The amount and range of brand related literature published in the last fifty years can be overwhelming for brand scholars. This Companion provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of contemporary issues in brand management research, and the challenges faced by brands and their managers. Original contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars from Europe, US, Asia and Africa, provide a diverse range of insights on different areas of branding, reflecting the state of the art and insights into future challenges. Designed to provide not only a comprehensive overview, but also to stimulate new insights, this will be an essential resource for researchers, educators and advanced students in branding and brand management, consumer behaviour, marketing and advertising.

Leading the Customer Experience explores the relationship between leadership behaviour and exceptional service. Most organisation's strategic aims and goals centre on the delivery of excellent service. Loyal customers not only keep buying from a company but also recommend the business to others. It is clear that managers and leaders throughout an organisation have a key influence on the experience that customers receive. How leaders behave has a direct impact on their team member's motivation to go the extra mile to deliver excellent service for the customer. Sarah Cook's vision for Leading the Customer Experience is to provide practical advice, tools and techniques for managers in how to effectively lead and motivate their team to deliver the best possible customer service. This book encapsulates her research on the behaviours of leaders who successfully create an environment where employees deliver exceptional service and she brings a pragmatic and business focused approach to the topic. Each chapter contains a variety of case study examples from businesses in UK and Europe, Asia Pacific, US and BRIC countries. These include service organisations in the financial sector, manufacturing, hospitality, transport, healthcare, public and third sectors.

There are an estimated 40,000 international Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), working in an enormous global aid industry; official development assistance alone reached GBP90bn in 2014. This is supplemented by huge voluntary giving - the UK public, for example, give around GBP1bn a year to overseas causes. These organisations face a unique challenge from fraud and corruption. Operating in the world's most under-developed and fragile environments, with minimal infrastructure and trust-based cultures, the risk is high. And, being wholly reliant on donors and supporters for income, so are the stakes. Researchers make different estimates of the scale of the problem facing the sector. Some research implies that losses to the global aid budget caused by occupational fraud and abuse may be in the billions of pounds, while those to the British public's voluntary overseas donations could be in the tens of millions. For many sector professionals working in the developing world, these estimates are readily believable. Fighting Fraud and Corruption in the Humanitarian and Global Development Sector by Oliver May is a timely, accessible and relevant how-to guide, which explores the scale and nature of the threat, debunks pervasive myths, and shows readers how to help their NGOs to better deter, prevent, detect and respond to fraud and corruption.

Socialize Your Patient Engagement Strategy makes the case for a fundamentally new approach to healthcare communication; one that mobilizes patients, healthcare professionals and uses new media to enable gathering, sharing and communication of information to achieve patient-centricity and provide better value for both organizations (in terms of profit) and patients (in terms of better service and improved health). Letizia Affinito and John Mack focus on three priority areas for actions: Improving Health Literacy (e.g. web sites; targeted mass digital campaigns), Improving Self-care (e.g. self-management education; self-monitoring; self-treatment), Improving Patient Safety (e.g. adherence to treatment regimens; equipping patients for safer selfcare). The authors explain the healthcare context to the digital communications revolution; the emerging digital marketing and communications techniques that enable this revolution and the core elements behind a patient-driven digital strategy. Drawing on the authors' research and consulting practices, as well as on the practical experience of managers in medium-large companies worldwide, the book provides a proven framework for improving the development and implementation of patient-centered digital communication programs in healthcare organizations. It is an engaging how-to/how-not-to book which includes tips, advice, and critical reviews that every stakeholder dealing with the healthcare system must have in order to participate in the evolving healthcare system and be more active in making strategic patient-centered choices. Socialize Your Patient Engagement Strategy includes interviews with experts and leading case histories of successful digital communication programs in the healthcare arena. While there are books that focus on specific healthcare communicators within different types of organizations, in their book the authors recognize that effective patient-centric communication crosses all organizational boundar

