GLOBAL BRAND STRATEGY ISSUES

Global Brand Strategy Issues



Global Brand Strategy Issues

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis on the global branding strategies and the issues related to these branding strategies. The paper is the reflection of the case study of Lenovo Group. In May of this year, Lenovo Group chairman Liu Chunzhi made a high-profile announcement, "after six years of operation, Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's PC business can be said with great success." The excellent performance in fiscal year 2010/2011, and successful communication of Lenovo's core products, such as mobile phones and laptop computers contributes to the increasing brand value of Lenovo. Although different product brands have different personalities, together, the expression of these brands has enhanced the Lenovo brand internationally among young, fashion-oriented consumer. Lenovo is one of the largest famous personal computer makers in the world. Today, Lenovo strives to be the global market share leader in each of the market we serve. On September 24, in 2004, Lenovo purchased the personal computer business and the brand “ThinkPad” famous computer IBM in the IT industry all over the world. This landmark transaction is taken as its most important stage of the international strategy in the computer industry (Balmer, 2001, p. 17). This marks the trinity Lenovo's internationalization strategy has risen to a new stage, which indicates that Lenovo already in the United States established a brand-name image localization. Now, the Lenovo has become the global application company (sales) that have their own package plants in more than 7 countries and cooperation plants in many countries and make the local enterprises business license and distribution contract. Lenovo is also one of the major global companies (sales), and it has its own production plants in 7 countries, its products are marketing in nearly 80 countries.

Discussion

Brand loyalty is defined as a consumer's favorable attitudes towards the brand, and the consumer's repeat consumption of the brand's service or product. Previous research indicated that brand loyalty is a multidimensional construct that should be measured behaviorally and attitudinally. Quelch (1999) suggested that the attitudinal dimension is a better predictor of a consumer remaining loyal to a brand for an extended period of time. Research conducted in the area of leisure concurred that attitudinal loyalty is the most important, and added that leisure consumers may be loyal to the activity, but not the brand. Murray (2000) suggested that loyalty to the brand comes from repeat usage over time. Brand loyalty has proven to be a key dimension in the existing brand equity models. Murray (2000) stated that brand loyalty was the only dimension that may be substituted for brand equity.

We define true brand loyalty is the synergistic union of attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty. Our definition of brand loyalty draws lOur frequent use of the term "brand loyalty" is synonymous with what we defme as "true brand loyalty." Other writers' use of the term "brand loyalty" generally refers to "true brand loyalty," however, depending on how brand loyalty was ope rationalized ...