Marketing Management Inside the Business Family: The Family Mindketing

Introduction

Thirty years ago, academic research on family businesses was not appreciated. However, in recent years it has been shown that successful family businesses are very different from non-family ones, being driven by value or non-financial objectives; they can also generate networks and long-term relationships that foster trust and altruism; they succeed in the marketplace by identifying the family as a brand identity, and often have a long-term perspective (Astrachan, 2010). In this context, it is demonstrated that the family brand contains familiar personality elements relevant to the market and visible to be more attractive (Reuber & Fischer, 2011). The family business brand includes the characteristics of the family (i.e., family involvement) and the company (i.e., the age of the company), which are relevant for predicting the communication of the family business brand. It is necessary to indicate that the communication of the family business brand positively affects the income of the company considering that these positive effects are influenced by the way the information is presented (Barroso-Martínez et al., 2019). Lude and Prügl (2018) provide evidence that brands that emphasize their family business background are automatically perceived as more authentic and indicate that the promotion of the family nature of a company leads to an inference of trust in the family business.

Strategic planning is historically one of the most important practices applied by companies in this area. Within the implementation of strategies, three dimensions of strategic planning are raised as a practice: the modes of planning, the reasons for planning, and the planning court (Nordqvist & Melin, 2010). Under these three dimensions is the brand strategy, which is family-based and suggests a way to achieve competitive advantage by valuing family nature. Indeed, when family members manage the company's resources, efficiency is achieved. However, when family members combine their participation in management with an appropriate and well-planned brand strategy aimed at communicating to the family as a brand, the firm also shows a higher rate of sales growth (Gallucci, Santulli, & Calabrò, 2015).

In addition to brand strategies, companies should pay more attention to appropriate marketing strategies, such as advertising, promotion, and interactive marketing, to create competitive advantages, as these are the way to improve the value of the company's brand. Some of the success factors could come from aggressive advertising through mass media, such as television, radio, and social networks (Majid et al., 2016).

Both strategy and practice are important within organizations where emotional intelligence and social intelligence are influential elements that provide vision, leadership, and transformation in family businesses (Boyatzis & Soler, 2012). The emotional component does not cease to be an influential one in planning, taking into account that the decisions made can personally destabilize the members of the business family (Arenas-Cardona & Rico-Balvín, 2014), which influences both the strategic and operational levels of the organization.

The brand and marketing of the family firm are presented throughout its value chain, and the leadership applied influences the operations and teamwork processes, the social climate, and finally, the results (Pedraja & Rodríguez, 2004). Leaders can generate value using social and emotional intelligence, considering that they can create a shared vision among various stakeholders of the family, the organization, and the community, which creates resonant relationships where a positive emotional appeal is generated (Boyatzis & Soler, 2012). The social-emotional force becomes an engine that generates harmony, power, survival and can even manage an entire network in the supply chain (Maloni, Hiatt, & Astrachan, 2017) that affects the perception of the brand and, therefore its value within its environment.