Many brands have tried to go global. Some have been successful; a handful of others have failed. Professor Durairaj Maheswaran of New York University's Stern School of Business revealed the secrets to successful global branding on March 28, at CKGSB’s Beijing campus.
Many brands have tried to go global. Some have been successful; a handful of others have failed. Professor Durairaj Maheswaran of New York University’s Stern School of Business revealed the secrets to successful global branding on March 28, at CKGSB’s Beijing campus.
Cultural understanding, corporate reputation, and national equity are the most critical issues in brand globalization, according to Prof. Maheswaran, who is paying an academic exchange visit to CKGSB.
“Without in-depth understanding of the culture of a target market, brands are prone to mistakes with advertising content,” he says. For example, individualism is the core of the social philosophy and value in American culture. Making explicit comparison with competing brands in commercials does work to win hearts of Americans, though “comparative advertising is very negative in the eyes of Japanese consumers,” he says.
In addition to cultural understanding, corporate reputation and national equity – or the reputation of the brand’s country of origin – also matter in global branding. A great country reputation is a big plus for brands expanding into the global market. For some nations, like Japan, corporate reputation and country reputation have shown a very strong positive correlation in Prof. Maheswaran’s study. In the case of China, he says “a hybrid, or complementary, branding efforts performed by corporate and government works better.”
Dr. Durairaj Maheswaran (Mahesh) is the Paganelli-Bull Professor of Marketing and International Business at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He received a Ph.D in marketing from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. He has published widely in leading publications such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. He was the Editor of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. He is a Past-President of the Society of Consumer Psychology. He was also a President of the Policy Board of the Journal of Consumer Research. He has extensive work and consulting experience with major corporations including AOL, Credit Suisse First Boston, Johnson and Johnson, and IBM. He is a recipient of the Excellence in Teaching award from New York University.
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