This thesis explores the guidelines that brand managers should follow when branding a newlymerged or acquired subsidiary. It does this within the context of international brandarchitecture management. M&As are more popular than ever, although most fail to meetperformance goals. Numerous scholars warn that this because the brand is overlooked infavour of financial, operational, and legal issues in the due diligence process. This thesisseeks to answer the following questions:1. After a horizontal cross-border M&A, which guidelines should brand managers follow inorder to design an international brand architecture with high brand performance?2. To what extent does Telenor follow the guidelines identified in RQ1 when developing itsinternational brand architecture post-M&A?The key findings from the theoretical review are presented in a normative framework and canbe divided into four main categories: brand considerations, firm characteristics, nationalculture, and industry conditions. The normative framework has two purposes: The first is toevaluate Telenor's official brand architecture framework and guidelines. The second is toassess the branding decisions Telenor made for DTAC in Thailand and DiGi in Malaysia, andcompare these to the recommended approaches set forward by the normative framework. It isconcluded that international brand architecture is a multifaceted and dynamic concept, and itsmanagement must be adapted to specific contexts. The findings reveal that Telenor'sframework is mostly based around business areas and therefore too simplistic. Moreover, thebranding decisions made for the two cases are not consistent with the official framework.This suggests that decisions are made ad-hoc, independent of guidelines, and possibly evenbased on managerial preferences. The managerial implication is consequently that Telenorshould improve its existing framework by extending the scope and adding a theoreticalfoundation. The guidelines should be communicated clearly and enforced thereafter.
展开▼
