INTRODUCTIONBrand is a term that the primarysource of a firm’s competitive advantage. It has the ability to create valuethat add emotion and trust to the products and services that provide clues thatsimplify consumers’ choice. One of the main benefits of branding is its abilityto build purchase confidence and improve customer loyalty.Consumers’desires and expectations are continuously changing and today’sshoppers are more intelligent and concerning abouttheir individual preferences. In theglobal market place, “brand” issue has become one ofthe most important factors affecting consumer purchasing behavior. Brands notonly satisfy the physical needs ofconsumers, but also psychological needs (Aaker, 1996).Consumers are following ashion and selecting brands which define who they areor who they want to be. Fulfilling the esteem needs and self actualizationneeds (Maslow, 1954) brands serve for self fulfillment and assure self respectand recognition to the individuals.
So far, the importance of brand issue willbe the milestone of this study.A seriesof studies have highlighted the strategic importance of a strong corporatebrand and its impact on various corporate dimensions. A strong corporate brandis thought to enable a company to attract qualified employees, attract capital,select suppliers and achieve significant financial performance (Beatty, Ritter,1986) but there is not consistent or reliable research conducted to develop ascale to measure this strength of corporate brand.
In literatüre there is awide gap about corporate brand equity which is defined by Keller (2000) as thedifferential response by consumers, customers, employees, other firms, or anyrelevant constituency to the words, actions, communications, products orservices provided by an identified corporate brand entity. Therefore, it issignificant and necessary to explore consumer based corporate brand equityindicators.Successfulbrand building could strengthen a producer’s competitive position to withstandthe increasing power of retailers.
The high costs associated with the launchingof new brands and the high failure rates of new products as well as increasingcosts of advertising and distribution are some of the reasons for buildingstrong brand. Brand building can also bring advantages such as defendingagainst competitors and building market share. Hence, a better understanding ofbrand equity measurement is essential for an enriched practice of brandmanagement (Pappu et al, 2005).In theprogress of the globalization, the developing cities are effective on thepeople of the city. Cities in the way of global integration entered into atransformation progress as parallel to the economic, social, cultural andpublicity that have to revised by conditions of the day. Today it is not aunknown fact that cities are under a burden which consists of people and theiractivies because of global processes.
It is widely seen in the literature thatsince the 1980s, globalization has changed a lot of cities around the world andhas taken to a new social atmoshere. A new city approach occurred. According tothis concept, a city has to accommodate a lot of relations such as workingclass, living class, many activities by people and so a lot of things on. In recentresearch, as it is seen, the branding concept is very common issue for hugefirms. Huge firms like McDonalds, Lc Waikiki and so on, research the many fieldto spread their brands. The brand, each passing day, is very important objectfor prople. Especially in many huge cities the brand is very common issue.
There are many benefits of branding. For example, some families have babiesand they care about them. For this reason they want to use branding for health,security and so on. Brand equity can be evaluated as large retail market. Brandequity bears very commercial targets in terms of trade, finance, andinformation resulted from the recent improvement in all aspects of life. Thisis what we see as the tip of the iceberg, it is not the exact definition.Globalization is actually the spread of capitalism with its all principles andinstitutions. The relation between globalization and power of marketing is veryimportant in terms of the development.
With the effects of the globalization,multinational companies and local markets have various effects in market areas. 2.CONCEPTUALFRAMEThe late twentieth century hasseen the rapid growth of internationa trade and cooperation. This phenomenon,dubbed “globalization,” has resulted in the rise of largemultinational corporations whose power and influence extends beyond one nationor one trading bloc. Today, names like Coca-Cola, Exxon, and IBM are recognizedin the most distant, least industrialized corners of the world. Withcorporations holding such influence, many have wondered what role the statewill play in this new economic system. There are some who claim that the statewill maintain its leadership in shaping economic policy. Nevertheless, the highpopularity and high growth of multinational companies in the world economy is areality to the fact that the corporation is becoming the dominant power inconducting and shaping economic policy.
This phenomenon is most evident indeveloping nations, where multinational companies have surpassed the state ininfluence and power. Multinational firms, relocatingtheir operations beyond the boundaries of their home country, influence and areinfluenced by the political, economical, social and cultural environment of thehost state. These impacts may be both positive and negative ones. It can beobserved that the multinationals may have a positive contribution to the tradebalance of the host developing country by producing goods that used to be imported(import substitution) and which can ever be exported (reversal of the directionof trade).
In this study, we will examine the multinational companies’ power ongovernment. The trade is in front of the management. Nowadays governments care aboutthe trade. The management is in the second plan as these taxes are veryimportant for the government’s power. Multinationals or huge firms mean thetaxes or income fort hat government. The governments have to take under thecontrol countyr’s economy.
Becuase, the states have to live. But the firms canbe destroyed in some crises (Kotler 1991). 2.1. Branding Thebranding is growing more and more and affects all the sectors such as,economic, industry, health, chemistry, biology, computer and the environment.And each passing day, a crisis emerges in the world. All the crises affect theall the population in all over the world.
The people that are affected by allthese innovations face to the crisis every day (Kotler 1991). As Keller (1993) explained, thebiggest crisis emerged in the economic sector in 1930s in America. Becausepeople have to work to find to live. The process of globalization has in thepast couple of decades been very rapid but also lopsided.
