E-Adequate Branding: Building Offline and Online Brand Structure within a Polygon of Interdependent Forces

Due to the new Web-based forms of communication and customer interaction, the Internet directly impacts corporate branding strategies through the concept of e-branding. Further, the Internet may alter the cost-benefit ratio of additional brands in the offline world, thus indirectly creating the need to adapt the offline brand structure. In those industries in which e-commerce plays or will play a significant role in the design of business processes, the Internet is expected to have a strong impact on the offline brand structure and to lead to a stronger interdependence of brand structure, IT structure and organisational structure. This paper discusses direct and indirect interdependencies of these three elements by placing them in a polygon of influencing factors to arrive at the concept of e-adequate branding. Instead of creating a pure e-brand or merely transferring offline branding to the Internet, it is vital that the offline brand structure be designed in a manner compatible with the online environment. Moreover, e-adequate branding entails a brand structure capable of exploiting the new potentials provided by IT and aligned with the company's IT structure and organisational structure.