Branding and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Avinash Kapoor

Management Development Institute, India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Management Development Institute, India

Branding and Sustainable

Competitive Advantage:

Building Virtual Presence

http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield

Branding and sustainable competitive advantage: building virtual presence / Avinash Kapoor and Chinmaya Kulshretha,

editors.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: “This book explores the processes involved in managing brands for long-term sustainable competitive advan￾tage, helping readers better understand the importance of consumers’ perceptions in brand management”--Provided by

publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61350-171-9 (hbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-61350-172-6 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-61350-173-3 (print & perpetual

access) 1. Branding (Marketing) 2. Brand name products--Management. 3. Product management. I. Kapoor, Avinash. II.

Kulshretha, Chinmaya, 1976-

HF5415.1255.B72 2012

658.8’27--dc23

2011031126

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To my mother Dr. Gyan Kapoor, my Brother Vivek Kapoor, my wife Namita, and my son Akshat for

their continued love and support and encouragement.

Avinash Kapoor

To my beloved parents Mrs. Indira Kulshrestha and Dr. N. K. Kulshrestha for their blessings, and to

my husband Shailendra and my son Yashmit for their unflinching support.

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Editorial Advisory Board

Jaideep Motwani, Seidman College of Business, USA

Ashok Kumar, Seidman College of Business, USA

Ralf Wagner, University of Kassel, Germany

Richard Feinberg, Purdue University, USA

Harsh Diwedi, University of Rajasthan, India

Arvind Kalia, Rajasthan Patrika, India

J.C. Kapoor, Management and IT consultant, India

List of Reviewers

Jaideep Motwani, Seidman College of Business, USA

Ashok Kumar, Seidman College of Business, USA

Ralf Wagner, University of Kassel, Germany

Richard Feinberg, Purdue University, USA

Harsh Diwedi, University of Rajasthan, India

Arvind Kalia, Rajasthan Patrika, India

J.C. Kapoor, Management and IT consultant, India

Rajesh Pillannia, MDI, India

Soumendu Biswas, MDI, India

Avinash Kapoor, MDI, India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha, MDI, India

Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................................viii

Acknowledgment................................................................................................................................... x

Section 1

Branding and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Chapter 1

Is Being Perceived as Sustainable a Means to Achieve a Differential Advantage?................................ 1

Avinash Kapoor, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Chapter 2

Are Strong Brands a Source of Competitive Advantage in the Virtual World?...................................... 4

Piyush Sharma, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Chapter 3

Taking Public Health Learning Global through Branding and Identity Management.......................... 24

Shalin Hai-Jew, Kansas State University, USA

Section 2

Strategic Branding Decisions

Chapter 4

Exploring Key Issues in Destination Branding..................................................................................... 47

Piyush Nangru, Great India Rural Tours, India

Vaibhav Rustagi, ITC Ltd, India

Manish Makhija, HCL Technologies, India

Lubna Nafees, IMT, India

Omkumar Krishnan, IMT, India

Chapter 5

Branding Strategies for Digital TV Channels....................................................................................... 57

Margherita Pagani, Bocconi University, Italy

Chapter 6

Between Physical and Virtual Reality: The Case of Benetton Brand, “A Company that

is Born from Ideas”............................................................................................................................... 69

Annamaria Silvana de Rosa, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Elena Bocci, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Chapter 7

Branding and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Indian Politics: Brand Rahul Gandhi............... 96

Avinash Kapoor, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Section 3

Consumers and Brands

Chapter 8

Brand Engagement and Brand Loyalty............................................................................................... 121

Ronald E. Goldsmith, Florida State University, USA

Chapter 9

The Brand Stakeholder Approach: Broad and Narrow-Based Views to Managing

Consumer-Centric Brands................................................................................................................... 136

Jonathan A. J. Wilson, University of Greenwich, UK

Chapter 10

Brand Obsessed Society: Branding Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev in India ............................................. 161

Chinmaya Kulshrestha, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Avinash Kapoor, Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Section 4

Digital and Virtual World

Chapter 11

GeoFree BrandComms: Building and Sustaining Virtual Brand Communities ................................. 177

P. Raj Devasagayam, Siena College, USA

Dana A. VanDen Heuvel, Pheedo, Inc., USA

Chapter 12

Enhanced Social Presence Through eBranding the Consumer in Virtual Communities.................... 189