Why Customers Would Rather Have a Smartphone than a Car explores some of the fundamental changes in consumer behaviour: Why do we buy less in shops and more on the internet? Why do we spend more on gadgets, smartphones and apps and not more on food, holidays or clothing? Why do most business people only look at symptoms and not the causes of changing customer behaviour? The new generation buys differently from the baby boomers; they have different priorities and preferences. The internet has changed us in the way we think, act and communicate. Whilst many retailers now understand the need for change, few of them have established convincing or sustainable models for the future. Cor Molenaar argues that by understanding the drivers behind these new consumer behaviours, retailers can identify the opportunities this represents and adapt their offering accordingly. The kind of relationship retailing he advocates involves the way the retailer interacts with their customer; the new environment that they need to sustain along with their ability to relate customer data, technology and new services. The author interweaves examples from traditional and virtual retailing with his research on consumer psychology and buying behaviour to offer a sophisticated and at times challenging guide for all those involved in retailing, as well as those responsible for planning and designing social and retail space.

Practitioners of marketing in higher education and all academics across all disciplines who work in higher education are aware of the importance of marketing to their careers, their department, and their institution. Chancellors, University Presidents, Deans, Heads of School, Directors of Research, Directors of Programs and faculty, as well as those who work in departments of marketing within higher education institutions, recognise the increasing utility of marketing what they have to offer. Our purpose in this research based book on higher education marketing is to bring to the diversity of these publics a more sophisticated way of thinking about, and methods for, marketing higher education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

* Brings together many of the world's leading thinkers on management education to challenge the biggest issues impacting the future of business schools. * Each chapter is written in a readable and accessible way for those inside academia and for the more general reader. * As an Open Access book, it is designed to have genuine impact in the field of management education.

The Value Trail offers a comprehensive approach to competitive analysis and strategy, considering value as a central theme and from a customer based perspective. It fully develops a disruptive new model of strategic analysis (namely the Three Dimensions of Value model) that approaches the drivers of success within a business from a value-based perspective: how value is understood by the customer (Appreciation of Value), and how it is boosted (Concentration of Value) or subtracted (Predation of Value) by different business agents. From this business-level perspective, the book progressively moves down to a company level to allow the reader to understand how companies can set corporate goals and leverage internal resources to deliver successful value propositions. To close the circle, special attention is paid to the definition of an integrated monitoring system based on both market (outside-in perspective) and company (inside-out perspective) metrics. On top of that, the book also identifies, in line with this new theory, the most relevant existing competitive models, together with a comprehensive analysis of their strategic approach and success drivers. If you are an entrepreneur looking for a solid and understandable guide to fully cover all company stages, a manager seeking to improve the implementation of operational and strategic processes or a practitioner in search of a disruptive approach to competitive analysis, this is the book you've been waiting for.

Corporate governance and corporate reporting are closely linked to each other, and their respective evolutionary patterns are mutually influencing. Along with the recent expansion of company disclosure, a growing attention is being paid to corporate governance determinants and mechanisms underpinning the decision to voluntarily adopt non-financial disclosure formats, such as integrated reporting. At institutional level, several national corporate governance codes have been changed towards the recognition and inclusion of this innovative, non-financial language. In academic research, the influence of corporate governance variables vis-a-vis the choice to embrace such reporting practices has been subject to a long scrutiny. However, only a little inquiry has so far analysed the influence of corporate governance factors on integrated reporting adoption, quality, and credibility. Accordingly, the aim of the book is to investigate if, and to what extent, corporate board composition and characteristics can affect, at the same time, the decision to voluntarily adopt integrated reporting by companies as well as their financial performance. The study carries out an empirical analysis of the professional features of board members at the time of their decision to implement integrated reporting as a new form of company accountability. The work provides innovative insights into the articulated relationships between the quantitative and qualitative composition of corporate boards and the latter's choice to uptake this advanced form of reporting to represent the wider value creation processes of their organisations.

