Strategic Brand Management 5 credits

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of strategic brand management as a process for creating, sustaining, and leveraging brand equity to achieve long-term business success. It emphasises the role of brands as strategic assets and explains how brand management interacts with and supports key business functions such as marketing, pricing, distribution, innovation, finance, and corporate strategy. You will learn key concepts, models, and frameworks central to strategic brand management, including brand equity theory and the principles of segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP). The course emphasises the application of these analytical frameworks to develop coherent, market-aligned brand strategies. The course covers the principles underlying brand portfolios, brand architectures, and brand extension strategies. You will learn to design and manage these structures in alignment with organisational and market objectives. Attention is given to analysing brand-related challenges such as cannibalisation, market overlap, and competitive positioning, and to proposing appropriate strategic responses. You will examine how branding decisions interact with pricing, distribution, and product development. The course addresses the development of brand strategies for new product and service launches, including decisions related to market entry and channel management. You will develop competence in measuring and evaluating brand performance using key performance indicators (KPIs), including market share, brand equity measures, customer perceptions, and financial outcomes. The course emphasises interpreting and integrating both qualitative and quantitative brand data to support evidence-based decisions. You will critically assess brand strategies in relation to overall business performance and long-term goals, reflect on managerial implications across functions and contexts, and demonstrate a professional and analytical approach that balances short-term outcomes with long-term brand equity. Connection to Research The course is based on relevant research in branding. Research articles constitute the main component of the literature in the course. Connection to Practice Lectures as well as discussions in the classroom are mostly supported by presenting cases and examples from practice. Additionally, in the group-based project work, you work on live cases in which you apply the theoretical principles learnt in the classroom in a real-world scenario. Connection to Ethics, Responsibility, Sustainability (ERS) Ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS) perspectives are integrated into the course through the analysis of branding strategies and their societal and environmental implications. You discuss ethical aspects of branding, including transparency, responsible communication, and the avoidance of misleading practices. Through cases and/or discussions, you evaluate how companies incorporate sustainability and responsibility into brand positioning and strategy. In the group project, you can apply ERS perspectives by developing branding recommendations that consider both business performance and broader societal impacts.