Susan Segal-Horn

The criteria for successful services brands

There are few valuable services brands, which may be due to the lack of services branding knowledge and the inappropriate use of product‐based branding advice. To contribute to services branding knowledge the authors undertook a review of the services management and services branding literature and postulated a model of services branding. In‐depth interviews with 28 leading‐edge consultants showed the appropriateness of this model. The study found a need for ruthless clarity about positioning and the corporations genuinely felt values. Success is more likely when everyone internally believes in their brands values. When management behaviour is based on genuine conviction, shared values are more likely. Through shared values, there is a greater likelihood of commitment, internal loyalty, clearer brand understanding, and importantly, consistent brand delivery across all stakeholders. By viewing these factors within a systems perspective, greater services brand consistency can result.

Building on Services' Characteristics to Develop Successful Services Brands

Little has been published about services brands, even though we are in a services economy. The literature shows services have unique characteristics, but their implications for brand building have not been explored. To understand how to develop and sustain successful services brands with their unique characteristics, we undertook in depth interviews with 28 leading brand consultants. They have brand categorisations, which provide rich inspirations for services brand strategies. Ways of circumventing the problems of intangibility and heterogeneous quality were elicited and opportunities for relationship building were identified. Services branding, unlike product branding, is more about internal consistency, places more emphasis on managing the total services brand experience and is more about social processes. It stresses the need for accepting the brand inside and outside the organisation.

Building a Services Brand: Stages, People and Orientations

This article examines the services-brand-building process, based on depth interviews with leading-edge brand consultants. A model is posited of the factors involved when building a services brand from scratch. Insights about those involved in the services-brand-building process are provided along with a consideration of the impact of the organisations internal/external orientation. The results show that, in comparison with the goods model, more work is required in terms of organisational culture and internal branding when building services brands. It is recommended that organisations utilise cross-functional teams, a strong customer orientation and a brand-supporting culture to maximise the success of their services brand.

Communicating Services Brands' Values Internally and Externally

This paper explores the ways that services brand values are communicated to both staff and customers. Values are communicated to employees via overt internal communications, the ripple effect, senior management example/involvement, HR activities and external communications. A number of failure factors which could hinder the communication of values to employees are identified. For consumers, values are communicated via their holistic experiences of the brand, interactions with employees, external brand communications and the tangible elements of the service offering. The results highlight the need for consistency in all brand value communications.

The globalization of law firms: managerial issues

Purpose – To identify and discuss the changes arising within very large law firms from the pressure to provide global services and the issues for firms in implementing cross‐border integration.Design/methodology/approach – The research is qualitative, case‐based and exploratory, using a piloted topic guide. The study is of very large UK “City” law firms (i.e. those operating in over 20 countries) using in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with: managing partners, senior partners, partners and associates at “City” law firms, clients, US lawyers in London and non‐legal professionals. Data are triangulated with information from trade press, trade associations and firm reports.Findings – Identification of managerial issues of global integration common to law firms interviewed. These include: a shift to a “managed” firm and decline in professional autonomy; post‐acquisition integration and merger process issues; operationalization of global practices (such as common technology platforms, common systems practice...

The Rise of Super-Elite Law Firms: Towards Global Strategies

This paper reviews the pressures towards globalisation reshaping the corporate law sector. It uses Yips [Yip, G.S. (1996). Total global strategy (2nd ed.). Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] framework of global industry drivers. The dominant view has been that the globalisation potential of the legal industry is low since there are few global legal products and many regulatory differences between markets. However, within the corporate law sector, strong regulatory differences between countries are outweighed by the combined impact of market, competitive and cost drivers. Evidence from this research shows that the balance of industry drivers is towards there being benefits to the pursuit of global strategies within this sector. In practice, a small number of very large corporate law firms are implementing global strategies in pursuit of specific sources of future competitive advantage. Thus a small ‘super-elite’ of globalising firms is emerging.

The globalization of the European white goods industry

This paper reassesses competitive strategies in the European white goods industry by revisiting the effectiveness of national, regional and global strategies. Changes to markets, manufacturing processes, cost drivers and greater sophistication in the co-ordination processes and internal learning mechanisms within global competitor firms provide an a priori for both the resurgence and the increased appropriateness of global strategies in this industry. The paper focuses on the effectiveness of national, regional and global strategies from the perspective of the historic positioning of the European competitors.

Strategic space and industry dynamics: The implications for international marketing strategy

The globalisation of markets and the completion of the single market in Europe raise issues that require a better understanding and analysis of long term industry dynamics. This paper develops a model to show an industry can be analysed in terms of its strategic groups, its mobility barriers and its sub‐structures and spaces. The paper focuses on the food processing industry in Europe and uses the idea of strategic space to analyse the effect of industry dynamics on marketing strategy and organisation of the marketing function.

Cross-border Management Issues in International Law Firms

This chapter focuses on the organizational changes arising from the creation of large cross-border legal service organizations and alliance networks. We address the management issues faced by legal professional service firms (PSFs) in responding to the demands placed upon their existing organizational structures and processes by the most recent phase in their international expansion. This phase of their growth has been intended to implement global strategies and to create global organization structures. In particular, our findings relate to the larger law firms for whom the requirement to build integrated global networks is a competitive and client expectation. To put the issue of firm size into perspective, the largest UK law firm at which we conducted interviews operated in 24 countries, had over 350 partners (of whom nearly 50 per cent were located outside the UK) and had fee income in excess of £450 million; a smaller firm studied still operated in 15 countries, had almost 3000 professional staff and over 300 partners, with fee income in excess of £280 million.