To manage key accounts profitably you need strategic planning that works. This book is the definitive guide to achieving this based on the unmatched practical and research experience of Ryals and McDonald. Key Account Management is proven to deliver substantial benefits to the bottom line. Best practice companies know that real results from managing powerful customers are not achieved through short-term cost cutting. Instead, as the best companies understand, it depends on fostering carefully developed and profitably managed relationships with an equally carefully selected group of key accounts. This is a genuinely strategic activity that goes well beyond sales management and the simplistic use of budgets to generate targets. It is about the behaviours and practices that make predictable, profitable and sustainable Key Account Management possible. To achieve this the book is constructed to deliver- * Clear descriptions of the various techniques and the reason for their importance * A hugely powerful step by step approach to using the key techniques to build strategic skills * Templates for building real plans * Cases, examples and vignettes to show best real world practice Based on wide application in the business world, and the world class research at Cranfield Management School this book will be an essential introduction to the principles and reality of Strategic Key Account Planning. For senior managers, key account managers at all levels as well as those on executive and MBA courses it will be an essential guide and text.

Strategic Marketing Planning concentrates on the critical planning aspects that are of vital importance to practitioners and students alike. It has a clear structure that offers a digest of the five principal dimensions of the strategic marketing planning process. Leading authors in this sector, Gilligan and Wilson offer current thinking in marketing and consider the changes it has undergone over the past few years. Updated information in this new edition includes: * Changing corporate perspectives on the role of strategic marketing activity * Changing social structures and the rise of social tribes * The significance of the new consumer and how the new consumer needs to be managed * New thinking on market segmentation * Changing routes to market * Developments in e-marketing * Changing environmental structures and pressures

Where do powerful strategies come from? How do some companies develop strategies that enable them to outperform others regardless of the state of their industry or the economic climate? How does a company get the essentials to work in regard to the company's strategies, such as leadership buy-in and follow through on implementations and performance management, without being slow, rigid and check-box focused? These are some of the questions asked by Arve Peder A~verland in Always On: Digital Brand Strategy in a Big Data World. This book will provide an understanding of what it takes to develop, implement and run a digital strategy but it is not meant as a rigid process document that must be strictly adhered to. Companies have different needs and live in vastly different environments. The internal structure of an organization and the market in which it competes is not going to adapt to a digital strategy process, it must find a process and methodology that works best for it. With big data emerging as a standard framework for decision making, digital strategy and governance have taken on increased importance. It's a given in today's online marketplace that you are perceived as being always on. Make sure your governance programmes for your systems and platforms keep it that way. Think fast, be agile, be ready - you're always on!

The need for assurance is never more acute than in times of turbulence and uncertainty. The events following the financial market crisis demonstrate the catastrophic consequence of risk taking that exceeds the board's appetite, and of not joining up risk intelligence for sound decision making. Boards and senior management alike consistently seek the 'one truth' about risk exposures and strength of controls but are continuing to grapple with the challenge. Much has been written about assurance and the governance of risks, but mainly by those who provide it - such as internal auditors, accountants and information security technologists - for the purpose of advancing their professional practices. Less is written for or by those in governance who need assurance for the effective discharge of their responsibilities. Regulations do not usually go beyond acknowledging its importance and rely on those in the boardroom to get it right. Studies have consistently shown the link between weak corporate governance and corporate failures. The lack of reliable assurance has often been a factor. Assurance, as an integral part of corporate governance, cannot be taken for granted. It requires conscious action across the organisation. It is time to rethink assurance beyond its usual functional boundaries, to focus on what matters to the business and how discussions in the board room can be better supported by more joined up assurance. This book provides practical guidance for those who need that support as well as those who deliver assurance.

