RU. Int. J. vol.

3(1), 2009

The Impact of Corporate Re-branding on Brand Equity and Firm Performance

Korakoj Petburikul Institute of International Studides, Ramkhamhaeng University Bangkok, Thailand E-mail: milkid_way@hotmail.com. Abstract Strong brand enhances positive evaluations of a products quality, maintains a high level of product awareness, and provides a consistent image or brand personality. As time passes by, these brands remain unchanged and consumers perceptions towards the brands are changing. These brands are becoming obsolete by themselves because of the changing society and modern brands. Thus, re-branding is a necessary strategy that can escalate a new business image to build confidence to the consumers. This paper will focus on the corporate re-branding strategy with the approach on the effect of consumers perception in Thailand. The key measurement of successful perception of re-branding is brand equity which composite with brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and other proprietary brand assets by conduct survey on consumer. Introduction In todays competitive market, brand building is crucial. Strong brand can create options of growth, command market share, barrier of entry for competitors and consumer loyalty. Moreover, strong brand enhances positive evaluations of a products quality, maintains a high level of product awareness, and provides a consistent image or brand personality. In order to keep up with fierce competition, companies may seek to transform their business due to changing business directions or branching out business units. This change is mandatory for anyone who wants to survive. Thus, re-branding is a necessary strategy that can escalate a new business image to build confidence to the consumers. Re-branding is one of the key factors that marketers have to pay attention in order to revive a brand that is becoming obsolete. This dissertation will focus on the management of corporate re-branding with the approach on the effect of consumers perception in Thailand. It will define some crucial decisions and steps needed to carry on the re-branding procedure to the success. In order to achieve such purpose, this dissertation will explore cases of Thai large enterprises, which have successfully gone through re-branding that aligns with
155

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

their new strategic position, gaining more confidence and loyalty from consumers as well as investors. True, the giant communication company, and TOT, the government owned communication organization in Thailand, are to be the case study in this dissertation. Study of both companies can reveal the different cases of re-branding between government and private sector although they operate in the same business deeply in all brand equity components and firm performance. The cases will show reasons why changes are needed, and reasons why new brands come out the way they do. Corporate re-branding When product life cycle comes to a downfall (liabilities greater than asset) and/or brand life cycle comes to decline of the brand period, it implies that there is a change in the market trend. As lifestyles change and new competitors enter the market, brand attributes that were once important in purchasing decisions may become inappropriate. Re-branding may be prompted by a crisis or scandal, or a brand may simply need a fresh start- sometimes, trying to revitalize an old brand thats lost its shine is like polishing the proverbial turd. The re-branding process has been like giving birth. Re-branding is the practice of building anew a name representative of a differentiated position in the mind frame of stakeholders and a distinctive identity from competitors (Muzellec, Doogan, and Lambkin, 2003). A corporate name change may enhance market recognition and position and generate an increase in the stock market value of renamed firm (Horsky and Swyngedouw, 1987). For a new name to be lunched, however, the old name has to be abandoned, an action likely to nullify years of branding effort in terms of creating awareness. Since name awareness is a key component of brand equity (Aaker, 1991), this action is likely to further damage the equity of the brand. As the name is the anchor for brand equity, the change of name might not only damage the brand equity, it might simply destroy it (Muzellec and Lambkin, 2006). The re-branding concerned brand equity, brand gestation, and communication involvement. It was proposed that re-branding exercise involving a change of name had the potential to affect old-name brand equity adversely. Thus, whether a re-branding follows from corporate strategy or constitutes the actual corporate strategy, it aims at enhancing, regaining, transferring and/or recreating the corporate brand equity (Muzellec and Lambkin, 2006). Companies will occasionally discover that they may have to re-position the brand because customers change preferences and new competitors enter the market. Moreover, the reason for re-position the brand is not only to change consumer preference, but mergers, acquisitions and diversified business also influence companies to re-position. Often times, company is forced into re-brandingthe name is no longer appropriate, the identity elements do not communicate the true nature of the venture or its purpose, or legal conditions force such change. Sometimes, the image is obsolete. Company looks and sounds too old. Some brands need to change while others work in a more conservative segment or work more traditionally by nature.
156

