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Growing and sustaining brand equity
Growing and sustaining brand equity
Choosing brand elements to build brand equity
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Brands and Marketing Commodities
A commodity is a good or even a service whose widespread availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors other than price, such as brand name. By definition, commodities lack differentiation and the consequent ability to charge a price premium distinguishing them from strong brands. Brands also ensure repeat buying and publicity thus ensuring a predictable and grow-able share of the market based on their unique positioning strategy rather than based on just cost competition.
Even with commodities, there are quite a few parameters which brands can use to position themselves to capture a place in the consumer’s memory and consequently in their shopping basket. A few of the more widely accepted of them are: Consistency of Product Quality, Customization of the product to the extent possible, Providing a wider range of products, Identifying the most profit generating segments of the market and modifying or adding an offering to cater to their specific needs, Unique packaging, Emotional Branding and even basing branding on building a unique image to the extent of professing to have a brand personality. In fact focusing on getting consumers to build an emotional identification with the brand and its personality has a far longer lasting effect and builds far greater loyalty than focusing on just functional and utility attributes which a competitor would also able to easily match if not surpass.
Hamam is a typical example of such a strategy of building a strong brand image to appeal to the consumers. Hamam has captured the consumer’s mind space by building around itself an image of Honesty and Protection even while it is seen that the product itself offers scope for very little unique or differentiating features which would ensure that a consumer remains loyal to the brand because given the plethora of players in this market any new successful variant would be instantly taken up by the competitors too. Even in the currently evolving face of the brand to gear up to the challenge of trying to appeal to the youth segment, the core value of Trust that its brand equity over the years has been heavily based on, is still being stressed to the possible extent.
Hamam: A Brief History
Hamam is one of the oldest established soap brands in India. It was launched in 1930s alongside Cinthol (from Godrej). At the time of its inception, Hamam was owned by TOMCO (Tata Oil Manufacturing Company).
When the consistency of the information is built, the credibility of the brand becomes higher (Bengtsson, Bardhi and Venkatraman, 2010). It is suggested that asymmetric information leads to consumer uncertainty, which would therefore have a negative impact on brand image (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Accordingly, consistency of the information has become a key factor that leads to the successfulness of a global brand since it reduces the uncertainty and the thinking process time of consumers (Lee et al., 2007). Several effects have been found regarding to standardization of a brand (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Marketers will have a better control of the brand if the brand meaning has been consistent over the time (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). First of all, it increases brand equity, which would therefore improve consumer’s brand awareness (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Second, it would reduce consumers’ uncertainty of the brand, which would thus increase the reliability of the brand and brand loyalty (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Third, it greatly reduces the conflict of consumers’ cognitive structures, which would lead them to trust more on the brand (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p.
The only difference is that some consumers want to show up by having expensive products from famous brands rather than from an unknown brand. Some consumers may buy expensive brands’ products, when their economy was not good
In every given business, the name itself portrays different meanings. This serves as the reference point and sometimes the basis of customers on what to expect within the company. Since personality affects product image (Langmeyer & Shank, 1994), the presence of brand helps in the realization of this concept. Traditionally, brand is a symbolic manifestation of all the information connected with a company, product, or service (Nilson, 2003; Olin, 2003). A brand is typically composed of a name, logo, and other visual elements such as images, colors, and icons (Gillooley & Varley, 2001; Laforet & Saunders, 1994)). It is believed that a brand puts an impression to the consumer on what to expect to the product or service being offered (Mere, 1995). In other application, brand may be referred as trademark, which is legally appropriate term. The brand is the most powerful weapon in the market (LePla & Parker, 1999). Brands possess personality in which people associate their experience. Oftentimes, they are related to the core values the company executes.
Branding is defined as “the promot[ion] of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand” (Merriam-Webster, 2015). Branding is also used to create a corporate image or brand by utilizing logos, corporate statements, and other images that will be associated with or displayed on all of that company’s products (Wolak, 2002). A brand is a valuable, enduring asset that is essential in creating and maintaining competitive advantage in an industry (Wolak, 2002; Murphy, 1988). This corporate asset can be just as important as the product or service behind it, because it carries name recognition and peace of mind to customers in the purchase decisions they make everyday (Hall, 2008). Brands essentially work as a “shorthand device” for consumers to evaluate product decisions by conveying a message of uniform quality, credibility, and experience
In an ever-increasingly competitive market, David Jones has placed imperative emphasis on augmenting and developing its brand image (Hsu & McDonald, 2002, p.360). In this respect, David Jones has initiated diverse advertisement campaigns, to improve its brand image at the product, retail, and consumer level (Meenaghan, 1995, p.555). Through intensive advertising, David Jones informs its customers of the functional capabilities of the brand, while at the same time, infusing the brand with values and meanings that are relevant to the consumers. This report will conduct a professional advertising audit on David Jones’ recent advertising campaign. In this respect, the report will pay imperative focus on issues such as consumer and target audience, media selection, creativity, among many other issues relevant to the subject (Rosenkrans, 2009, p.