Robert Pennington, Fo Guang University, Taiwan

Chapter 13

E-Branding and Institutional Web Sites: The “Visiting Card” of the

Municipalities of Rome and Paris....................................................................................................... 207

Annamaria Silvana de Rosa, Sapienza University di Rome, Italy

Elena Bocci, Sapienza University di Rome, Italy

Massimiliano Picone, Sapienza University di Rome, Italy

Compilation of References............................................................................................................... 248

About the Contributors.................................................................................................................... 274

Index................................................................................................................................................... 279

viii

Preface

Brands help to build sustained relationships with the consumers. Strong brands lend endurance and

permanence to an organization and protect it from the market turbulence and uncertainties. Given its

strategic role, the selected chapters examine and develop a critical understanding of the processes in￾volved in building and managing brands for gaining long-term sustainable competitive advantage. The

book provides an insight into the world of sustainable and competitive branding through thirteen chap￾ters divided into four sections.

In section one, “Branding and Sustainable Competitive Advantage,” the first chapter discusses whether

being perceived as sustainable is a means to achieve a differential advantage. Whereas, the second

chapter on “Are Strong Brands a Source of Competitive Advantage in the Virtual World?” highlights

the importance of customer education and employee training to prevent the erosion of brand image and

loyalty on one hand, and improve perceived service quality and customer satisfaction on the other, for

companies using offshore outsourcing of customer services.

Finally, the third chapter, “Taking Public Health Learning Global through Branding and Identity

Management,” explores potential methods for online branding and identity management. This chapter

addresses an environmental scan of the global public health environment and work implications of the

global branding, along with the engagement and the maintenance of the brand over time.

In section two “Strategic Branding Decisions,” the first chapter, “Exploring key issues in Destination

Marketing,” discusses and presents an analytical framework to effectively communicate the competi￾tive advantage of destinations and market them as brands. The second chapter, “Branding Strategies

for digital TV Channels,” analyses the impact of digitalization on TV marketing strategies focusing on

the role of brand as a loyalty-based resource, available to digital television networks to create a sustain￾able competitive advantage. The third chapter, entitled “Between Physical and Virtual reality: the case

of Benetton Brand,” identifies the organizational dynamics of the Benetton Company and presents a

perspective theory that seeks to analyze the connections between social representations and corporate

communication.

Further, the fourth chapter, “Branding & Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Indian Politics:

Brand Rahul Gandhi,” discusses and analyses Rahul Gandhi as a brand to find a match between brand

identity, brand personality, and consumer perception in terms of benefits sought and influence of activi￾ties undertaken by him. The chapter concludes that there should be a sustainable synergy between the

leader and the party to avoid brand equity dilution.

In section three, “Consumers and Brands,” the first chapter, “Brand Engagement and Brand Loyalty,”

states brand engagement from theoretical, managerial, and methodological perspectives. The theoretical

component describes types and levels of engagement and emphasizes their antecedents and consequences.

ix

The managerial component briefly describes management interests in branding and brand loyalty and

the relation of brand engagement to loyalty. Finally, the methodological component briefly describes

how to operationalize the engagement concepts. Similarly, the second chapter, “The Brand Stakeholder

Approach: Broad and Narrow-based views to managing consumer-centric brands,” presents a dynamic

collaborative process of creation of brands seeking to engage consumers in new and innovative ways

in order to gain authenticity.

Finally, the third chapter, “Brand Obsessed Society: Branding Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev in India,”

explores the value propositions, and the sustainable key differentiators to analyze the brand status and

brand strategy of spiritual beacon Baba Ram Dev. The chapter concludes that, a strong synergy between

image and identity of Brand Baba Ramdev results in strong personality that offers him a competitive

advantage to get across to the consumers.

In section Four, “Digital And Virtual World,” the first chapter, “GeoFree BrandComms: Building and

Sustaining Virtual Brand Communities,” presents the use of Weblogs (Blogs) and related technologies as

strategic tools in building GeoFree BrandComms and posits the applications of GeoFree BrandComms

in Web-based marketing strategies that find their basis in strong brands and loyal customers.