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

While there may not be a preponderance of re-branding in any one industry, the phenomenon does seem to be geographically concentrated, with 42 percent of re-branded companies based in UK and 31 percent in the US, as shown in Table 2 (Muzellec, Doogan, and Lambkin 2003) The prominence of the US is not surprising as it is the worlds leading economy and many large international companies with subsidiaries worldwide in the pharmaceutical, telecommunication and computer-related industries, etc., are headquartered there. The UK is also home to many large companies, of course, but the prominence of UK firms may also reflect the use of the Financial Times as a source of data since it is a UK publication. The rest of Europe is also reasonably high (17.4 percent), while Australia, Canada and South Africa account for the remaining 9 percent. Kailkatis study has shown an interesting number that from the first half of 2000 to 2001, re-branding around the world increased by 7 percent, equivalent to 1,993 name changes. The United States of America led the world with a total of 1,761 name changes. Meanwhile The United Kingdom was the first across the Atlantic with 65 name changes. Next were Canada with 41, Germany with 29, France with 24, and Japan with 21 (Kaikati 2003). As the activity carries forward, re-branding has become one of the most discussed topics in Asia, including Thailand. From Muzellec (2003)s study, the study shows that 166 companies, which have gone through re-branding represent over 40 different industries. Those are catagorized into 12 general industry types derived from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for ease of analysis. The categories with most rebranded companies are the information technology and telecommunications industries, representing 22.3 percent of the entire re-branded companies. This evident shows a market trend of technology that it is changing rapidly. Many telecommunications companies will change their strategies and re-position to par up with technology movement. For example True Corporation and TOT, the giant telecommunication companies in Thailand, chose to change its name to prepare for the new technology era and to support a new direction. Not only new direction but TRUE and TOT also want to combine the existing brands in some manner. Umbrella branding may be appropriate for the companies while single banner brand is used worldwide for almost the entire product line of the company (Kaikati, 2003). TRUE and TOT have re-branding by changing name completely. A change of name presents the opportunity to project the companys distinctiveness through intensive use of the total corporate communication mix (Hatch and Schulz, 2001). Moreover, by definition the name is new to stakeholders and customers, so they do not know what the brand stands for. The re-branding and the clever usage of the various brand ingredients (notably colors) allowed a smooth transition. Advertising, as well as other elements of the marketing communication mix played a significant role in creating brand awareness as well as
157

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

fostering brand values (Muzellec and Lambkin, 2006). Therefore, the values and image of the new brand must be communicated to all stakeholders and customers through an integrated marketing communication campaign (Daly and Moloney, 2004). Brand Equity Brand equity is important in marketing consumer goods and services. Brand equity is regarded as very important concept in business practice as well as in academic research because marketers can gain competitive advantage through successful brand. The competitive advantage of firms that have brands with high equity includes the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors promotional pressures, and creation of barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). Building brand equity is considered an important part of brand building. Most articles automatically assume that brand equity has an impact on a brands performance; brands should do everything feasible to increase their equity. However, it does not make sense economically to invest a firms scarce resources in strategies to add value if the value does not translate into preferences and purchase behavior. Brand equity is supposed to bring several advantages to firm. For example, high brand equity levels are known to lead to higher consumer preferences and purchase intentions (CobbWalgren et al., 1995). Firms with high brand equity are also known to have high stock returns (Aaker and Jacobson, 1994). Aaker (1991) provide the most comprehensive definition of brand equity available in the literature, defining brand equity as: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firms customers. In effect, Aaker conceptualized brand equity as a set of assets (or liabilities). He uses is consumer preference ratings for a branded product versus an unbranded equivalent. Aaker is one of the few authors to incorporate both perceptual and behavioral dimensions. He suggested using a brand-earnings multiplier that is based on a weighted average of the brand on five key components of brand equity :awareness, associations, perceived quality, loyalty, andother proprietary assets such as patents and trade marks Many researchers try to prove the real brand equity model. Pappu and et.al. (2005) provide empirical evidence of the multidimensionality of consumer- based brand equity, supporting Aakers and Kellers conceptualization of brand equity. The research also enriched consumer-based brand equity measurement by incorporating the brand personality measures. The overall model goodness-of-fit results and the measurement model supported the proposed four-factor model. The measures of absolute and incremental fit indicated that model in each case was acceptable. The overall results of the confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that consumer-based brand equity was a four-dimensional construct. So, this dissertation will use Aakers model for measuring corporate re-branding strategy on brand equity by excluding other proprietary assets component.
158

