Brand Management in Business-to-Business Context : Relational Perspective

It is a common belief among managers that branding is only useful in Business-to-Consumer markets and not in Business-to-Business. These managers think that the Busi-ness-to-Business rational and unemotional buying decision-making process cannot be affected by brand because it is only concerned with features, price, quality and so on. This is incorrect information. The possibility to choose between competitors has grown during time and this has expanded the traditional view of branding. A trusted brand provides to the customer an easy and trustworthy selection of a supplier or a service provider. Brand is a promise of quality, origin and performance to select among the options. Even the person who is in charge of the organizational buying process has emotions after all. This thesis aimed at finding practices on how Business-to-Business organizations can manage their brand equity in the long-term and to provide examples of these findings through case studies conducted in Finnish corporations. The theoretical framework covered the Business-to-Business brand management process and the steps included in it. The actual branding process was at the center of the study, as were also the customers. The model consists of customer brand perception and the actions taken by the organization to create the brand. The customer segments were divid-ed to three groups according to their brand receptiveness and what they see as sources of brand equity. The lower part of the framework is the actions of organization divided to two major categories, brand management tools and brand management in the long-term. The model – and the branding process – starts by the actions of the organization and ends with the customer. In the empirical part, the theoretical framework was tested by using UPM Raflatac Oy, KONE Oyj, Neste Oil Oyj and Wärtsilä Oyj as case companies. The case studies consisted of interviews conducted with the case company’s representative. The four qualitative in-terviews were held as open discussion to reveal the actual perceptions of the representative and the case company. The revised framework crystallizes the case study findings. It highlights the five critical components of Business-to-Business brand management. The major five components re-vealed by the study were brand planning, brand strategy, brand building, brand audit and the process cycle. According to the study these five components have a major effect on the success of the branding in the Business-to-Business context