Further, the second chapter, “Enhanced Social Presence Through eBranding the Consumer in Virtual

Communities,” discusses that brands have become an important mode of consumer communication,

identifying and distinguishing consumers as social objects within consumer market culture. In addi￾tion, eBranding affords consumers the necessary tools to represent themselves by communicating their

roles and relationships in virtual consumer culture environments for transfer to actual consumer culture

environments.

Finally, the third chapter, “E branding and Institutional Websites: the Visiting Cards of the Munici￾palities of Rome and Paris,” presents the analysis of the municipal web sites of two historical capitals,

Rome and Paris, considered as the Visiting Cards these two cities offer citizens and tourists. In sum, the

chapter offers guidelines for web professionals and institutional communication managers.

Avinash Kapoor

Management Development Institute, India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Management Development Institute, India

x

Acknowledgment

Our colleagues in both academics and business world have really helped in providing us valuable guid￾ance and insight into Branding and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Building Virtual Presence, along

with intellectual stimulations. We would like to thank everyone who has influenced our thinking di￾rectly or indirectly. Our heartfelt thanks to all the contributors for bringing their intellectual insights on

branding and sustainable competitive advantage.

We would like to pay our special thanks and regards to Professor VK Gupta, Director, Dr B.S Sahay,

Director, IIM Raipur (Former Director MDI) for encouraging us to bring out this the edited book. We

acknowledge the support of Marketing Area faculty and the member of the other functional area faculty

of MDI.

We place on record our sincere thanks to members of editorial advisory board and reviewers’ team

who helped us in selecting and screening the chapters.

We acknowledge the tremendous support received from Prof. Ashok Kumar Grand Valley State

University, Michigan, Prof. Jaideep Motwani, Grand Valley State University, Michigan, Prof. Ralf

Wagner, DMCC Kassel Germany, University of Kassel, Prof. Richard Feinberg, Purdue University,

Dr. J. C. Kapoor, Management and IT consultant formerly, Professor and Consultant Indian Institute

of Public Administration, New Delhi, Prof. Om Prakash Gupta, University of Texas, Prof. Y. C. Bhatt

MNIT, Prof. M. K. Bhargava MNIT, Prof. S. K. Khosla University of Rajasthan, Prof. Ritu Parashar

University of Rajasthan, Dr. Ruby Diwedi University of Rajasthan, Professor Adrian Palmer Univer￾sity of Swansea UK, Professor Asha Bhandarkar, MDI Gurgaon, Professor Anjila Saxena, University

of Rajasthan, Professor Mukul Gupta, MDI Gurgaon, Dr. Harsh Diwedi University of Rajasthan, Dr.

Rajesh Kothari, University of Rajasthan, Dr. Arvind Kalia, National Corporate Head Rajasthan Patrika,

Dr. Geetika Kapoor University of Rajasthan, Dr. Ashok Sharma University of Rajasthan, Mr. Yogendra

Khare, Project Manager Accenture, Mr. Amit Khare, Consultant, CGI, Sadat Khan Godphrey Philips,

Mr. Vivek Kapoor Tata Docomo, Ms. Shefali Chhachi Marketing Director Max Bupa, Mr. Nitin Puri,

Tata Docomo, Mr. R. K. Malhotra GM Sahara India Ltd.

We would like to pay our very special thanks and regards to Dr. Pritam Singh, ex-Director and Pro￾fessor Eminence MDI, who inspired and encouraged us to take up such an endeavour.

We acknowledge with sincere gratitude the encouragement and the support given by our family

members, friends, and the Publisher, IGI Global, as well as the entire production staff.

xi

Finally, we owe everything to God Almighty and our dear parents, whose blessings and guidance

have always inspired and encouraged us.

Avinash Kapoor

Management Development Institute, India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Management Development Institute, India

Section 1

Branding and Sustainable

Competitive Advantage

1

Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

Chapter 1

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-171-9.ch001

INTRODUCTION

Organizations across all sectors of the economy be￾lieve that being perceived as sustainable is a means

to achieve a differential advantage. One example

of this is BP (formerly British Petroleum), which

is one of the top oil and gasoline distributors. BP

has shed its old namesake and replaced it with the

brand “beyond petroleum.” Also, environmentally

conscious brochures are available at the pumps

that contain embedded seeds so if they are littered

they will still benefit the Earth. However, what

is missing in both the strategic initiative and the

marketing literature is a thorough consideration

of how being perceived as sustainable benefits

organizations in their marketing efforts.