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

From Myers (2003), this study examined the effect of intangible and tangible attribute on brand equity as well as its relationship to consumer preferences. There is a strong relationship between brand equity and each of the preference measures utilized in this study. So, the brand with the higher equity in the category generates significantly greater preference. It might have been expected that brand name may have greater important than overall preference for these brands, given the less abstract nature of this product category. Intangible attributes of high involvement categories might contribute more to brand equity than intangible of low involvement categories and that brand equity may be influenced by attribute knowledge( which decomposed into brand awareness and brand image) more than consumer preference. From this dissertation, it studies into TOT and True company which are high involvement categories that might contribute more to brand equity; thus, brand name may have greater important than consumer preference. So, building brand name is more important for both companies. Marketing Communication Strategy Marketing communication plays an important role in building and maintaining stakeholder relationship, and in leveraging these relationships in terms of brand and channel equity (Duncan and Moriarty 1998). The IMC helps businesses to develop an effective and efficient marketing communications strategy. IMC strategy is essential to the firms strategic brand management and that it strengthens the interface between the firms brand identity strategy and its customer-based brand equity. So, re-brandings company will use IMC for the important tools to build brand equity. Methodology This hypotheses are drawn to study that a companys re-branding strategy by using IMC components has an influence on brand equity and that demographic factors have an influence to brand equity as well. In addition, the hypothesis is also drawn to understand whether or not a companys re-branding strategy helps driving its performance. To fully understand this, we will compare sales volume pre and post re-branding.

159

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

The hypotheses can be stated as follows: Hypothesis 1: Customer Demographic have impact on Brand Equity Hypothesis 2: IMC has impact on Brand Equity
H1

Customer Demographic
Gender Family Status Age Education Occupation Economic Status Brand Loyalty Brand Awareness Perceived Quality Sale Volume

Re-Brand

Brand Equity

Firm Performance

H2

Re-Brand

Brand Association

Companys Re-Branding Strategy (IMC)

Advertising Direct Marketing Public Relations Sponsorship Promotion Internet Marketing

160

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Methodology designs for the collection of the primary data used in testing the hypotheses and includes formulating of the hypotheses, the data collection methods, designing the questionnaires, the pilot study and the sample design. This research consists of three parts: demographic information, brand equity, and integrated marketing communication. In order to obtain demographic information, the respondents were required to select the best answers that fit their profile the most. Respondents were asked if your home is in Bangkok and vicinity area, have fixed line telephone, or have hi-speed Internet. If the respondents do not have information in those criteria, then these respondents would be excluded from this research survey. In order to define brand equity and delineate its parameters, a review of the academic literature on brand equity was undertaken. Aaker (1991) provided the most comprehensive definition of brand equity available in the literature, defining brand equity as : a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firms customers. He suggested using a brand-earnings multiplier that is based on a weighted average of the brand on five key components of brand equity: brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and other proprietary assets such as patents and trade marks. So, this dissertation will use Aakers model for measuring corporate rebranding strategy on customer-based brand equity by excluding other proprietary assets component. The respondents in this study were asked to choose with a five-point Likert scale of agreement-disagreement anchored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The advantage of using and interval scale is that it permits the researcher to use a variety of statistical techniques which can be applied to nominal and ordinal scale data in addition to the arithmetic mean, standard deviation, product-moment correlations, and other statistics commonly used in marketing research. Measures for brand equity used in the present study were compiled from the literature (e.g. Aaker, 1991, 1996; Yoo et al., 2000; Yoo and Donthu, 2001). The third part is the study of integrated marketing communication in corporate communication strategy which develops strong customer-based brand equity. The study capture on advertising, direct marketing, public relations, sponsorship, promotions, and Internet marketing. The respondents in this study were asked to choose with a five-point Likert scale anchored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Survey Instrument The survey questionnaire used in this study is divided into 3 parts. In Part 1, the respondents were asked general demographic questions such as gender, age, education attainment, economic status, occupation, and family status. Part 2 of the questionnaire contains 4 items measuring various dimensions of customer-based brand equity, namely brand awareness, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand
161

