Brand Management Capability and Brand Performance

Brands are intangible assets that provide companies with the potential to extract higher rents or prices from customers. However, only few organizations are able to build and sustain brands over a long period of time. Brand management capability - the organization's ability to build and sustain brands becomes important for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Despite the importance of brand management capability to organizations, majority of the brand management literature has primarily focused on the consumer perspective of brands. This gap in knowledge about the components of brand management capability impedes firms from replicating brand successes, and makes them reliant on brand managers. More recently, there have been multiple calls in literature to identify marketing-related organizational capabilities, which can provide organizations with a sustainable competitive advantage. The focus on developing marketing-based capabilities comes at a time when marketing is losing its influence in organizations. To this end, the current dissertation uses organizational capability theory and literature on brand management to identify the primary resource (intellectual capital comprising of structural, human, and relational capital), organizational culture type (clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market), and processes (strategic brand management, internal branding, and market information processes comprising of information acquisition, information transmission, conceptual utilization, and instrument utilization), that constitute the brand management capability. This dissertation also examines the association among various components of brand management capability and brand performance. A survey-based technique was used to gather data from individuals responsible for managing brands. The data was analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results indicate that human capital, relational capital, market and hierarchy culture types, internal branding, strategic brand management, and instrument utilization are positively associated with brand performance. Structural capital, clan and adhocracy culture types, information acquisition, information transmission, and conceptual utilization are not associated with brand performance. From a research standpoint, this dissertation contributes to the extant literature by identifying the resources, organizational culture, and processes that constitute the brand management capability. In addition to the extant brand management processes (internal branding and strategic brand management), a third set of processes identified in this dissertation (market information processes) is argued to be a critical component for successfully managing brands in organizations. This dissertation also provides empirical support for the role of marketing-based capabilities in determining organizational value, which has been debated in recent literature. Finally, this research addresses the calls for exploring marketing-based capabilities, especially at a time when marketing as a function is losing its influence in academia and organizations. From a managerial standpoint, this dissertation provides an outline for organizations seeking to build brand management capability. In addition to developing intellectual capital and brand management processes, firms need to create the right kind of organizational culture that is needed for brand management capability. This is consistent with the movement towards brands being managed with a strategic perspective.