Going, Going... Gone Global : A study of two companies that want to take their brands abroad

Abstract: This is a bachelor thesis within marketing that aims at finding how branding strategies is affected by the market it operates and how it influences the possibilities to create a global brand. This will be carried out by looking at branding strategies, global branding and branding on the emerging markets with comparison to mature markets. The authors will do this by conducting a case study where two companies will be studied, one from an emerging market and one from a mature market. The development of a case study came from the explanatory nature of the purpose and the decision was made to look into the lingerie industry since this is a market that is easily segmented and that uses branding. The authors used one company on each market that were in the lingerie industry and the companies that came to be investigated were Beijing Aimer Co Ltd. and Miss Mary of Sweden AB. The authors used theories of branding, empirical material from interviews as well as secondary information about the markets in order to conduct the study. The authors concluded that there are a number of different strategies a company has to consider for their brand: What market(s) to cover, pricing strategies, name strategies and extension strategies. All are combined and need to fit each other to have a good branding strategy. Then there are different conditions for companies on mature and emerging markets. In the emerging markets, branding is a relatively new concept and differentiation with the help of branding has been missing. A mature market, on the other hand, is often saturated of brands which make it hard for companies to stand out in the clutter. This can make it easier for a company to target a niche in the market. When globalising the brand, the companies also need to take other things into consideration. It is important to know the market the company wishes to reach and there can be images that stick from the country of origin of the brand, which also influences the globalisation of the brand and is different for mature and emerging markets. What the authors found from the empirical findings was that the companies are not as the theories would suggest and the Chinese company seems to be very aware of their brands. What the authors also found that both the companies were failing in their branding strate-gies, but in very different ways. Aimer, who desperately wants to create an international brand, is failing due to country of origin effects, while Miss Mary is failing in their segmentations strategy which makes them less resident to competitors in a mature and cluttered marketplace.