Hundreds of millionsof workers, mainly from Asia, have entered production geared to internationalmarkets. This process has improved, inter alia, the lot of poor Chinese andIndians workers, while at the same time helping to keep down prices ofmanufactured goods and moderating global inflation (Keller, 1993)In today’smarketplace, with the change in consumer perceptions and preferences, brandinghas attained a crucial importance to provide profitability and sustainability.Some analysts think that brands are the major enduring assets of a companywhich outlast the company?s specific products and facilities (Kotler,Armstrong, 2001).Tounderstand brand knowledge and its relation with brand equity, some basicmemory principles can be used (Keller 1993). Associativemodel formulation is one of the most widely accepted conceptualizations ofmemory structure (Wyer, Srull 1989).
Associativenetwork memory model represents each concept, idea, or piece of informationstored in memory as a node and each node or idea is connected to other nodes bylinks referred to as associations (Anderson, 1993). All thenodes and all the associations between these nodes constitute a complexassociative network. Every piece of information in associative network isinterrelated with other pieces. Closely related ideas are connected directly bya single association; however, ideas that are less closely related areconnected by a series of associations between many related concepts (Karde?2001).Brandnodes which are connected to each other by other links, associations comprise brandknowledge and as seen in figure 2.1, branding is an important agenda intoday’s world in order to analyze the social, economic and politicaldevelopment in world wide.
So, it’s necessary to understand the basiccontradictions and positive-negative aspects of the process. Branding can bedefined as the growing interdependence of the economies of the nation-states (Keller 1993).Figure 2.1:Dimension of Brand Knowledge Source : Keller,K. L., Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer- Based Brand Equity(1993), 7. Global companies are in theposition to place themselves on more diverse bases.
They have the ability toproduce hundreds of different products which smaller companies can not. Thisallows the bigger companies the ability to cope more easily when one of theirproducts does not succeed in the market place. All the huge companies arereally big like McDonalds or General Motors. They have the very large marketsin the world. They are respected by the other companies.
They are effective on people and states. Itis agreed that they are respectful. Surprisingly though multinational companiesare not as big as it seems. The 37 largest corporations that appear in the listof the 100 largest economies create value added that represents less than 4% ofthe value added created by the top 37 countries in that list. Moreover, themultinationals have not become, weve larger in relation to the nation-statesduring the last twenty years. Why are the perceptions so different from theobserved facts? (Kotler 1991).The fact that the multinationalsare not as big as we thought and that they have not grownfaster than the nationstates does not say much about the power of these multinationals. The lattermay exert considerable power, and this power may have increased.
Although sizeand power are correlated, the correlation is far from perfect. Certainly, theperception today (again) is that the power of multinationals is large and thatthis power has increased (Kotler, 2000).2.
1.1. Importance of Branding for Consumers Companies investingheavily on innovation mostly have well established marketing structures andtheir marketing processes are much more innovative or creative than others inbusiness (Kotler, 2000).
According to Doyle (2002) however, the meaning ofbranding and its role on companies are very significant issues. Branding andmarketing cannot be separated as they has very close and mutual relations.Branding means the process of bringing new approachesand ideas to solve internal marketing problems and to achieve pecuniary andnon-pecuniary results. In moredetail, role of Brandingis to provide, an innovative, proactive, andopportunistic approach to creating value for customers by bringing uniquecombinations of public and private resources. Therefore, a company applyingdomestic marketing activities exploits economic, social and culturalopportunities in a changing environment (Ger,Lascu, 1993).
However, they indicate that domestic is vital for successfulmarketing strategy due to three facts about it. Domestic motivates and focusesgeneration of new ideas that are very significant determinants of innovation,it leads to product differentiation, which plays a key role on success of thecompany in market, and, creativity, as an intangible resource embedded withinthe firm, provides competitive advantage to the firm because it is a flexible,rare and inimitable strategic resource (Stijn etal. 2000). Therefore, creativity plays a significant positive role onmarketing activities of organizations. The innovative marketing activities of acompany are composed of innovative behaviors of employees working within thatcompany.
Formalization is the degree to which rules defines roles, authority,communication, norms and sanctions between people working in an organization.Centralization is the inverse of amount of delegation of decision makingauthority throughout the organization. Departmentalization is the number ofdepartments into which organizational activities are separated andcompartmentalized (Aaker, 1991). 2.
2. Importance of Branding for Firms Brand equity concept brings certain benefits to innovative firms. Some authors claimthat there are six basic perspectives that clarify how domestic marketingprovides certain benefits to companies (Keller,2008). ü Strategic development perspective; it asserts that creativemarketing provides well structured technological strategies for companies thatmake them more adaptive to changing environment (Keller,Lehmann, 2006). ü Customer creating perspective; it discusses that creativemarketing does not only give what customers want, but also creates newcustomers in new and existing markets by discovering new needs of customers (Masayavanij, 2007). ü Resource leveraging perspective; it claims that creative marketingis not bounded with limited resources, however, it leverages resources invarious ways (Keller, Lehmann, 2006).
ü Calculated risk taking perspective; it argues that creativemarketing process makes the marketing people to take calculated risks in developingnew products or processes, leading customers to new products or to new ways ofusing existing products Rio, Vasquez and Iglesias (2001) ü Creative imagination perspective; it indicates that creativemarketing provide creative imagination to marketing staff by providingflexible, exploratory, non-predetermined paths in their problem solvingprocesses Tong and Hawley (2009) ü Sustainable innovation perspective; it specifies that creativemarketing provides sustainable development of new ideas, technology andknowledge in theory (Lassar, Mittal and Sharma (1995)In branding customercharacteristics such as age, sex, social class, personality, brand loyalty,product usage and attitudes toward the given brand are often used as bases forsegmentation Sethuraman (2009). In international markets on the other hand afurther
