Abstract:
It has been suggested that a key way of enterprise survival is to pursue competitive
marketing practices such as branding, which enables firms to differentiate their products
and services in the marketplace, and to become more sustainable. However, there have
been some erroneous perceptions that branding is a preserve of large businesses and as a
result, scholarly evidence suggests that the practice has not gained much attention within
SME business settings. The study explores the relationships among SME resource
positions, branding capabilities and branding benefits. More specifically, the research
draws on the resource-based theory and dynamic capability theory to examine the
differential roles played by resources and branding capabilities in enabling SMEs to
achieve product branding benefits amidst the constraints in their environment. Through
extensive literature review, a conceptual framework and empirical results from 304 SMEs,
the study employs exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses along with structural
equation modelling to evaluate a proposed model for understanding the relationships
among the constructs, as well as examining mediating and moderating effects. The study
finds that an enterprise’s ability to achieve branding benefits is dependent on how SME
owners/managers harness and deploy their resources and branding capability generated
over a period through their tacit branding practices/activities. In addition, resource
possession alone may not result in gaining branding benefits, unless they are harnessed in
tandem with branding capabilities, along a set of branding efforts needed to realize the
benefits. Again, SMEs’ environments determine, to an extent, the resources they can
access, the capabilities they can build, and how these can be integrated with branding
efforts to realize branding benefits. The theoretical and practical implications of the results
are also discussed in the thesis.