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

association. And, each item is contains sub-item. Part 3 of the questionnaire contains 6 items measuring various dimensions of integrated marketing communication, namely advertising, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, promotion, and Internet marketing. Pilot Study Questionnaire was pre-tested on 20 selected people (5% from population sample). It took most respondents about 10-15 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Based on the feedback, no item was found to be too vague, confusing, or conceptually inadequate to be removed from consideration. But, some clarifications were made to the questionnaire wording in order to reduce ambiguity such as Internet broadband, direct marketing, and sponsorship. The researcher has added some brief definitions. So, there were no modifications made to any question of the survey instruments. Sampling Plan The appropriate sample size for this study was determined by a formula used by Yamane (1967). Since the population in subscriber of fixed-line telephone in Bangkok and vicinity area was 3,429,696 in 2006 (From www.tot.co.th, www.truecrop.co.th ), and the level of precision is 0.05. Hence, the minimum sample size in this study should be at least 400. In order to obtain as large as possible, the researcher decided to send out 450 sets of questionnaires Data Collection The multi-stage random sampling distribution method with 3 stages was used in this study. The first stage, stratified random sampling was used to classified sample population. Two classifications were chosen; the first one is urban districts, which include Silom, Phayathai, and Sukhumvit and secondly is the vicinity area, which include Chaengwattana and Pinklao. After we identify the classifications, we select working area by purposive sampling method, which focuses on government offices, private companies and universities. Then we utilize quota random sampling mechanic by distributing 40 sets of questionnaires to private companies, 20 sets to government office and 20 sets to universities. This research conducted in Thailand (Bangkok and vicinity area), examine a stage in the re-branding strategy that is relatively unexplored in terms of brand equity and firm performance relationships in general. Data was collected via intercept conducted by trained interviewers at universities, government offices, and business area at various times of the day. Every effort was made to get a representative sample. Four interviewers had training before conducting the survey. They are obliged to explain all questions thoroughly and ensure that the questionnaire is completely filled. If there are unanswered fields, they will be noted for the data entry convenience purpose. Respondents were asked if your home is in Bangkok and vicinity area, have fixed line telephone, and have hi-speed Internet. For purpose of this study, people who do not live in Bangkok and vicinity area, and do not have fixed
162

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

line telephone were not asked to participate in this study. Those who met this criterion were given a copy of the self-administered questionnaire. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed and 420 returned in the given time frame. Of these, 20 were excluded since they had not been fully completed. Thus, the findings presented here refer to the analysis a total of 400 questionnaires. Data Analysis Method Data collected for this study were analyzed using the SPSS Version 11 program. First, the correlations among variables were analyzed and an inter-correlation matrix was generated using component analysis technique to determine the appropriate number of factors for variables. Following that, the data were analyzed systematically by the following procedures: Stage 1 1. Explore the number of brand equity components that are relevant to rebranding in Thailand. 2. Explore the number of integrated marketing communication components that are relevant to re-branding in Thailand. Reliability Analysis: Cronbachs Alpha was used as the coefficient of reliability. Stage 2 1. Test the relationship between demographic components and brand equity of corporate re-branding. 2. Test the relationship between integrated marketing communication components and brand equity of corporate re-branding. Chi-square: Chi-square is any statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic has a chi-square distribution when the null hypothesis is not rejected, or any in which the probability distribution of the test statistic (assuming the null hypothesis is not rejected) can be made to approximate a chi-square distribution as closely as desired by making the sample size large enough. Pearson Correlation: The Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient (r) has been used in this study to find how each integrated marketing communication factors related to brand equity components(brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association) except brand awareness. The correlation coefficients will range from 1.00 to + 1.00. The farther away the correlation is from zero, the stronger the relationship. t test: t-test is any statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic has a students t distribution if the null hypothesis is not rejected.
163

