Designing a model of factors influencing brand formation with a system dynamics approach (Case Study of Zarin Ghazal Food Industries)

Master's Thesis of Faculty of Humanities

Management Department

Abstract

Considering the importance of brands in creating value and increasing incoming cash flows of institutions, it is necessary for managers of units to pay special attention to this category and by striving to form, create and maintain a brand that can meet the expectations of consumers, shareholders and other groups that somehow affect organizational communication. to fulfill Knowing the factors affecting brand formation is so important that the success of many companies today and in the future is based on the correct knowledge of such factors. Companies can increase the chance of success of their brand and ultimately their company in today's competitive markets by grouping such factors and examining their impact. In this research, it is intended to identify the factors that affect the formation of the brand, and by using the fuzzy Delphi technique, the factors affecting the formation of the brand are identified and finalized, and by using the system dynamics technique, the effect of each of these factors on the formation of the brand is investigated. For this purpose, first, the relationships between the variables obtained from the research literature were modeled in the form of a cause-effect diagram. Then, according to the opinion of the experts, a flow chart was designed in relation to the degree of connection between the variables. Next, the scenarios were designed and tested. The purpose of this research is to model the influencing factors on the formation of Zarin Ghazal Fars Industries brand. The information of this research has been extracted through interviews with university and industry experts as well as the use of available statistics and documents related to Fars Zarin Ghazal Industries.

From the results obtained from this thesis, the design of the model of the factors affecting brand formation and also the results show that an increase in brand formation indicators can cause an increase in the market share, profitability and the amount of demand for the Fars Zarin Ghazal Industries brand.

Keywords: brand- formation Brand-Fuzzy-Delphi-System Dynamics

Introduction

In today's era, the marketing environment has a very complex environment and routine formulas and rules cannot solve problems, besides creativity and agility are parameters that can turn the marketer into a professional surfer in the space of limitations, brands can lead to the creation of new ideas about the company's products and services. In other words, powerful and up-to-date brands can stimulate innovation in organizations, and the brand can be a benchmark for elites and risk-takers interested in starting a business in the industry to evaluate their startups. The increase in competition has caused more attention to be paid to maintaining current customers and trying to attract new customers (Dohdashti et al., 2019). Brand is one of the important communication tools in customer relationship management [1] and it is valuable for customers for two reasons: firstly, it reduces consumer risk and secondly, it saves decision-making costs. Also, the brand is one of the effective signs in the market that the company uses due to the asymmetry of information in the market and exposes the customer to losses. Therefore, the company fulfills the customer's wishes and fulfills the obligations it gave to the customer in relation to its services in order to prevent the uncertainty of the customer. If customers become disillusioned with a brand, all of the company's investments and future profits are at risk. So the brand acts as a lever and encourages the company to properly fulfill its obligations (Sweeney and Sweet [2], 2008). In a long-term relationship, the brand makes the buyer and the seller commit to each other. In addition to keeping the market share under its control, the brand also proposes ways to grow the business and attract and retain skilled and talented employees and improve its value among the shareholders of the group. Today, the importance of the concept of brand in the purchase of customers is so much that some experts refer to it as a complete product and believe that many times customers buy brands instead of buying a product. Managers and researchers have named the future world of marketing as the world of brand management [3] and activities around branding. Perhaps no capital is more efficient than a powerful, credible and value-creating name for organizations (Rahim Nia and Fatemi, 2011).Therefore, knowing the factors affecting the formation of the brand and investigating the specific characteristics of the brand has become doubly important and it is necessary to conduct various researches in this field. The importance of knowing the factors affecting brand formation is so important that the success of many companies today and in the future may be based on the correct knowledge of such factors. Such companies can increase the chance of success of their brand and ultimately their company in today's competitive markets by grouping such factors and examining the impact of each of these classes (Dazifeh Dost and Khairi, 2019). Tangible assets [4]3 pointed to intangible assets (including patent, brand, license, technical knowledge, etc.) (Bulletin of Brand Finance Institute, 2000).

Today, companies make huge investments in brand creation. In most economic sectors, even in markets such as the food market, agricultural products, and high-tech products, we see the emergence of countless new brands that traditionally resisted in this regard. But it seems that in our country, scientific principles and methods are used less in order to create a brand, and our manufactured products have been less able to establish their position in the minds of consumers, and in competition with similar products and more famous brands, usually in the position of choice, the differences are probably clearly visible in the decision-making process of consumer purchases. In this way, the consumer usually buys a product with a more famous brand, and finally, this issue is considered a kind of weakness both from the competitive aspect for the company's product and from the economic aspect for the shareholders (Kafashpour and Nyakan, 2018). The food industry in Iran is facing post-production problems, which seems to be due to the use of incorrect strategies in the field of marketing and advertising, as well as neglecting the values ??of reputable brands and paying little attention to the customer's point of view. In our country, despite the presence of reputable and long-standing brands, so far not much activity has been done in the field of brand valuation and adaptation of its desirability components to the demands and needs of customers, and it can be said that the current brand situation in Iran has many problems, so that even some reputable brands in the food industry have been forgotten over time due to the inattention of the authorities (Qods and Zarebi, 2013). The formation and construction of the brand is to provide a solid foundation for creating a powerful brand in the challenging field of the food industry. Because it is difficult to compile effective factors in the formation of the brand and at the same time there is no significant experience in this field in the country. Therefore, the nature of the problem and its solution is such that the achievement of objective achievements requires consensus and cooperation of experts in different parts of the society. Therefore, in this article, the fuzzy Delphi method is used to determine the factors affecting brand formation. Based on the beliefs of Heraclitus [5], marketing and brand managers should base their activities on this philosophy, that everything is changing and transforming at any time. Any kind of similarity or pretense of stability is just a mirage and fantasy. Brands are by no means excluded from other entities in the world. Conversely, brands are much less stable than other entities because they exist only in the minds of current and potential consumers. In the past, marketing managers believed that brand management is the concept of creating, developing and maintaining it. In other words, the main hypothesis of their minds was that brands are like the architectural components of a building and they must be put together one by one until this building is formed, and once it is formed, it will remain in the same state until the end of its life. They naively believe that brands are like fixed and unchanging points in today's changing business world, but such an intellectual foundation is fatal for a marketing manager who works in today's world (Bathai, 2015). In the brand world, nothing is fixed. Everything is changing at every moment (Elijica [6], 2006). Consumers' perception of your brand and your position in the competition scene is different every day.