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
Marketing Concepts
Significance of Social Evaluation of Marketing
Social Evaluation of marketing is an approach that has a long-term impact on an individual. Marketing plays an important role in a society by influencing life of people. Marketing is much more than advertising and selling. It plays an important role in meeting the needs of the consumers. The concept of marketing touches life of every individual. It is a medium through which desire of people is satisfied on everyday basis. The overall concept of marketing concept covers activities like advertising, public relation, promotion, sales, etc. This is a process through which a product or a service is introduced in the market. For the reason it is important to manage the marketing policies. Marketing is a broad concept comprising of activates from procurement of raw material till after sales services. The broad parameter of the marketing strategies helps in organizational design. For the purpose the marketing strategies are developed by Continue reading
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
Positioning and Differentiation of Services
Services firms are not identifying their key market segments and then determining how they wish consumers to perceive both their company and its products and services. Positioning is of particular significant in the services sector as it places an intangible service within a more tangible frame of reference. Thus the concept of positioning stems from a consideration of how an organization wishes its target customer to view its products and services in relationship to those of its competitors and their actual, or perceived, needs. “Positioning is concerned with the identification, development and communication of a differentiated advantage which makes the organization’s products and services perceived as superior and distinctive to those of its competitors in the mind of its target customers.” Positioning offers the opportunity to differentiate any service. Each service firm and its goods and services has a position or image in the consumer’s mind and this influences purchase Continue reading
Marketing Research – Definition, Importance and Process
Definition of Marketing Research Marketing research is a key to the evolution of successful marketing strategies and programmes. It is an important tool to study buyer behavior, changes in consumer lifestyles and consumption patterns, brand loyalty and forecast market changes. Research is also used to study competition and analyze the competitor product’s positioning and how to gain competitive advantage. Recently, marketing research is being used to help create and enhance brand equity. According to Philip Kotler, Marketing research is systematic problem analysis, model building and fact finding for the purposes of important decision making and control in the marketing of goods and services. The important decision making related to market strategy and other tasks related to marketing depends on findings or marketing research. Marketing research process reduces the chances of errors, miss conceptions and uncertainty from decision making process. It is therefore very important to conduct marketing research to identify Continue reading
Brand Case Study: Virgin Atlantic, Adidas, Xerox, Ikea and Accenture
VIRGIN ATLANTIC Virgin Atlantic was born in the 1980s. Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, had already created a successful brand with Virgin Group, particularly in the music business. He had founded the group when he was 20 as a mail-order record company and shortly after opened a music shop in London’s main shopping thoroughfare, Oxford Street. The original brand slogan of these stores was ‘Cheap and nasty’. A music studio was built in Oxfordshire in 1972, where one Mike Oldfield recorded his massively successful album Tabular Bells for the Virgin Records label. This album sold 5 million copies and was the catalyst for Virgin Records, which signed a range of successful artists, including The Rolling Stones, Culture Club, Janet Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Simple Minds and The Human League. Virgin was to become one of the six biggest record companies in the world. By the early 80s Virgin Group was well Continue reading