Creating business-IT alignment through brand communications

The aim of this research was to study brand management of an IT department of a case company, a big Finnish MNC, and to identify gaps between its brand identity and brand image and the reasons why those exist. Due to digitalisation, most business development now requires IT, and close co-operation between business and IT promotes quicker development of new IT-enabled services and products. Also, many companies are investing heavily on IT to achieve competitive advantage. To ensure that the impacts of the digitalisation are positive, there is a need to ensure that the brand image of the IT organisation is positive and aligned with its brand identity. The theoretical framework of this paper was built around brand management and stakeholder communications. Communication was identified as the tool to diminish the gap between brand identity and brand image, and therefore understanding it was important. The empirical research of this thesis was qualitative, and the data was collected through examination of written documentation and by conducting semi-structured interviews in the case company. In total 11 stakeholders of the case organisation were interviewed to understand the brand image they have of the case organisation. The findings of this research include identifying gaps between the brand identity and brand image of the case organisation. As it was a case study, the paper also includes a set of recommendations on how the business-IT alignment could be improved by communications or by some other actions.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format