Consistency is the key to successfully building and managing brand equity. Having a long-term outlook and projecting a consistent image of your brand to the customer will maximize the results of building brand equity. It is critical for managers to realize that brand equity can have positive as well as negative effects on a product or company. In the end, it is the customer that truly defines what brand equity means. If management feels it is necessary to change the direction of a brand or change a product it must be careful not to change too quickly. There are many examples of companies that have changed a product or brand too much or too quickly. On these occasions, consumers met changes with adverse reactions. The most famous example is Coca-Cola. They changed the formula of their flagship product Coke, and consumers reacted so poorly to the new product that the Continue reading
Brand Management
Elements of Brand Identity
There are many elements/characteristics associated with a brand, which need to be understood to facilitate brand creation and brand management. These include brand identity, image, positioning, personality, culture and architecture, as well as brand components such as the text, visual images, and sounds. The brand identity is the way in which a brand/product is portrayed by the firm, with the aim of differentiating the brand from competitors while concurrently creating familiarity between the target market and the brand. This is achieved using a range of tools, which will include the brand image, positioning, personality, culture and architecture. The brand image uses these tools in a combined manner to create or embody a unique set of representative associations which helps to establish a relationship between the customer and the brand/product. The brand identity should create immediate recognition not only for the underlying product/service, but the values, positioning, and general benefits associated Continue reading
The Importance of Brand Perception
The perception of Branding holds great significance since many years; it is the explanation to distinguish the goods and services from one to another. Customer’s simple understanding of brand is to relate and consider with simple information processing about products purchasing and being positive about the brand to construct their trust with time. Branding is a method that is utilized by the enterprises to utilize trading schemes to enhance their merchandise or service likeness in order that it is more gladly recollected by the customer. Branding assists the goods or service to make a favorable influence on the goal customers while the branding notions assist in explaining the guidelines that should be pursued throughout the branding process. Brand equity is primarily constructed by laying a base of brand perception – finally forming affirmative brand images – and is finally maximized by high grades of brand commitment. The significance of brand equity comprises Continue reading
Introduction to Branding Concepts- Brand Advertising and Brand Promotion
A brand is a term used to identify its products; while branding is the practice of identifying a product or line of products by a special name or symbol. Its use goes back to the middle ages for promoting sales. It is said that Egyptians were using some or other identification to market their pottery. The continued use of brands to the present times in business has been largely due to: Growth in competition. Growth of national and local advertising. Growth of packaging and The development of consumer brand consciousness. Such sales promotion devices are intended: To gain recognition for their products. To bring about a certain amount of consumers preference and To so firmly fix the product in the mind of the buyer that he will believe that it is the only one which will satisfy his wants and as a result will refuse to accept a substitute. Definition Continue reading
Brand Hierarchy
A brand hierarchy is a means of summarizing the branding strategy by displaying the number and nature of common and distinctive brand elements across the firm’s products, revealing the explicit ordering of brand elements. By capturing the potential branding rela tionships among the different products sold by the firm, a brand hierarchy is a useful means of graphically portraying a firm’s branding strategy. Specifically, a brand hierarchy is based on the realization that a product can be branded in different ways depending on how many new and existing brand elements are used and how they are combined for any one product. Because certain brand elements are used to make more than one brand, a hierarchy can be constructed to represent how (if at all) products are nested with other prod ucts because of their common brand elements. Some brand elements may be shared by many products (e.g., Ford); other brand Continue reading
Building Strong Brands: Why Is It Hard?
In today’s competitive market, a brand can only achieve success if it can connect with consumers and effectively communicate its unique qualities in a way in which they create a positive impression in the minds of consumers. The brand builder who attempts to develop a strong brand is like a golfer playing on a course with heavy roughs, deep sand traps, sharp doglegs, and vast water barriers. It is difficult to score well in such conditions. Substantial pressures and barriers, both internal and external, can inhibit the brand builder. To be able to develop effective brand strategies, it is useful to understand these pressures and barriers. 1. Pressure To Compete On Price There are enormous pressures on nearly all firms to engage in price competition. In all industries from computers to cars to frozen dinners to airlines to soft drinks, price competition is at center stage, driven by the power Continue reading