Corporate rebranding in a South African bank
Date
2017
Authors
Kigen, Fiona Cheruiyot
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Every so often, we hear of companies in the business news that have adopted new brand identities (Alahuhta, 2009), a process known as corporate rebranding. The process is costly, time consuming and fraught with pitfalls, with no guarantee of success, and as the number of companies that rebrand increases, so does the failure rate (Causon, 2004). Some companies attempt to rebrand, but end up losing customers and market share. On the other hand, for some, a rebranding exercise injects much needed change into the organisation, and helps it conquer new markets.
The main problem of this research was to assess the factors that impacted the corporate rebranding exercise in a South African banking organisation, the first sub-problem being to assess the major enabling factors that impacted the exercise, and the second sub-problem being to assess the major disabling factors that could have impacted the exercise.
This research was a case study, which entailed detailed exploration of one South African banking organisation, Absa, that has been through a rebranding exercise recently and the data was collected by way of interviews with a population pool of 11 senior management employees, middle level management employees and agency partners, all who played a role in the rebranding exercise.
The research concluded that the following enabling factors impacted the exercise - strong rebranding leadership, a well-developed brand understanding, carrying out of internal branding activities, continuity of brand attributes, stakeholder co-ordination, an integrated marketing programme and organisational agility. The research also concluded that the following disabling factors were not present and thus did not impact the exercise - stakeholder tensions, a narrow brand re-vision, inadequate research and inadequate customer consideration.
The key conclusion from this research is that by understanding the seven enabling and four disabling factors of corporate rebranding proposed in this study, corporate executives can be much better prepared for the process that lies ahead, thus positioning it for success.
Description
MBA(Thesis)
Keywords
Branding (Marketing) -- South Africa. Corporate image -- South Africa.Banks and banking -- South Africa.