What should organisations be concerned about in corporate rebranding from a strategic point of view - Dissertation Example

Business firms use rebranding typically in an attempt to remove some negative associations, improve sales, giving it a modern look, or during mergers and acquisitions, to change the way the corporation is viewed. The issue of corporate-rebranding though quite popularly used amongst corporates to change identities and is seen featured regularly in business reviews and business related news, has been largely ignored largely by the academic/scholarly world, leading to a serious lack of research articles on this topic.

Aim – The chief objective of this paper is to delineate the term corporate rebranding in addition to the various underlying theories that create a framework for the process. It also highlights the various contexts that often makes this process an important one for the corporate houses, while also focuses on the pitfalls that may turn rebranding into a total failure. Approach – The paper uses a qualitative and inductive methodology through literature review and case studies to comprehend the various principles and theories of corporate rebranding.

It uses case studies to present examples of corporate rebranding that were successful and those that failed, while evaluating the reasons behind their successes or failures. The research paper however has certain limitations where we find that there is a lack of academic or scholarly articles on this topic. There is no dearth of business reviews or press releases on this topic, but academicians, in general, have kept away from this subject. Corporates present an opaque front in cases where they have attempted rebranding and have failed.

As for example, eircom, which had initially succeeded in its rebranding venture but now has a poor financial output, has removed the internal memorandums that it had circulated amongst its employees during rebranding, making the case study highly dependent on data derived from other researcher’s works. Even in cases of successful rebranding, all facts related to the old identity are removed after sometime, to keep up with new brand image. Significance of the study – Despite a lack of research papers that have a theory-based approach on the topic, this paper attempts to create a well-studied and comprehensive framework on corporate rebranding that analyses both the pro and cons of the issue.

1 Introduction 1.1 Background study In recent times, observations reveal that there has been an increasing emphasis on using brands as a management strategy for achieving better business outcome (Balmer and Greyser, 2003). Increasing competition at a global level has led the corporates to feel a desire for uniqueness. If variables that give a firm its most unique value while helping it to gain a competitive edge over the rivals, are examined, corporate brand or image appear as most relevant