Brand Management In SME

2.7 SME Perspective

As previously mentioned in many SMEs, the brand marketing activity, is often explained as an unnecessary expense rather than a possibility. However, new products alone are in most cases insufficient to encourage sales and add value in the long-term (Lassen, Kunde, & Gioia, 2008). It is fundamental that CEOs, managers and company owners take a long-term view on branding in order to build strong brands.

Lassen, Kunde, & Gioia recognize the following guidelines for brand management in SMEs.

1. Identify the brand essence

What makes the brand unique? What are the personality, culture and values of the brand? This is about identifying the soul of the brand. Managers need to understand the underlying character of the brand.

2. Focus

This is a very important concept since it is closely related to my purpose of developing a brand model especially for a SME and not makes it general to fit all companies regardless of size.

Brand Power

The concept of brand power is not a concept included in my theoretical framework. This concept is connected with the concept of brand equity. Aaker (1991) describes how generating brand equity inform of strong loyalty will result in better storage space, and how this is important for companies selling retail stores. How this brand power gives advantages or disadvantages to the firm at different levels of the organization will help us to understand the role of branding in a SME and how this can be used in my model.

Loyal customer

Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial lucidity, very social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators.

Early Adopters (13.5%) – This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters.

Early Majority (34%) – Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, contact with early adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p.