Sanghyun Daniel Choi, Youngsoo Park, Paul Hong

Global market around the world has different context, due to its geographical and cultural differences. Some brands that were successful in U.S. can suffer the failure in the other part of the world. And in the same area, individual products go through the different phase of the life cycle. Many product markets are growing in China, while others are mature enough or even declining. In such situations, it is important to establish the right strategy, which reflects the consideration in the health of the brand, the sources of the brand equity and suggests ways to improve and leverage it. ‘Brand Audit’ is one of the way that can assess those elements, which was suggested by K. Keller. After that, each business can make the choice based on the Brand Audit. The strategy that the businesses choose can fall under three categories of Michael Porter’s ‘Generic Strategies’; Cost Leadership, Differentiation, and Focus. The choice of the strategy leads to the different designing of the organizational structure. Different organizational structure requires the different global supply chains.

Therefore, the area this research covers is from the marketing to strategy, and from strategy to supply chain structure. The case we used to support the research is automotive industry. We will use the example of Hyundai Motors, which has pretty big gap between the brand offerings and its low brand awareness among customers. The brand audit about Hyundai Motors may reveal an example about how to design the strategy to increase the brand equity. This strategy should coordinate the operational structure, to make it plausible. So, this study will suggest the ways for supply chain structure that can increase efficiency and productivity of automotive supply chain.