The nature and scope of retail branding in small to medium sized enterprises

Abstract

Brands and the management of brand equity has become a consideration of both marketing practitioners and marketing scholars. The complexities of brand management warrant study from a diverse range of theoretical disciplines and paradigms. This study seeks to explore branding from the perspective of the SME retailer. A multiple case study approach is utilised, which investigates retail branding in the context of 18 small to medium retailer enterprises. The findings of this study showcase the importance of both the SME specific dynamics upon retail branding and, conversely, the nature of retail branding upon SME brand management. As such, a number of contributions are made to the brand management, retail branding and SME branding discourses.

These findings include the very nature of retail branding, as a disparate marketing concept, and its implications of this upon SME brand management practice. The inherent constraints of the SME context introduce a number of idiosyncrasies to retail branding. Conversely, the structure of the SME, specifically the centricity of the owner manager, elicit a number of facilitators to retail brand management. In practice, this study finds that retail branding in SMEs encompasses management of the retail process across a number of store based components. Moreover, SME owner managers focus on service and product mix features of their retail businesses and attempt to embed meanings of localisation, familyness and heritage into their brand. Finally, the entrepreneurial nature of brand performance is exposed in terms of how SMEs appraise their brand equity based upon intuitive, colloquial customer brand centricity

Date of Award	Apr 2012
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland
Supervisor	Karise Hutchinson (Supervisor) & Barry Quinn (Supervisor)