Search

A study was conducted to offer some conceptual foundations for a culturally relative, contextually sensitive approach to international branding in which the construct of brand mythology is central. It is argued that international marketing researchers will need to revise some key premises of global branding in order to meet theoretical and methodological challenges.

The reasons for the success of brands that depend mainly on advertising to compete with others are investigated. Findings revealed that successful international brands mostly come from developed nations and are old, proof that it takes time to build a brand identity. The significance of entrepreneurship in the growth and success of international brands is examined further.

Brands have played a critical role in the evolution of multinationals in alcoholic beverages. As this article shows, brands often determined the nature and scope of mergers and acquisitions in this industry and so help explain the successive merger waves that have transformed it since the 1960s. The firms that became truly global were primarily those that developed a portfolio of successful brands recognised in many countries. By acquiring and repositioning such brands, firms were able to respond to changes in consumption, competition and regulation, to move from familiar to geographically and culturally distant markets, and thereby to achieve continuous growth and long-term survival. Standard accounts of growth and internationalisation tend to give primacy to investments in science and technology. By looking at brands, this article shows how other kinds of knowledge -- in this case the marketing knowledge inherent in brand management -- are fundamental in explaining the evolution of firms in industries like alcoholic beverages where technology is not a major input. This article discusses the role of brands in the evolution of large international firms in the world alcoholic beverages industry since the 1960s. The vast literature on the growth of firms and their international expansion has emphasised technology rather than marketing. This is strongly present in the work of Chandler, in the concept of 'ownership advantage' associated with Dunning and other theorists of the multinational enterprise, and in the internalisation literature on the international growth of firms. (1) Other researchers, however, have put greater emphasis on brands. They feature prominently in the management literature, though business historians such as Wilkins and, more recently, Koehn have drawn attention to the importance of brands in the growth of modern business. (2) This article builds on these insights in the context of the growth of multinationals in alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages provide an interesting case of an industry in which firms have both survived a long time, as the longevity of their products and brands testifies, and have grown internationally very large, appearing among the world's largest industrial multinationals (MNEs). This is also an industry where brands can be expected to play a greater role than science and technology in firm strategies. (3) This article considers the growth of large firms in alcoholic beverages and their cross-border expansion. The focus is on the period since the 1960s. It argues that brands and also marketing knowledge (that is, the capability of firms to manage brands and distribution networks) provide fundamental elements of the growth strategies of firms in foreign markets and of their evolution as a whole. It draws on concepts from Penrose and Johanson and Vahlne. The latter's stages model of the internationalisation of the firm, despite not directly addressing entry into foreign markets through globalisation of brands, considers brands as important features in that process of internationalisation. (4) Employing a new database on the evolution of the world's largest alcoholic beverages MNEs between 1960 and 2000, the article analyses the growth of industry concentration as brands gained increased strategic relevance and firms accumulated marketing knowledge over time. A schematic representation shows the boundaries of firm s evolving in sequential stages, corresponding to a great extent to 'waves' of international mergers and acquisitions in the industry. (5) This article is structured in seven sections. Following the introduction, the second section identifies the nature of brands in alcoholic beverages, defines the concept of 'brand', analyses the significance of brands as opposed to technological innovation, and highlights the role of brands in the international evolution of firms. The third section explains the selection criteria of the sample of the world's largest MNEs in alcoholic beverages and shows the merger waves that they created. Sections four and five establish which were the main determinants related to the evolution of the industry and to the strategies of firms which most affected their evolution, and also relate these determinants to the waves of mergers and acquisitions that occurred in the industry in different periods, noting which firms were involved in each one. Section six presents a schematic representation on the role of successful brands and also marketing knowledge in the evolution of a standard large multinational in alcoholic beverage s, showing the increased importance these firm specific determinants played in that process. Finally, section seven provides the major conclusions., II There remains no consensus on the precise definition of a 'brand'. (6) A benchmark definition might be that a brand is a legally defensible proprietary name, recognised by some [...]

Foreign trademark protection standards of the World Trade Organization members are discussed.

The analysis of a brand name product in a foreign market is examined with respect to US-based fast food restaurant, McDonald's, in Shanghai, China.

Global brand image management is discussed. The cohesiveness of international brand image is evaluated through knowledge of the brand in home markets as compared with the knowledge of the brand in foreign markets.

This research reports on consumers' cognitive structures for countries and their products. In-depth personal interviews identified respondents' knowledge, beliefs, myths, and other relevant cognitions related to a diverse set of 11 countries and their products. Derived cognitive dimensions were analyzed via correspondence analysis, and the 11 countries were subsequently grouped into five sets, or cognitive categories. In addition to the empirical findings, the article introduces the concept of country equity as a new way of thinking about global brands and discussed managerial implications related thereto. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)