ABSTRACT
Branding has become one of the most striking developments of conventional (bricks) retailing over the past decade. This has become a worldwide trend, led to some extent by well-known American retailers like The Gap, Home Depot, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart. The same is true in the UK, led by The Body Shop, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer. In Australia brand leaders include Woolworths, Coles, Big W, Flight Centre and David Jones. In the Australian case, retailers occupy six of the 20 largest and most valuable brands. So branding has become a big business in its own right and good retailers can add value to the organization through clever brand management. We thus have a good reason to see how we can apply branding principles to the e-retailing context.
