ARTICLES
2024
Rebranding after international acquisitions: challenges of legitimation in emerging and developed countries
International Marketing Review
Purpose: This study describes how a multinational enterprise (MNE) gains acceptance after rebranding acquired brands from different countries among its internal and external stakeholders and identifies factors that influence this process.
Design/methodology/approach: The study employed a single case-study approach, including 18 semi-structured in-depth interviews with employees of a firm involved in the rebranding process in six countries. The countries are Sweden, Germany, the United States, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
Findings: The findings reveal how the MNE integrated brands it acquired in different international markets into one overarching corporate brand. The study shows that in emerging countries, external legitimation (external implementation process, country profiles and customer buy-in) constitutes the most significant challenge. By contrast, in developed countries, internal legitimation (employee buy-in and internal implementation process) is more challenging.
Research limitations/implications: The study contributes to and extends the rebranding literature by using a legitimation lens to analyze the rebranding process. This lens shows how internal and external stakeholders are both crucial to successful rebranding. The study provides a comprehensive perspective of the process, identifies challenging factors and differentiates between their importance in emerging and developed countries.
Originality/value: To address the dearth of research on how firms legitimize a new brand in different national contexts, the study compares the rebranding process in multiple countries and discusses the factors influencing the rebranding process.
2024
The patterns of the past and suggestions for a future agenda in international branding
Review of International Business and Strategy
Purpose: The purpose of this research is, first, to analyze the past years of research on international branding and, second, building on an early literature review, to analyze patterns in the field and suggest future research.
Design: The analyzed articles were compiled using the ISI Web of Science and Scopus databases. The author searched articles published between 2007 and 2023 that used terms related to international branding in their title, abstract, and keywords.
Findings: This article structures and identifies key institutions, articles, regions, and authors in the field. It provides an overview of the past years of research in the area. The study identifies important gaps in the literature and suggests further research dealing with, for example, the B2B sector and emerging markets.
Originality: Despite the increase in international branding studies, few literature reviews have been published since 2007. This review fills this research gap. It identifies future research areas dealing with branding in the B2B sector, branding in emerging markets, branding process and implementation studies using longitudinal methods and more practical relevant research.
2023
Market-driven Pressures and Institutional Biases at a University: A Review of the TV series The Chair
Markets, Globalization & Development Review
“The Chair” is a series that explores important contemporary issues such as cancel culture, institutional racism, sexism, and ageism in the context of a university setting. The series follows the story and struggles of Professor Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman, and an Asian-American, to be appointed chair of the English department at the elite Pembroke University, as she tries to protect the employment of a young African-American female professor and to raise her adopted daughter as a harried single parent. This media review essay examines the themes and issues addressed in this TV series, including the challenges faced by women and the ways in which traditional models of education may be inadequate for engaging and retaining the interest of younger generations. The review essay suggests that this TV series could serve as a starting point for considering how issues of bias, cultural shifts, and commercial pressures play out in a university setting, and encourages further exploration and discussion of these important topics.
2022
International Branding and Rebranding in Cross-Border Acquisitions
Halmstad University Press
Businesses worldwide are confronting a more internationalized market. With this trend, companies frequently turn to international branding and rebranding initiatives through the acquisition of companies to grow. During this process, businesses are updating their brand identity and/or strategy, while also dealing with various challenges. Studies focusing on these challenges on the B2B field remain little explored and are necessary, due to its highly competitive characteristic. Especially in the life science industry, due to its institutional differences between national markets in the sector. Therefore, the overall research purpose in this licentiate thesis is to describe and understand how the international branding and rebranding process is developed in the life science industry. In this thesis, two studies were made to achieve this purpose. One literature review to explore the current literature of the field and one empirical study using a single case study method. The main contribution of this licentiate thesis is to describe in-depth how the brand rebranding process is implemented in the life science industry, and its main hinders. They are: internal and external legitimation. More importantly, this study presents a framework that demonstrates how businesses in emerging regions face more external legitimation challenges as a result of institutional constraints, as opposed to developed countries, where internal legitimation barriers are more prominent during the rebranding process. This licentiate thesis contributes to creating knowledge in international branding since it provides an overview of the past years of research in the area and suggests research gaps that need further investigation. In parallel, it generates insights into the analyzed process of international branding and rebranding, bringing understanding into the corporate brand area and the management of B2B brands in life science industries.
2022
Legitimation of emerging technologies with new business models
Journal of Business Model
In this conceptual paper, we employ the explanatory future research approach to explore future perspectives regarding the legitimation of new business models of emergent technologies. Four alternative perspectives are described and discussed as a tool for guiding policy and action in response to challenges and opportunities.
Accepted.