We live in a behavior economy, an environment in which people no longer engage with companies just by purchasing things, but they seek engagement with services that allow them to behave, to leave a mark, and to participate in the community of others. The economic model promoted by the behavior economy is a model where behavior is the only goal of our actions, and where intrinsic motivation is the key to participation, engagement, and the satisfaction of multiple dimensions of value. Value Creation and the Internet of Things describes value delivery and consumption, and the mechanisms by which new value is captured and created, in enterprises dedicated to competing and prospering in this new environment. This book is significant in the context of the Internet of Things becoming mainstream, forcing organizations to re-examine their value creation methodologies in light of new consumer behavior and expectations. The Internet of Things will reframe the existence of the ones enriched by it. It will do so not because it can, but because our motivation will demand it. This is a book about reframing reality for new and incumbent organizations. The reality to reframe is not an imaginary one, but the immediate reality in which one operates: the behavior economy.

What's Your Business? offers a comprehensive pathway through the subject of corporate design clarifying the relationship between corporate design and corporate strategy and the terms identity, brand, image, communication and reputation. The book explores the impact of developing digital technology on brand creation and positioning in a marketplace, through symbolic and coherent design. A local market trader may buy a van, promote his business on a blackboard and proclaim 'daily special offers'. Corporations use computers, design websites and communicate with global clients through social media. Yet each business started with an idea and developed a distinctive existence. What's Your Business? helps you turn a business idea into reality by establishing its existence, ethos, message and activities. By integrating corporate and design strategy with creative inputs Claire Tomlins illustrates the subject's diversity. She ensures businesses set goals, strategies and plans whilst ensuring they recognise an identity that sparks the corporate design strategy and creative inputs that manifests the company's aesthetic for marketing purposes; including design management, Intellectual Property topics and measures. Business people wishing to know how design can provide added value to their organisation will find this book useful, including where they could contribute. Academic concepts and definitions are updated and explanations are provided to business and design students on where each of their skillsets can contribute to a business.

How do firms become Client-centric? Effective Client Management in Professional Services is about putting the Client first, everywhere, in the activities of professional services firms. The book introduces The Client Management Model to enable firms to assess their level of Client orientation and relationship development. It also features The Client Management Index which enables firms to benchmark their result against their peers. Many firms are still developing and improving their commercial structures and approaches to attract, develop and retain Clients. Characteristically, professional services firms tend to lag their consumer goods and service industry counterparts in overall commerciality. Only recently have they discovered the value of having a strong brand promise with the associated employee engagement. In many firms achievement of Client satisfaction is not a strategic objective; this may need to be reviewed. This book provides a comprehensive, pragmatic guide to the Client relationship journey, from identifying potential Clients to their engagement, care, retention, development, loyalty and beyond. The handbook format has exercises and tools which can help to establish which Clients are likely to be the most lucrative and thus provide the desired financial returns. The book also includes insights from top practitioners, anecdotes, case studies, charts and useful exercises and checklists. Readers can also determine their own level of effectiveness using the end of chapter reviews and a diagnostic tool to produce a Client Management Profile.

The behaviour of people and their organisation are the primary drivers of a project's pace of progress. Methodology, tools and techniques are vital but subordinate to human endeavour; if only because their selection, deployment and application entirely depend on the abilities of the project players and their organisation. Performance ultimately rests on human and organisational behaviour: expressed by the players' experience, professional ability, resolve, dialogue and collaboration. Fresh approaches and methods help practitioners to address this reality productively. This book is written under nine headings: collaboration; able people; strength; connections; rigour; pace; persistence; adaptation; and maturity. The Single-Minded Project offers a new and convincing appreciation of project management that will harness players and their organisation. It recognises that at its heart, the management and leadership of a project regime relies on the choices, behaviours and decisions of its players and the organisation's freedom of action. It addresses the urgency of the project (the need for swiftness), coupled with the kind and degree of diligence (the need for rigour in the choice and management of method): referring to its Pace of Progress. The success of a project very much depends on the pace at which it is conducted to then deliver value. Projects find themselves in territory where methodology, tools and techniques are of little help. The Single-Minded Project fills that gap and more.

