Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Organizational Factors Contributing to Successful Delivery of Corporate Brand Experience: What Do We
Know?
Extended Abstract
Clive Helm, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, U.K.
Introduction, context and purpose
In recent years, the related notions of value co-creation (Prahald and Ramaswamy, 2000, 2004; Wikstrom, 1996),
Service-Dominant Logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) and an experientially-based economy (Pine and Gilmore,
1988, 1989) have emerged to create a context in which the source of value for firm, consumers and other stakeholders is
seen to lie in the interaction between those consumers and the firm's brand that results in a distinctive and meaningful
experience for them. Consumers are no longer viewed as passive recipients of products but, along with the brand owner,
active participants in the process of co-creating a uniquely valuable, branded experience. As Gronroos (2007) puts it,
'customers do not look for goods or services, ...but for solutions that serve their own value generating processes', and
rather than simply selling increasingly commoditized goods or services, firms now increasingly seek to derive superior
value from delivering and enabling such an experience.
From the co-creation standpoint therefore, a firm's competitive advantage and ability to create long term value come not
only from ownership of a brand asset that promises a distinctive and meaningful experience, but also from having the
capability to successfully deliver it to meet the expectations of consumers and other stakeholders, so as to engage and
build long-term relationships with them (Norton, 2003; Roper and Davies, 2007; Schreuer, 2000).
The co-creation view has therefore highlighted the importance to a firm's value creation process of its capability in
'brand delivery' - what Aaker (2004) describes as the ability to 'deliver the brand promise with reliability'; in other
words, the capability to successfully and consistently deliver the experience the brand represents and promises in terms
of a distinctive set of functional and emotional benefits. Growing awareness of the importance of brand delivery was
neatly articulated some years ago in the now familiar and much quoted statement by Jan Carlzon, former Chief
Executive of Scandinavian Airlines Service;
'SAS is not a collection of material assets but the quality of contact between an individual customer and SAS employees
who serve a customer directly. Last year, each of our ten million customers came into contact with approximately five
SAS employees and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. These 50 million 'moments of truth' are the
moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. We must prove to customers that
SAS is their best alternative' (Carlzon, 1988).
In reality, there is a realization that successful and consistent delivery of the experience promised by the brand at such
'moments of truth' is still far from easy to achieve. According to a report by consultancy Interbrand (2007), 'Strict
adherence to brand standards creates brands with customer impact - but few companies have been able to secure
consistent compliance across their organizations'. Although they may be few, some firms however are noticeably
significantly better at successfully and consistently delivering the promise their brand offers than others. The reasons for
this are numerous, but literature suggests that some aspects of organizational culture are important factors.
This paper therefore aims to gain a further understanding of the complex relationship between capability in brand
delivery and organizational culture from a review of existing literature. It considers successful delivery of brand
experience, although critical to a firm's value creating ability, to be a non-financial aspect of organizational
performance. However, a review of the literature quickly reveals the issue to be complex, as there are various distinct
strands of literature that could be considered relevant, each of which offers diverse perspectives. Two are considered
here; first, the literature on the linkages between organizational culture and performance in general, and second, the
newer and narrower, emerging literature on the relationship between organizational culture and brand delivery itself.
The paper presents a mapping and review of these literatures to set an agenda for investigating conceptually the
complex relationship between aspects of organizational culture and the increasingly important capability to successfully
deliver corporate brand experience in a co-creation context.
Review of Relevant Literature
1. Organizational culture; problems in diversity of definitions and theoretical perspectives
A problem in beginning research into any connection between organizational culture and capability in brand experience
delivery, or indeed any other aspect of performance, is the wide diversity of theoretical perspective relating to culture
itself in which there are no commonly agreed definitions. As Lundberg (1985) has pointed out, the whole notion of
organizational culture, 'remains a phenomenon that is, as yet, not fully understood or agreed upon'. As a starting point
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