Brand Building for Startups : A brand building framework for startups to establish a coherent and long lasting brand

Abstract: The brand is something every company must deal with whether they like it or not, and as a company grows it develops and works as a way to build recognition, trust, customer loyalty and employee branding (Jones, 2022). In the fast-paced startup environment, the resources are limited, and focus has to be split between different tasks and the most urgent problems are the ones to be dealt with - leaving the rest to be, where the unmeasurable and intangible focus areas such as branding often get deprioritized. The purpose of this study is to investigate the brand development process amongst startups, and to investigate how this aligns with the developed brand building framework for startups. The methods used are of qualitative nature, including 3 exploratory interviews, a literature review, framework development, 8 semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis of the collected data. The thesis resulted in insights on the brand understanding in startups, as well as findings concerning thresholds for startups to invest in their brand work. A varying level of understanding of brand between the startups could be seen, both in regards of what brand includes, but also which building blocks are necessary and how the brand can elevate the business. This paper is expected to contribute both toward a deeper theoretical understanding of branding frameworks for startups as well as working as a practical guide. In practice, this paper will guide startups in how to properly build their brand and keep a balanced approach to brand and how to properly build the brand and brand foundation.