Abstract
In the past, original equipment manufactures (OEMs) and original design manufactures (ODMs) play important roles in Taiwanese high tech industry. But, recently, they encountered more intensive competition worldwide and tended to be overtaken by suppliers from China, Korea and Southeast Asia. To cope with the external competitors, Taiwanese high tech OEMs and ODMs have to revise their strategic positions in terms of enhancing competitive advantages not only in research and development, but also in marketing capability, especially the usually-ignored branding strategy. So far, little research has been focused on the topic regarding OEMs and ODMs’ branding decisions in Taiwanese high tech industry, and therefore, there has been no consistent theory proposed as far as the literature was concerned. In order to better explore such an undefined area of research on branding decision for Taiwanese high tech industry, this study applies the exploratory methodology of multiple cases study on six companies in high tech industry. It is expected that the valuable information may be collected and analyzed through in-depth interviews and literature reviews. This study focused on the investigation of branding strategy in Taiwanese high tech OEMs and ODMs, especially whether or not own brand manufactures (OBMs) are the inevitable business planning and the advantages and disadvantage of OEMs/OBMs. In addition, this study would examine the underlying factors that may explain why some OEMs or ODMs would like to be transformed to OBMs. Furthermore, the successful characteristics for Taiwanese ODMs and OBMs would be identified. Finally, a conceptual framework would be proposed in this study to facilitate OEMs and ODMs’ decision making as to whether or not they are better off by transforming to OBMs and how to transform to OBMs successfully by controlling some potentially important factors.