Unit 1
Introduction to Brand Management
A brand is the individuality of a company. It is the representation, which gives a company its face. An example of a well-known and popular brand are: Apple, Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, etc.
Whereas, Brand Management is the analyzing, planning, and identifying the brand’s progress, thereby, securing its objectives.
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1.2.1 Brand
A brand is an identifying sign, logo, representation, name, word, or sentence that companies use to differentiate their products or services from others. A blend of one or more of those rudiments can be used to create a brand identity. Legal security given to a brand name is called a trademark.
“A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.”
- Lisa Gansky
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
- Jeff Bezos
1.2.2 Branding
Branding is nothing but a marketing process, led by the companies to create a name, design or symbol. Branding makes a mental structures that help customers establish their knowledge about offerings in a way that explains their decision making and, in the process, provides value to the firm. Branding should be in such a way that it can be easily identifiable as a belonging to a company.
1.2.3 Brand Management
Brand management is essentially a function of marketing that uses methods to grow the apparent value of a product line or brand over time. Effective brand management allows the price of products to go up and builds loyal consumers through constructive brand associations and images or a robust awareness of the brand.
1.2.4 Firms
A corporation, business, limited liability Company, or a partnership is often referred to as firms.
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There are numerous reasons why branding is important to customers, moreover, now that we have entered the digital era, where more and more customers have their strong social presence, there is the hoard of companies trying to climb the ladder of popularity.
Here, listed below are some of the most important reasons why branding is needed when the customers are concerned.
- The face of businesses: The customers relate brands to businesses as their identity. For many, when they remember a brand, it’s the only thing they can link to. This connection of customers and brand makes them remember the brand, thereby, making them loyal to that particular brand.
2. Creates Consumer Preference For The Product Or Service Behind The Brand: A wide diversity of products clues to confusion. One-way buyers manage these matters is by tilting towards brands they know and trust. Sincere and extensively known brands are seen as less unsafe to buy from.
3. Visually appealing brand management: The visual appeal of a brand is what makes the customers choose that particular brand over thousands of others. With an attractive packaging and an ingenious graphic design, the brand could be extensively linked to the company and etched in the mind of customers, thereby, making them automatically choose the visually appealing one over other.
4. Hike in sales: The more tempting the product looks to buy, the more chances of customers trying it. This direct connection of visually convincing the customers of its importance drives the sales of that particular product up a notch.
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A product is something which is made by a corporation and can be bought by a customer in exchange for money while a brand is established through a consumer perceptions, experiences and potentials with all products or services under a brand umbrella.
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A brand is a perceptual object that is entrenched in reality but imitates the insights and maybe even the peculiarities of customers. A brand is something that exist in the minds of customer.
There are multiple scopes of branding, such as branding a
- Physical goods
- service
- a person
- place
- an organization
- or, an idea
Branding Challenges and Opportunities
- Linking brand to be an asset
- Financial encounters
- Creating a digital branding plan
- Bringing up an advance brand concepts.
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1.6.1 Meaning
Brand positioning denotes to “target consumer’s” reason to buy your brand in inclination to others. It ensures that all brand activity has a mutual aim; is directed, guided and delivered by the brand’s reasons to buy; and it emphases at all points of contact with the customer.
Brand positioning allows you to describe your brand and comprehend what lies at the center of your business plan. Understanding this allows you to strategize how your brand and products should be interconnected to the customer and through what channels.
Example: Apple builds attractive, innovative computers that are dissimilar than anything you’ve experienced and markets them to resonate with their customers.
1.6.2 Importance of Brand Positioning
2. It gives the company a unique characteristics.
3. It becomes firms focus.
4. It drives the firms to be extensively effective and build an innovative decision making plan
5. It amplifies the message you’re trying to convey to the consumers.
6. It drives more sales, thereby, increasing the conversion rates of the company.
1.6.3 Basis
- Product positioning grounded on product qualities or benefits is the most frequently used strategy. Brands are categorized apart from opponents on the basis of some specific product feature or advantage offered. For years, Kelvinator refrigerator used to be advertised for its coolest compressors.
- Hero Honda has highlighted the economy and reliability of its cars and has become the front-runner in the number of units sold. Hyundai Santro has strained upon the maneuverability of the car on the roads and has become one such corporation having profits in the exact first year of its operations in India.
- Though, one or more than one traits can be chosen as a part of the positioning strategy, but communication about many product attributes may cause dilution in the product image and cause complications for the application of an advertising strategy.
- At the same time, positioning the product for a single attribute or profit in itself can also be a chancier proposition, as the product may lose its competitive advantage in case if competition trails the same. Hence, only noticeable attributes are identified i.e. those that are significant to the customers and are the basis for making a buying decision.
Key takeaways: • Brand positioning is the idea of the brand that the company wants to fit in the audiences mind. • Product positioning grounded on product qualities or benefits is the most frequently used strategy.
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References:
- Marketing Management by Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane
- Brand Marketing by Kirti Dutta
