Tata Steel: Branding Steel Based on Customer Focus

Tata Steel had outpaced 23 world-class competitors in 2005 and was ranked the world’s best steel company in studies carried out by World Steel Dynamics. It had made these achievements by adopting a strategy which stressed two points: branding its products and moving to high-value-added products in the late 1990s.The reason Tata chose a branding strategy is that 40 percent of its products were sold through retail and were subject to price fluctuations. To implement the strategy, the company began to introduce internal campaigns to bring its customer-centric message to its employees before branding, then set up a branding task force to explore the possibilities of branding. From the beginning, the branding initiative showed impressive results. With branded products, the company commanded a premium of 15 percent over competing brands. Its branded products made up22 percent of total turnover in 2005.However, while going abroad, it faced a big challenge of global branding. How could the firm brand itself? How could it move to high-value-added products?