Exploring the Strategic Value of Design in Branding - a Perspective from Design and Brand Consultancies

Abstract

It has progressively been a compact from the low labor cost of south Asia and mainland China to SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) The industries remain in Taiwan started with more refined differentiated technology-intensive strategy The government is also a great force to help facilitating branding with SMEs branding program In the past time Taiwan industries intend to transform form OEM ODM to the highly promoted OBM It is an opportunity of brand consultancies Branding has changed as a concept of segmentation of product competitive to a multi-dimensional communication to consumers which takes consider of the whole enterprise operation In the route of branding design as an important tool of visual identity system now turns into a systematic design consideration For instance service design experience design and design thinking are the fields of the applications This study claims that design has a surpassed affection in business operation and branding Therefore this study target on the design operating of “Branding consultancies based on design” as the main issues The study method is firstly second hand data collection This process is to sufficient the knowledge of the consultancies service the suitable interviewees and the interview contents Second taking use of open ended interview to explore the issues while consultancies using design to serve for their businesses clients and the phenomenon occur in the industries Finally it analysis the interview subscriptions with coding technics The final result shows that the brand value is seemingly presented in visual appearance But actually the strategic works behind the visual appearance is where the effect of branding design takes place which is always being regarded as only a kind of an abstract application Therefore the real value of design is always ignored and does not receive an equal payment In this case this study indicates the importance of “interdependence of design offerings and design strategy”; In the context of the branding design consultancies this study reveals the background phenomenon and the management of design in these branding consultancies which is called “Model of branding service gap in design based consultancies” The design consultancies should differentiate their service in order to emphasis on the advantages There are two main goals – (1) To deepen service of design (2) To build up a long-term client relationship Several suggestions are given in the frame of these two goals

Date of Award	2016 Feb 18
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shuo-Fang Liu (Supervisor)