AREAS FOR ENHANCING BRAND INTEGRATION IN A MERGER PROCESS

Abstract

The article seeks to explore the contemporary issues of promoting brand integration in a merger process. It is suggested to consider the areas for enhancing the degree of brand integration subject to respective brand integration phases of particular business entities (low integration level – a crisis phase; medium level of integration – the phase of stabilization (verified by the presence of complementary effects from internal and external interaction); high level of integration – the growth phase (verified by the presence of synergistic effects from internal and external self-organization). The proposed pathways to foster brand integration within a merger process are sought to contribute to maximizing the degree of consolidation and diversification of available resources in integrated business structures. The use of an integration effectiveness assessment framework allows for zoning of synergetic effect manifestations, identifying the most probable directions for resource diffusion, boosting the territorial clusters complementarity as well as harmonizing the diverse integration and decentralization interests of business entities. Depending on the phases of business units brand integration, the brand integration principles in the context of a merger process have been specified. Apart from that, the relationship between different types of complementary and synergistic effects has been explored subject to a specific brand structure. The study findings have revealed the major barriers to brand integration within business structures which often trigger negative effects from self-organization, in particular. It is argued that to ensure a balance of the organizational and economic premises of integrated business structures, its baseline institutions, mechanisms and technologies should have a vast integration potential that will link individual elements of the system in such a way as to encourage synergistic and complementary effects to form a kind of a helix that attracts and draws individual brands together into innovation processes.