Small and medium sized companies often struggle in having their brand management in place. The reason for this could be they do not see the importance of branding in their business or they simply do not have the resources to work on the brand man- agement. The case company, Movenium, had not spent time on creating its brand so far and the objective of the researcher was to define and facilitate the creation a brand identity for Movenium.
This thesis studied the current brand image of Movenium and defined the brand iden- tity by using the theoretical framework based on David Aaker’s brand identity planning model (BIPM) and the research findings. The research was held by using the qualitative method; the information and data collection was gathered from the interviews done with the internal employees and the surveys done with the existing customer base. The data collected was analyzed and presented by using the tools, word cloud and the tables from the survey monkey.
The current brand image of Movenium is positive internally as well as externally, though the understanding of the brand was not very clear within the company. How- ever, the employees are positive about the company and CEO is very appreciative about the workforce. The findings of the study conclude that there are elements of brand already existing; the company needs to put little effort to consolidate the data.
This study guides them through the brand building process and gives a concrete brand identity for Movenium to be used in the future. The recommendations made would give them the outsider opinion that would help the company move towards their brand building process.
Like Movenium, I am sure there are many more SMEs who do not spend time on the brand management and do not see the importance of branding in their business or they simply do not have the resources to work on the brand management. Though as discussed in the study limitations, very little knowledge can be found on brand building in the software business or SMEs. This is surprising considering the important role of
the software industry. However, I found an interesting article on brand building in software SMEs done by students in Laurea University of applied sciences (Ojasalo Jukka et al. 2008.) and I am referring to that article in giving the importance of brand- ing in the SMEs and software business.
Even though, brand management is far from a high priority issue in the SMEs, I would like to point out some of the benefits it can bring to the company:
• Helps the company to differentiate in the competitive environment
• Attracts and gains new customers
• Benefits of the products (functional, emotional, self expressive benefits)
• Enhances existing relationships
5.5.1 Reflections on learning
During the whole thesis process, I have struggled at lot with the thesis subject and the companies etc. due to the change in team and not working for the same company. I had to change the topic of my Master’s thesis project three times and finally got to work with “Creating a brand identity for Movenium for International markets”. It has been very stressful process for me personally, but this time I was determined in com- pleting the thesis and that too with good grade and I think I have been able to achieve that, though the grades will verify that.
Branding was an interesting area for me to work on as my background is in Marketing and Communications. I got to work on a practical problem of the company, which gave me exposure to the real problem solving and application of the theory. I hope to have, answered the research question well and gave practical suggestions for the com- pany to implement. If the results are implemented in the company, it would be an achievement for me, something that I can be proud of.
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