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

One -way Anova: One-way Anova is a layout when we have a single factor with several levels and multiple observations at each level. With this kind of layout, it can calculate the mean of the observations within each level of factor. The residuals will tell about the variation within each level and can also average the means of each level to obtain a grand mean, which can then look at the deviation of the mean of each level from the grand mean to understand something about the level effects. Finally, we can compare the variation within levels to the variation across levels. Results In this study, the sample was well balanced in term of demographic. Most of the survey respondents were female 230 (42.5%) and male 170 (57.5%). In term of age, the sample was well balanced in term of Age. 34% of the respondents were age between 8-25, 30% between 26-35, 25.75% between 36-45, and 10.25 % between 46-55. Age between 18-25 years old should to have more percentage because they are the young generation consumer target group. In term of educational background, most of the respondents possessed at least high-school education. The majority has a bachelors degree (57.25%) while those with higher bachelor degree were a close second (31%). Together these 2 groups accounted for over two-thirds of the respondents. As for the rest, 6.25% had obtained high-school education, 5.25% had diploma degree. Most of the respondents (56.5%) has personal income around 10,000-30,000 Baht, while 24.25% has salary less than 10,000 Baht. 12.75% has 30,001-50,000 Baht, 3.5% has 50,001-70,000 Baht, and 3% has salary of more than 70,000 Baht. Descriptive Analysis The respondents are in the moderate to high level. From this research, True has brand equity higher than TOT (brand awareness, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association) (see Table1) Table1 Summary of brand equity factors
Factors Brand Awareness (%) Brand Loyalty Perceived Quality Brand Association TOT Mean 88.9% 3.17 3.26 3.36 TOT SD 0.825 0.692 0.642 True Mean 84.1% 3.38 3.52 3.62 True SD 0.736 0.555 0.494

164

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Descriptive statistics for the Integrated Marketing Communication IMC are provided in the following tables, which contained of advertising & public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, promotion and Internet marketing. (see Table 2) Table2 Summary of IMC factors
IMC Advertising and PR Direct Marketing Sponsorship Promotion Internet Marketing TOT Mean 3.12 2.98 2.89 2.93 2.90 True Mean 3.62 3.44 3.23 3.46 3.30

Hypothesis 1 : Customer Demographic have impact on Brand Equity Null Hypotheses (H0): Customer Demographic have no impact on Brand Equity. Table 3 Result of Hypotheses1
H H1 (1,1) H1 (1,2): H1 (1,3): H1 (1,4): H1 (1,5): H1 (1,6): H1 (1,7): H1 (1,8): H1 (1,9): H1 (1,10): H1 (1,11): H1 (1,12): H1 (1,13): H1 (1,14): H1 (1,15): H1 (1,16): H1 (1,17): H1 (1,18): H1 (1,19): H1 (1,20): H1 (1,21): H1 (1,22): H1 (1,23): H1 (1,24): Gender has impact on Brand Loyalty Age has impact on Brand Loyalty Family status has impact on Brand Loyalty Education has impact on Brand Loyalty Occupation has impact on Brand Loyalty Economic Status has impact on Brand Loyalty Gender has impact on Brand Awareness Age has impact on Brand Awareness Family status has impact on Brand Awareness Education has impact on Brand Awareness Occupation has impact on Brand Awareness Economic Status has impact on Brand Awareness Gender has impact on Perceived Quality Age has impact on Perceived Quality Family status has impact on Perceived Quality Education has impact on Perceived Quality Occupation has impact on Perceived Quality Economic status has impact on Perceived Quality Gender has impact on Brand Associate Age has impact on Brand Associate Family status has impact on Brand Associate Education has impact on Brand Associate Occupation has impact on Brand Associate Economic Status has impact on Brand Associate Do not reject null hypothesis * * * ** ** * ** ** * ** * * ** ** ** ** ** * ** * ** ** ** Do not null hypothesis **