As the era of ever expanding markets and ample resources ends, governments and business will have to behave differently. The world is facing weak economic growth, limits to affordable resources and increasing concerns about environmental consequences. During the boom times, governments championed de-regulation and business responded by adopting an anything-goes attitude. In these straitened times, strategic analysis has to engage with the challenges that society faces to create resilient corporations fit for the 21st century. In Corporate Strategy in the Age of Responsibility, Peter McManners, who has for nine years run strategy workshops on the Henley MBA focusing on the global business environment, sets about providing a strategic framework for navigating the new economic environment. Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) now exist, but they struggle to find the strategic rationale for the improvements they champion. The author argues that their good intentions often lack traction, partly because others in management don't get it, but also because they are not ambitious enough. The book is not about preaching semi-charitable behaviour or how to enhance the reputation of the corporation instead it is about surviving and thriving in a challenging and changing environment. A corporate audience familiar with strategy books will relate to this book, but will find it steers them towards radically new strategic thinking suitable for a turbulent period of transition.

Learn the fundamentals of market research with this bestselling guide that delivers an overview of the whole process, from planning a project and executing it, what tools to use, through to analysis and presenting the findings. Market Research in Practice provides a practical and robust introduction to the subject, providing a clear step-by-step guide to managing market research and how to effectively to obtain the most reliable results. Written by an industry expert with over 35 years' practical experience in running a successful market research agency, tips and advice are included throughout to ground the concepts in business reality. This text also benefits from real-world examples from companies including Adidas, Marks & Spencer, Grohe and General Motors. Now in its fourth edition, Market Research in Practice is now fully updated to capture the latest changes and developments in the field and explores new tools of qualitative research using online methods as well as expanding further on online surveys such as SurveyMonkey. Accompanied by a range of templates, surveys and resources for lecturers, this is an invaluable guide for students of research methods, researchers, marketers and users of market research.

Territorial Development and Action Research examines the role of action research within fields such as territorial development and innovation. Most researchers analyse these fields from the outside, developing a theoretical understanding of what should be done, but not of how to do it. Based on their own experience of territorial development processes from the inside out, James Karlsen and Miren Larrea argue that filling the gap regarding social relations in the innovation process makes it possible for researchers to engage in the processes taking place in the territory, thereby revealing how to make things work. This book will help researchers face the pressure to engage and play a useful role in the development of their host regions. It will help policy makers to continuously learn and redefine policy approaches and bring about collaboration through networks, programs and projects where researchers and practitioners in regional, local and urban development work together to construct territorial development. Readers will acquire a better understanding of micro-territorial development processes and the roles played by individuals and coalitions in endogenous development processes.

There can be little doubt about the profound impact that the Internet has had on all aspects of business over the past decade. Indeed, it is now widely accepted that we have entered a new and even more revolutionary phase in the development of the Net as a global marketing and communications platform; a phase characterised by information pull rather than push, user-generated content, openness, sharing, collaboration, interaction, communities, and social networking. New generation Web-based communities and hosted applications are beginning to have a major impact on customer behaviour across a diverse range of industries. These new applications represent a fundamental change in the way people use the Internet, their online expectations, and experiences.

From a marketing perspective, the most distinctive feature is not the technology involved but rather the growth of a new global culture a Net generation culture based on decentralised authority rather than hierarchy and control, online socialising and collaboration, user-generated and distributed content, open communications, peer-to-peer sharing, and global participation. Success in this new online environment, characterised by people and network empowerment, requires new mindsets and innovative approaches to marketing, customer, and network relationships.

