INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATED BRANDING FUNCTIONING: CONTENT AND MANAGEMENT SPECIFICS

Abstract

The article provides insights into institutional foundations of integrated branding functioning along with revealing its content and management specifics. Organizational and legal forms of business associations are analyzed and generalized in order to ensure an optimal choice of organizational structure for achieving stockholders’ goals. The morphological analysis of a ‘brand’ concept has proved the need to consider this economic category taking into account its multifaceted nature and aspects, in particular: as a risk reduction tool, as an instrument of value added, from the perspective of brand as image in consumer perceptions and from the position of brand in terms of product-customer relationship. Based on institutional principles of environment differentiation of the economic and regulatory framework of integrated branding (the essence of the concepts of «brand», «branding», «integrated marketing», «integrated branding» and «integrated business structures»), the authors offer their own definition of «branding of integrated business structures» subject to the branding object specifics. It has been established that specific features of mergers and acquisitions envisage the formation of a fundamentally new approach to effective management, including a brand-oriented focus within the system of integrated business structures. The study results allowed for certain research findings on the brand integration structure. Thus, by brands of integrated business structures it is proposed to understand the brands that were created on the basis and as a result of integration and co-operation of partners in a joint business process. In addition, the article substantiates the institutional principles of environment differentiation for the economic and regulatory foundations of integrated branding functioning to identify potential growth points for assessing priorities in the development of specific brands, mobilization of resources, mergers and acquisitions to meet potential opportunities and institutional conditions to facilitate and enhance the traditional as well as fundamentally new types of economic activity.