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Companies adopting new brand names are frequently reported in the business press but this phenomenon has as yet received little academic attention. Dispensing with an established brand, often the culmination of many years of continuous investment, and perfunctorily replacing it with a new brand would seem to contradict a century of marketing theory and practice. This paper sets out to provide a preliminary investigation of the corporate rebranding phenomenon: it defines it, analyses its main drivers, and examines the process involved in selecting and establishing a new corporate brand.
A database of rebranded companies compiled from secondary sources is explored as a first step in searching for empirical insights on the rebranding phenomenon. It enables us to address such questions as whether rebranding is more prevalent in particular industries or geographic markets, whether particular industry conditions seem to precipitate this change and what the stated motivations of the firms involved were. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for organisations considering whether or not to rebrand.
The idea of brands as a core asset upon which corporate success depends is deeply ingrained in modern corporate culture as well as being a central tenet of the marketing discipline. A further premise that underpins marketing education and practice is that strong brands are built through many years of sustained investment which, if well judged, will yield a loyal consumer franchise that will result in large sales, a high market share and a continuing stream of income for the brand owner (Kapferer, 1995; Aaker, 2000; Keller, 2002).
Despite this received wisdom, there has been a marked increase in the number of high-profile companies rebranding or renaming their organisations in the past few years. Choosing to discard a long-held brand name and starting again from scratch, apparently attempting to build a new brand overnight, would seem to run counter to the fundamental axioms of marketing. The question then is: what exactly is driving this spate of rebrandings and what are the performance implications for the new brands?
This question would seem to provide a fertile ground for academic research but, as yet, very little consideration has been given to it in the academic literature. This paper represents a first attempt to explore...