* Significant at the 0.05 level , ** Significant at the 0.01 level

165

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Hypothesis 2: IMC has impact on Brand Equity Null Hypotheses (H0): IMC have no impact on Brand Equity. Table 4 Result of Hypothesis 2
H H2 (1, 1): H2 (1, 2): H2 (1, 3): H2 (1, 4): H2 (1, 5): H2 (1, 6): H2 (1, 7): H2 (1, 8): Advertising and PR has impact on Brand Loyalty. Direct Marketing has impact on Brand Loyalty. Sponsorship has impact on Brand Loyalty. Promotions has impact on Brand Loyalty. Internet Marketing has impact on Brand Loyalty. Advertising and PR has impact on Brand Awareness. Direct Marketing has impact on Brand Awareness. Sponsorship has impact on Brand Awareness. Do not reject null hypothesis Reject null hypothesis ** (** (** (** (**

(* (* (* (* (* (** (** (** (** (** (** ** ** ** **

H2 (1, 9): Promotions has impact on Brand Awareness. H2 (1, 10): Internet Marketing has impact on Brand Awareness. H2 (1, 11): Advertising and PR has impact on Perceived Quality. H2 (1, 12): Direct Marketing has impact on Perceived Quality. H2 (1, 13): Sponsorship has impact on Perceived Quality. H2 (1, 14): Promotions has impact on Perceived Quality. H2 (1, 15): Internet Marketing has impact on Perceived Quality. H2 (1, 16): Advertising and PR has impact on Brand Association. H2 (1, 17): Direct Marketing has impact on Brand Association. H2 (1, 18): Sponsorship has impact on Brand Association. H2 (1, 19): Promotions has impact on Brand Association. H2 (1, 20): Internet Marketing has impact on Brand Association.

* Significant at the 0.05 level , Summary and Discussion

** Significant at the 0.01 level

The research article attempted to present the impact of corporate re-branding deeply in all brand equity components and firm performance. The research is based on the analysis of telecommunication companies in Thailand and the efficiency of integrated marketing communications through companies brand equity, which are different between public and private sector. Key findings of this study can be summarized as following: 1. Age, occupations, and economic status have impact on brand loyalty. 2. Age, family status, education, and occupations have impact on brand awareness. 3. Age, education, occupations, and economic status have impact on perceived quality. 4. Age, education, occupations, and economic status have impact on brand association. 5. Gender has no impact on every brand equity components. 6. All integrated marketing communication disciplines (advertising, public relations, direct marketing, sponsorship, promotions, and Internet marketing)
166