This book makes a valuable contribution to the field by examining recent and future developments in online marketing, including the revolutionary impact of new media. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, including: information exchange on bulletin board systems and in online consumer portals; Web 2.0 and New-Wave Globals; online tribal marketing; co-creation; industry impact; privacy issues; online advertising effectiveness; and practitioner prognostics for the future of online marketing.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

This book provides a clear roadmap for the roles workers and leaders in business, labor, education, and government must play in building a new social contract for all to prosper. It is a call to action for a collaborative effort to develop both high-quality jobs and strong, successful businesses while simultaneously overcoming the deep social and economic divisions that are all too apparent in society today. Written by two leading and trusted experts in the field of employment and work from MIT and Cornell University, this book is a practical, action-oriented guide. Readers will feel empowered to take actions needed to shape a better future of work for themselves, their employees, their co-workers, and others they may represent. It emphasizes the need to fix America's broken social contract and reimagine a new one. The most important message of this book is that we have the ability to shape the work of the future by harnessing the power of new technologies. The book is essential reading for business executives, labor leaders and workforce advocates, government policy makers, politicians, and anyone who is interested in using emerging knowledge and technologies to drive innovation, creating high-quality jobs, and shaping a more broadly shared prosperity.

Given the increased social and environmental problems in China, this book looks into the social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms by constructing a stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional, disclosure index. The book contains a three-part study: the first part explores the current status of social and environment disclosure practices. The second part empirically examines the relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and various influencing factors (i.e. stakeholders' power and corporate characteristics). The third part empirically examines the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (i.e. publishing a CSR report and the quality of the CSR report) and socially responsible reputation. The book finds that the CSR report provided more stakeholder-relevant social and environmental disclosure than the annual report. It also finds that corporate characteristics such as firm size, profitability and industry classification are all statistically significant factors influencing the social and environmental disclosure of the Chinese firms studied. Shareholders significantly influenced firms' social and environmental disclosure, and creditors significantly influenced firms' disclosure related to their environmental performance. The final part of the study reports that publishing a CSR report and CSR reporting quality had a positive influence on firms' socially responsible reputations and that the CEO/chairman duality negatively influenced firms' socially responsible reputation. This book will be of interest to those who are keen to learn more about corporate social responsibilities in the context of Chinese firms.

Increasingly in the public discourse there are references to the knowledge economy, knowledge society, knowledge workers and knowledge organisations. The argument is that knowledge is becoming the main economic resource, replacing the natural resources that drove the industrial revolution. The new knowledge economy is driven by knowledge development, innovation and highly skilled employees. Increasing investment in higher education and in universities is in line with this strategy and understanding. In an earlier book, Creating Collaborative Advantage edited with Richard Ennals, Professor Hans Christian Garmann Johnsen argued that it is knowledge that links social and economic processes. He believes that what is missing in the current discussion on innovation is a conceptualisation of exactly what knowledge is. In The New Natural Resource, he digs deeper into what it is and how it develops and subsequently leads to widespread change. The author argues that knowledge is inherently a social phenomenon. That is why social processes are closely linked to economic development, and why this relationship becomes even more apparent in the new knowledge economy. Knowledge is not an objective entity, established once and for all. Knowledge development is interrelated with values, norms, perceptions and interpretations. We need to know what the mechanisms are by which knowledge becomes legitimate, true and relevant.

The journey to purchase for the family shop or the B2B buyer is impacted by media, advice, packaging and trial. The sales and marketing challenge is what to say, and where to say it. Shoppernomics, based on research and case studies from US and UK, examines the path taken by the potential buyer. The authors describe the key drivers and barriers on the journey to purchase. They identify the need to get key messages, key partners and key media all working together, and a framework for success. The authors challenge the budget split between sales and marketing as possibly the largest barrier to successful shopper marketing and identify core stores and the areas they serve as being equally important targets for investment. Shoppernomics provides the manual for achieving successful companies serving happy and loyal customers, as the ultimate goal for manufacturers, retailers and brands. It reminds marketers that it is what customers take from their product or service that is important, not what they think they are delivering. It reminds sales people that nothing is more important than matching supply and demand in the eyes of the customer regardless of who actually makes the ultimate sale. Shoppernomics is designed to deliver fast results for companies prepared to recognise that they are not perfect, and go the extra mile to find out why.