The literature’s scant treatment of sustainabil￾ity issues is surprising given the growing trend

towards positioning organizations as sustainable.

This positioning reflects growing need for firms to

take into full account their environmental impact

when making business decisions (Menon and

Menon, 1997). Often associated with terms such

as “green business,” “going green,” and the “green

Avinash Kapoor

Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Chinmaya Kulshrestha

Management Development Institute (MDI), India

Is Being Perceived as

Sustainable a Means to Achieve

a Differential Advantage?

ABSTRACT

Sustainability has been a concern of activists, organizations, and public officials for several decades.

The chapter discusses an important issue: whether consumers purchase sustainable products because

they perceive them to be higher in quality or because it makes them feel good. Finally, it submits that

the sustained efforts of the organizations can fulfill a brand promise dedicated to enhancing the lives of

citizens in the state, nation, and world!

2

Is Being Perceived as Sustainable a Means to Achieve a Differential Advantage?

movement,” sustainability has been a concern of

activists, organizations, and public officials for

several decades. First widely researched in the

1970’s (Ellen, Wiener, and Cobb-Walgren, 1991;

Henion and Wilson, 1976; Kinnear, Taylor, and

Ahmed, 1974; Murphy, Kangun, and Locander,

1978; Scott, 1977; Webster Jr., 1975), sustain￾ability was dismissed as a “cause” rather than a

mainstream concern of either the academic litera￾ture or popular press. In recent years, however,

sustainability has become a global issue that is

viewed as an important concern in every facet of

society and business. Today, consumers, managers

and government officials, as well as the press, all

appear to consider sustainability a timely concern.

In fact, sustainability is now frequently identi￾fied as a prescription for long term survival by

many businesses and strategic planners (Miles

and Covin, 2000), as well as a primary research

interest by such organizations as the Marketing

Science Institute (MSI) (Osterhus, 1997). Interest

in sustainability is growing because of greater

social awareness (Roberts, 1996) that appears to

have resulted from the media exposure.

In short, exposure to sustainable themes is

leading to greater social awareness and concern

relative to the issue of sustainability, as well as

greater acceptance of sustainability as a viable

option in organizational branding and promo￾tional efforts. Sustainability is also an issue of

interest to government. As energy costs soar, and

sustainability increases in visibility and concern

among consumers, public officials are increasingly

considering social policies related to conservation

incentives, pollution, and sustainable economic

development. President Barack Obama has ar￾gued that environmental sustainability is not a

“someday” issue it is “now” (Obama 2007). This

strategy is being pursued by his administration.

Recently, it awarded 54 billion dollars to devel￾oping renewable energy and technology (Times

Online 2008).

ISSUES

In spite of the interest demonstrated by consumers,

managers, and public officials in sustainability,

there is a gap in the literature concerning the role of

sustainability in marketing and branding strategies

and the effects of environmental responsiveness

on consumers’ assessments of brands. However,

consumers may also doubt the authenticity of

sustainable claims made by firms long associated

with products not considered environmentally

friendly. An important question that remains is

whether consumers purchase sustainable prod￾ucts because they perceive them to be higher in

quality or because it makes them feel good. The

importance of such information is particularly

high for organizations as they assess how to best

position and promote their organization’s goods

and services. Further, it is likely that an emotive

effect is also present when a consumer considers

an environmentally responsive organization and

its effects on quality, satisfaction, and purchase

intentions.

The relevant question that remains unanswered

is which effect has the greater impact on consum￾ers’ product evaluations and purchase decisions.

In addition, many consumers are confused about

sustainable products, which hurt evaluations

and reduce purchasing intentions. Therefore,

testing the effects of different branding tools and

promotional types on consumer assessments in

a sustainable context addresses a timely gap in

the literature.

Further, in today’s competitive marketplace, it

is challenging for an organization to be heard, seen,

and remembered. It is important to remember that

brand is about much more than logos, colors, and

typefaces. In order to deliver messages more con￾sistently and effectively, successful organizations

organize their marketing and communications

efforts around a brand identity. Ask yourself, as

an organization are you committed to developing

communications strategies that strengthen your

image and build new and sustained loyalty among