Qualitative study of challenges and strategies of Indian IT organizations toward global branding

Purpose There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations. Findings Results show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital. Practical implications - This research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations. Social implications - IT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian's economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands. Originality/value The originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.