Diederich Bakker develops a comprehensive planning process that can guide brand manufacturers in assessing the internal and external environment. The step-by-step planning process includes strategies to thoroughly audit brand portfolios and to review an organisation’s brand management capabilities. The planning process aides brand manufacturers in assessing product categories and in determining retailers for their suitability as cooperation partners. The proposed Vertical Brand Portfolio Management is based on the principles of brand portfolio strategy assigning clear roles for all brands including private labels. Instead of fighting the retailer products brand manufacturers are encouraged to cooperate with retail partners by offering vertically integrated brand portfolios. Based on numerous international case studies, the author offers brand manufacturers and retailers practical tools to consider collaborations in the production and management of private labels.

In this long-awaited book from the world’s premier brand expert and author of the seminal work Building Strong Brands, David Aaker shows managers how to construct a brand portfolio strategy that will support a company’s business strategy and create relevance, differentiation, energy, leverage, and clarity. Building on case studies of world-class brands such as Dell, Disney, Microsoft, Sony, Dove, Intel, CitiGroup, and PowerBar, Aaker demonstrates how powerful, cohesive brand strategies have enabled managers to revitalize brands, support business growth, and create discipline in confused, bloated portfolios of master brands, subbrands, endorser brands, cobrands, and brand extensions. Renowned brand guru Aaker demonstrates that assuring that each brand in the portfolio has a clear role and actively reinforces and supports the other portfolio brands will profoundly affect the firm’s profitability. Brand Portfolio Strategy is required reading not only for brand managers but for all managers with bottom-line responsibility to their shareholders.

This volume examines the importance of strategic brand imaging and brand management. It covers the fundamentals of launching, growing, leveraging, and managing brands in a global context, the strategic decisions related to brand building, and the integration of the 4Ps in implementing the brand strategy. The book presents a practical perspective on building brands through social media and using artificial intelligence technologies. Readers will get a clear introductory understanding about the role of consumer behavior, the research methods that every brand manager must be familiar with, brand architecture, portfolio, brand equity, and valuation. Branding requires vision to foresee, logic to understand the market, and the art of understanding consumers. This book is a guide for readers and professionals who are interested in all aspects of branding and brand building. It will also be useful for scholars and students of Marketing, Advertising and Brand Management, Business Studies, Business Communication, Media and Journalism and Public Relations, and for marketing professionals. It will help them understand fundamentals and practical application of brand management.

Adopted internationally by business schools and MBA programmes, this book is the ultimate resource for senior strategists, positioning professionals and postgraduate students to understand and overcome the challenges of brand management and strategy today, written by the leading international expert of branding, Jean-Noël Kapferer. The New Strategic Brand Management is simply the reference source for branding professionals and postgraduate students. Over the years it has not only established a reputation as one of the leading works on brand strategy, but also has become synonymous with the topic itself. Using an array of international case studies, this book covers all the leading issues faced by brand strategists today, with both gravitas and intelligent insight. It reveals new thinking on topics such as putting culture and content into brands, the impact of private labels and the comeback of local brands. This updated fifth edition builds on the book's already impressive reputation, including new content that will help students and practitioners stay up to date with targeting, with relevant research and market knowledge to support the discipline. With dedicated sections for specific types of brands (luxury, corporate and retail), international examples and case studies from companies such as Audi, Nivea, Toyota and Absolut Vodka; plus models and frameworks such as the Brand Identity Prism; The New Strategic Brand Management remains at the forefront of strategic brand thinking.

Understanding the global hotel business is not possible without paying specific attention to hotel chain management and dynamics. Chains are big business, approximately 80 percent of hotels currently being constructed around the world are chain affiliated and, in 2014, the five largest brands held over a one million rooms. The high economic importance of the hotel chains and their global presence justifies the academic research in the field however, despite this, there is no uniform coverage in the current body of literature. This Handbook aids in filling the gap by exploring and critically evaluates the debates, issues and controversies of all aspects of hotel chains from their nature, fundamentals of existence and operation, expansion, strategic and operational aspects of their activities and geographical presence. It brings together leading specialists from range of disciplinary backgrounds and regions to provide state-of-the-art theoretical reflection and empirical research on current issues and future debates. Each of the five inter-related section explores and evaluates issues that are of extreme importance to hotel chain management, focusing on theoretical issues, the expansion of hotel chains, strategic and operational issues, the view point of the individual affiliated hotel and finally the current and future debates in the theory and practice of hotel chain management arising from globalisation, demographic trends, sustainability, and new technology development. It provides an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in hotel management, hospitality, tourism and business encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study. This is essential reading for students, researchers and academics of Hospitality as well as those of Tourism, Marketing, Business and Events Management.

"Aaker on Branding" presents in a compact form the twenty essential principles of branding that will lead to the creation of strong brands. Culled from the six David Aaker brand books and related publications, these principles provide the broad understanding of brands, brand strategy, brand portfolios, and brand building that all business, marketing, and brand strategists should know. "Aaker on Branding" is a source for how you create and maintain strong brands and synergetic brand portfolios. It provides a checklist of strategies, perspectives, tools, and concepts that represents not only what you should know but also what action options should be on the table. When followed, these principles will lead to strong, enduring brands that both support business strategies going forward and create coherent and effective brand families. Those now interested in and involved with branding are faced with information overload, not only from the Aaker books but from others as well. It is hard to know what to read and which elements to adapt. There are a lot of good ideas out there but also some that are inferior, need updating, or are subject to being misinterpreted and misapplied. And there are some ideas that, while plausible, are simply wrong if not dangerous especially if taken literally. "Aaker on Branding"offers a sense of topic priorities and a roadmap to David Aaker's books, thinking, and contributions. As it structures the larger literature of the brand field, it also advances the theory of branding and the practice of brand management and, by extension, the practice of business management.

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