms of brand awareness and familiarity with the company's different brands and labels, their brand perceptions and associations as well as the brand personality that HUGO BOSS possesses in Australia. The case study proposes that HUGO BOSS has been successful in establishing a unique brand identity as an international fashion label for high-quality business wear for men, but that the company's other brand attributes are less apparent for consumers and that the depth and variety of the brand is often not fully understood by its customers.