A customer’s response falls in two categories, judgment and feelings. Consumers are constantly making judgments about a brand. These judgments fall into four categories: quality, credibility, consideration, and superiority (Keller, 2001). Customers judge a brand based on its actual and perceived quality, and customers judge credibility using the perception of the company’s expertise, trustworthiness, and likability. To what extent is the brand seen as “competent, innovative, and a market leader,” “dependable and sensitive to the interest of customers,” and “fun, interesting, and worth spending time with” (Keller,
According to Philip Kotler “A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competitors. The business firm(s) faces the choice, whether it should brand its product or not? The Generic products can be offered to the consumers at a price lower than the branded products with standard or lower quality. The brand sponsor decision involves the decision about who is going to brand the product, manufacturer or re-seller or will it be a combination of the two? Indian retailing has seen a lot of ups and downs over the last few years. With the increasing growth of the organized
For commodity goods, consumers are more inelastic to price changes. As commodities are at affordable price, the price differences are rather small. Therefore, lowest price is not a main concern for most consumers.
Tanner and Raymond (2014) describe branding activity as “strategies that are designed to create an image and position in the consumers’ minds” (c.6). When branding messages coincide with its offerings’ characteristics, it establishes consumer trust, and brand strength. For example, when first introducing Dove brand in 1957, by labeling its product as a “beauty cleansing bar . . . [with] ¼ moisturizing cream, that rinses cleaner than soap” (Unilever, 2016), we can see that marketers associated the brand to moisturizing and beauty, and disassociated the brand from common soap. Over the years, this consistent message coinciding with product performance has strengthened the Dove brand. Strong brand equity is derived from consistent, strategic branding that establishes perceived quality and emotional attachment (Entrepreneur, 2016); therefore, consumers are more likely to pay higher prices, as well as purchase new offerings connected to the
Lastly, brand awareness is a crucial consideration. And It may be thought of as a consumers’ ability to find a brand within a group in adequate detail to make a purchase. It is important to remember that adequate detail does not always need identification of the brand name. Often “brand awareness is no more than a visual image of the package that stimulates a response to the brand.” Moreover, recall of the name is not necessarily required because brand awareness in which can try via brand recognition. According to Emma Macdonald and Byron Sharp (2003), suggested, when a brand is recognized at point of purchase, its brand awareness does not need brand recall. This is a major point in the consideration of brand awareness as the most important communication objective. In fact, the difference is misunderstood by marketing and advertising managers. The difficulty is to relate to the essential difference between recognition and recall, that is extremely important to advertising strategy. Brand recognition and brand recall are two separate types of brand awareness. The difference depends upon the communication effect that occurs primarily in the consumers’ memory.
The practice of brand management is a key component of marketing and performs an integral function by motivating the wants and needs of consumers. It is known that marketing can shape consumer needs and wants, however, consumers today appear to be more knowledgeable about the information regarding products. Consumers lead busy lives and have therefore gone to the internet as one of the many channels to learn about products in order to make informed decisions. This paper will discuss the argument that marketing should reflect the needs and wants of consumers rather than shaping these attributes. Due to the speed and ease of obtaining information, consumers do not take at face value strong marketing efforts that appear to be overly aggressive and push a brand rather than just being informative. Brand managers have to be aware of these changing dynamics and carefully craft brand management practices to meet the demands of consumers.
By communicating a new value proposition, brand management aims to change the brand’s former brand percep-tion and link the new brand image to the new position. Of course, also within re-positioning, new attributes have to demonstrate points of difference and superi-ority. By emphasizing the brand’s uniqueness, management enables the cus-tomer to perceive higher brand value in their mind (cf. Friis 2009, p. 19). If the brand elements are not relevant for the target audience or the brand proposition was not chosen correctly, brand identity will not be perceived as credible and communication will fail. Therefore, companies have to analyse their target groups accurately before choosing new attributes, which they want to communicate. Management has to find out what are the target audience’s needs, wants and desires and what do they believe in. The organizations values should in best case overlap with the values of the audience. New brand attributes have to follow specific communication objectives, which are focussed on changing the custom-ers’ perception (cf. Feddersen 2013, p.
Today's modern concept of branding grew out of the consumer packaged goods industry and the process of branding has come to include much more than just creating a way to identify a product or company. Branding is used to create emotional attachment to products and companies. Branding efforts create a feeling of involvement, a sense of higher quality, and an aura of intangible qualities that surround the brand name, mark, or symbol.
The second step deals in creation of proper brand meaning through powerful and unique brand connection with the customers. The third step involves invoking positive brand response while the fourth one involves engaging the customers so as to build a brand affiliation aimed at enhancing active brand loyalty. However, some building blocks are requisite in order to achieve these steps. These...
It 's no secret that traditional marketing practices have declined and consumers are now more skeptical than ever. Brands have had to find ways of connecting with potential customers in a more authentic way.