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

have relationship toward brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association as following: Higher advertising and public relation investment results in higher brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association. Higher direct marketing investment results in higher brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association. Higher sponsorship investment, results in greater brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association. Higher promotion investment results in higher brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association. Higher Internet marketing investment results in greater brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand association. 7. Only promotion has impact on brand awareness. Re-branding is the practice of building anew a name representative of a differentiated position in the mind frame of stakeholders and a distinctive identity from competitors (Muzellec, Doogan, and Lambkin, 2003). A corporate name change may enhance market recognition and position (Morris and Reyes, 1991) and generate an increase in the stock market value of the renamed firm (Horsky and Swyngedouw, 1987). Corporate re-branding program of TOT and True are successful because both are consumers top-of-mind awareness. Most importantly, they know what TOT and True change the companys name from, which means that all marketing communications have penetrated into consumers awareness effectively. Corporate brand equity is important in marketing consumer goods and services. Brand equity is regarded as a very important concept in business practice because marketers can gain competitive advantage through successful corporate brand. The competitive advantage of firms that have brands with high equity includes the opportunity for successful extensions, resilience against competitors promotional pressures, and creation of barriers to competitive entry (Farquhar, 1989). The study in telecommunication business suggests that when building brand equity, we should aim at people of age between 18 to 25 years old as target group. This target group is considered a new generation of the worlds that are very adaptive to new trends and flexible to changes that happen around them as their generation has been consuming content and fast changing technology everyday. Furthermore, effective IMC potentially enhances the effectiveness of the firms portfolio of brands, and hence, could positively influence brand equity (Bharadwaj, Varadarajan, and Fahy, 1993). IMC would have a greater capacity to achieve their stated direct and indirect campaign objectives, including increased brand awareness, positive brand attitude and preference, brand action intention, and purchase facilitation. From this research, IMC has the most impact to perceived quality as opposed to others such as brand loyalty, brand association and brand awareness.
167

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Additionally, promotion campaign is the most important in establishing a link between customers, stakeholders and the service with incredible power and value in corporate brand equity. It can build perceived quality, brand association, and brand awareness. Consumers will be more familiar, have stronger and have more favorable associations with the corporate brand via promotion channel than other channels The descriptive analysis shows that True has more valuable corporate brand equity than TOT has in every component that is associated with descriptive statistic from marketing communications. Trues IMC score is higher than TOTs score in all disciplines (advertising, PR, direct marketing, sponsorship, promotion and digital marketing). Consequently, True has executed its re-branding strategy in a more organized manner than TOT has in all IMC disciplines. In Thailand, there are only two giant brands in fixed-line telephone and broadband service. TOTs brand is not as strong as True in terms of brand equity. This can be from many possible reasons such as the late coming for re-branding in 2005 when True began its re-branding a year earlier. Moreover, TOT has transformed its corporate structure from publicly owned to become a private enterprise, which definitely requires corporate cultural adaptation and confidence from employees to move forward. For this research, we analyze firms performance on sales volume through the amount of fixed-line and broadband service. Since True invests in different kinds of services, and the financial statement covers all. Therefore, we only want to focus on sales volume, which we believe to have direct impact from marketing communications of re-branding. Table 5 shows fixed-line telephone subscribers of TOT and True between 2003 and 2006. The number does not change significantly because consumers evolve to mobile phone instead of fixed-line telephone. Table 5 Fixed-Line telephone subscribers
Fixed-Line telephone TOT True 30 June 2003 31 Dec 2004 31 Dec 2005 31 Dec 2006

1,542,231 2,007,273

1,485,690 1,944,521

1,441,922 1,989,664

1,520,658 1,909,038

www.tot.co.th, www.true.co.th

168

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Table 6 shows broadband subscribers of TOT and True between 2003 and 2006. It is noticeable that the subscribers significantly increase, and this is mainly due to globalization. People need to keep up with fast-pacing environment, so they favor technology to enjoy convenient living. Table 6 Broadband subscriber
Broadband subscriber TOT True 31 Dec 2003 -------11,611 31 Dec 2004 5,170 164,775 31 Dec 2005 35,210 300,322 31 Dec 2006 91,715 442,728

