Title:
Strategic value
addition
to enhancement of corporate branding through knowledge management system
Abstract: In today’s world of knowledge economy
business
environment is characterized with consumer-driven competition leading
up
to a hyper and fierce competition. All organizations are striving to
position
themselves differently in the market and make their brand more reputed
in
the minds of consumers. Consumer satisfaction and further customer
loyalty
(life time) play an essential role in this battle. Achievement of these
two
is not an easy challenge. It necessitates improvement of many factors
across
a broad spectrum of measures at all organizational levels which
requires
a comprehensive system to organize and manage information.
Theoretically organizational knowledge management deals with acquiring,
storing,
retrieving and sharing of organizational knowledge at all levels of an
organization
in order to make this knowledge widely available and applicable for
organizational
learning and improvement. In the mass body of management literature the
context
of organizational knowledge management has been considerably addressed
but
the significance of organizational knowledge management is not only in
organizational
learning and operating consequences but also equally from the marketing
perspective.
Organizational knowledge can be seen as a contributory device in
enhancement
of underlying factors in organizational Branding. Management literature
lacks
a systematic linkage between organizational knowledge management and
organizational
branding management so in the prior studies there is no obvious model
to
bridge this gap. Hence the main objective of this study is to develop a
model
illustrating the role of organizational knowledge management system
executed
at strategic level in enhancement of organizational branding .In this
regard
four factors can be considered as brand enhancement elements including;
product
innovation, service improvement, publicity and emotional appeal .All of
the
aforementioned factors require an appropriate bundle of organizational
knowledge
to be enhanced and then developed competitively. Therefore development
of
a system or model that consists of the relationship between
organizational
knowledge management mechanisms and brand enhancement factors aimed at
maximizing
consumer satisfaction and achievement of increased consumer loyalty
(preferably
of a life time nature) makes sense toady and would be mandatory o face
the
competition in the rapidly shrinking global world. A study to this
effect
would thus be crucial for industries and academicians and to some
extent
policy makers keen in empowering home grown industries into global
brands. According to this model, it is suggested that an
integrated system embracing
organizational knowledge management system and branding factors leads
organization
toward a new competitive edge. Methodology: Apart form the secondary
literature review fo the factors and
barriers that promote organizational knowledge management, brand
enhancement
and the relationship between the two and the strategies that are
effectively
attempted by Corporates the world over, a field study fo companies
involved
with either or both to review their experiences and systematize their
learnings
would be attempted around as sample of 6 to 8 units on an in depth case
oriented
basis. Focus groups of professionals and discussions with eminent
professionals
off the region would be a key part of the study.
Author: M.V.Shetty and Arash Najmaei