Corporate Branding is Essential for Today's Competative Market

In this competitive world, nothing is as certain as uncertainty and nothing are as sustained as change for any businesses. Strategy building is not as simple as possible for companies and the ground rules for competition have shifted from predictable markets or stable product range to more dynamic and globalized ways. The traditional perceptions and applications of branding has been fully dominated by a product mindset. But changes in the modern era and huge technological developments laid difficulties in managing realistic product differentiation in the face of duplication and homogenization of products and services. Changes in the attitudes and mindsets of the customers are also making markets more complex and competitive in nature. Hence, companies shifted focus from branding of stand-alone products and services to a branding of the organization itself. Differentiation requires positioning the whole corporation in addition to its products. Accordingly, the corporate branding originates from distinct combinations of symbols, values and emotions that are salient to both the organization and its dynamic relationships with internal and external stakeholders (Hatch & Schultz 2003, 1041).

Many scholars and researchers quoted that corporate branding is an essential tool for any company and also argued that traditional branding approaches has been restricting and constrained by a narrow external perspective (e.g. Aaker 1996; Aaker & Joachimsthaler, 2000; Kapferer 2001; Hatch and Schultz, 2001; Olins, 2004). The shift towards corporate branding was best supported in marketing literature. Some among them claimed that strong corporate brands are increasingly helps in building consumer relations within the organization itself and stresse...

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...ng all stakeholders to multi-disciplinary approach and strategy building, the importance of employees and the need to better understand their perceptions towards once own corporation and therefore the organizational culture of the company received attention further by many scholars. Few among them argued that employees plays key role in building strong relationships with other stakeholders as well as contributing to the meaning of the companies brand (de Chernatony 2001; Harris and de Chernatony 2001; Hatch and Schultz 2001; Wilson 2001; Balmer and Soenen 1999). The study tries to through insights about the importance of employees in corporate branding from the above three objectives. Overall, the central aim of the paper is to study the shifts in corporate branding literature and highlights the importance of internal stakeholders in the corporate branding process.