www.tot.co.th, www.true.co.th From the broadband subscription tables, the number of subscribers have increased substantially post re-branding. There are reasons to explain this change, but one key factor is definitely the communications to the consumers and the broadband service which is perceived to have good image and penetrate to target consumers. Therefore for this re-branding, not only will IMC help enhancing brand equity, but also result in better firms performance as stated by Yoo et al. (2000). Strong consumer-based brand equity is an asset, which is expected to enhance consumer value, increase purchase intent, and increase the companys market performance. Lastly, the essence of strengthening and adding more value to brand equity, we must carefully study the target group in terms of preference, social status, lifestyle, and consumption behavior so that we can provide the right service and exploit each IMC discipline effectively. Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research From demographic factors, family status is not quite significant to test in statistics because it is not a key influence on consumer behavior. So, family status will be making some bias to statistic testing. Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient is an inadequate sometime. Pearsons product moment correlation used to find correlation between two variables reflects the degree to which the variables are related but it ignored variance. This research measures firms performance by sales volume; however, generally the performance may have been influenced by multiple factors such as government policy or global situation. Therefore, sales volume is not the suitable measurement in general, but can provide an overview to understand performance.

169

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

The sample population is selected only in capital city and vicinity area. True service is limited to only capital city and surrounding area; conversely, TOT services border is nationwide. The consumer behavior and preference are rather different between the two groups. TOT possibly has more brand equity when we analyze the situation nationwide. Therefore, this research is controlling only specific group, which characterizes as new young generation, very adaptive to new trends and flexible to changes, not representing everyone in Thailand. This research studies only about consumers of fixed-line telephone service and broadband service although TOT and True have other services such as public telephone, Dial-up Internet, mobile phone, etc Other consumers will also enhance corporate brand equity for two companies if the brand communication program can impact them even though they do not use both service. Time-line for re-branding is just only 3-4 years after publication; brand communication has not yet confirmed the efficiency of the re-branding program. Next study will occur when another 2-3 years pass by, and the consumer-based brand equity will also better demonstrate the potential of two corporate re-branding programs that can sit in consumer mind. Reference Aaker, D.A. (1991), Building Strong Brands. The Free Press, New York, NY. Aaker, D.A. (1996), Measuring brand equity across products and markets. California Management Review, 38(3), 102-120. Aaker, D.A. & Jacobson, R. (1994), Study shows brand building pays off for Stockholders . Advertising Age, 65(30),18. Bharadwaj, Sundar G., Rajan Varadarajan, and John Fahy(1993), Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Service Industries: A Conceptual Model and Research. Journal of Marketing, 57, 83-99. Cobb-Walgren, C.J., Beal, C. & Donthu, N. (1995), Brand equity, brand preference, and purchase intent. Journal of Advertising, 24(3), 25-40. Daly, Aidan & Moloney, Deirdre (2004), Managing Corporate Re-branding. Irish Marketing Review, 17, 30-37. Duncan and Moriarty (1998), A Communication-Based Marketing Model for Managing Relationships. Journal of Marketing, 62(April),1-13.
170

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

Farquhar, P. (1989), Managing brand equity. Marketing Research, 1, (September), 24-33. Horsky, D. and P. Swyngedouw (1987), Does it pay to change your companys name? A stock marketing perspective. Marketing Science, 6(4), 320-335. Kaikati, J.G. and Andrew M. (2003), A rose by any other name: re-branding campaigns that work. Journal of Business Strategy, 24, 17. Muzellec, L., Doogan, M., and Lambkin, M. (2003), Corporate Re-brandingAn Exploratory Review. Irish Marketing Review, 16, 31-41. Muzellec, L. and Lambkin, M. (2006), Corporate Re-branding: destroying, Transferring or creating brand equity. European Journal of Marketing, 40 (7/8), 803-824. Myers, Chris A. (2003), Managing brand equity: a look at the impact of attributes. Journal of product and brand management, 12(1), 39-51. Pappu,R., Pascale G. Quester, and Ray W. Cooksey (2005), Consumer-based brand equity:improving the measurement-empirical evident. Journal of product and brand management,14(3), 143-154. Yamane, Toro (1967), Statistics: An introductory analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Yoo, B., Donthu, N. and Lee, S. (2000), An examination of selected marketing mix elements and brand equity. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(2), 195-211. Yoo, B. and Donthu, N. (2001), Developing and validating a multidimensional consumer-based brand equity scale. Journal of Business Research, 52, 1- 14.

171

RU. Int. J. vol. 3(1), 2009

172