BRANDS AND BRAND MANAGEMENT

What is a Brand?

Brand emerges from old norse (Scandinavian language) word brandr that means to burn.

For the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol,
or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one
seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.

A brand is a storehouse of trust. That matters more and more as choices multiply.
People want to simplify their lives.

In technocrat and colorless times, brands bring warmth, familiarity and trust.

Thus the key to creating a brand according to the AMA definition, is to be able to choose
a name, logo, symbol, package design or other characteristic that identifies a product
and distinguishes it from others, therefore these different components of a brand that
identify and differentiate it are called Brand Elements.

Many practicing managers refer to a brand as more than that as something that has
actually created a certain amount of awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on in
the marketplace.

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Brand Elements
A variety of brand elements can be chosen that inherently enhance brand awareness or
facilitate the formation of strong, favorable, and unique brand associations:

Brand Name

Logo

Symbol

Character

Packaging

Slogan

Branding
Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name. Branding can be
applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and service names.

Product VS Brand
Product is a cluster of value delightment for which consumers are willing to exchange
money
A product is anything that can be offered to the market for attention, acquisition, use, or
consumption that might satisfy a need or want. Thus, a product can be a physical good,
service, organization, place or ideas.
A brand is a product but adds other dimensions that differentiate it in some way from
other products designed to satisfy the same need.

Five Levels of Meaning for a Product

The core benefit level is the fundamental need or want that consumers satisfy by
consuming the product or service.

The generic product level is a basic version of the product containing only those
attributes or characteristics absolutely necessary for its functioning but with no
distinguishing features. This is basically a stripped-down, no-frills version of the product
that adequately performs the product function.

The expected product level is a set of attributes or characteristics that buyers normally
expect and agree to when they purchase a product.
The augmented product level includes additional product attributes, benefits, or related
services that distinguish the product from competitors.
The potential product level includes all the augmentations and transformations that a
product might ultimately undergo in the future.

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Five levels of Portable MP3 Player

Core Benefit
Generic product
Expected product
Augmented product
Potential product

Musical entertainment on the move

Ability to play music downloaded from the web or ripped from
CD collections.
Solid state device with no moving parts and 64-128 megabytes
of memory with expansion slot.
Color LCD screen, audio equalizer etc.
Voice-controlled programming; extended infinite life batteries.

e.g. Five levels of product: (For VCR)

The core benefit (Convenient environment)
The generic product level (Record and play back television program)
The expected product level (Channels)
Augmented product (Hi fi sound)
The potential product level (Voice controlled programming)

According to Kavin Lane Keller A brand is therefore a product, but one that adds other
dimensions that differentiate it in someway from other products designed to satisfy the
same need.

Understanding consumer motivations and desires and creating relevant and appealing
images surrounding the products makes a brand leader.

Some brands create competitive advantages with product performance; other brands
create competitive advantages through non-product-related means.

Brand building tools:

R&D

Product

Service

Promotion

Retail environment

Advertising

Merchandising

Packaging

CRM

Price

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Meaning of a Brand
A brand is essentially a sellers promise to deliver a specific set of features, benefits, and
services consistently to the buyers. A brand can convey up to six levels of meaning. They
are:
Attributes
Benefits
Values
Culture
Personality
User

Types of Products
Researchers have classified products and their associated attributes or benefits into three
categories:
Search Goods - grocery products consumers can evaluate product attributes like
sturdiness (strength, durability, hardness) size, color, style, design, weight and ingredient
composition by visual inspection.
Experience Goods like automobile tires cannot be assessed so easily by inspection
and actual product trial and experience is necessary to judge durability, service quality,
safety and ease of handling or use.
Credence Goods like open heart surgery, operations. includes characteristics that the
consumer may find it impossible to evaluate (Rarely learned) even after purchase or
consumption. Examples of offerings high in credence qualities are appendix operations
and brake relining on automobiles.

Types of Risk in Product Decisions

Consumers may perceive many different types of risks in buying and consuming a product:
Functional Risk The product does not perform up to expectations.
Physical Risk The product poses a threat to the physical well-being or health of the user
or others.
Financial Risk the product is not worth the price paid.
Social Risk The product results in embarrassment from others.
Psychological Risk The product affects the mental well-being of the user.
Time Risk The failure of the product results in an opportunity cost of finding another
satisfactory product.
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Why do brand matter to consumers?

Identification of sources of product
Assignment of responsibility to product maker.
Risk reducer
Search cost reducer
Symbolic device
Signal of quality
Promise or bond with product or maker
reduce customer search costs by identifying products quickly and accurately,

reduce the buyers perceived risk by providing an assurance of quality and consistency
(which may then be transferred to new products),

reduce the social and psychological risks associated with owning and using the wrong
product by providing psychological rewards for purchasing brands that symbolize status
and prestige.

Why do brand matter to Manufacturer?

Means of identification to simplifying handling and tracing.
Means of legally protecting unique feature.
Signal of quality
Means of endowing products with unique associations.
Sources of competitive advantage
Sources of financial returns.

the introduction of new products, because the customer is familiar with the brand from
previous buying experience,

promotional effectiveness by providing a point of focus,

premium pricing by creating a basic level of differentiation compared to competitors,

market segmentation by communicating a coherent message to the target audience,

telling them for whom the brand is intended and for whom it is not,

repeat purchases that enhance the companys financial performance because the brand
enables the customer to identify and re-identify the product compared to alternatives,

brand loyalty, of particular importance in product categories where loyal buying is an

important feature of buying behavior.

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Can Everything be Branded?

Ultimately a brand is something that resides in the minds of consumers.

The key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in a product
category.
Even commodities can be branded:
Coffee (Maxwell House), bath soap (Ivory), flour (Gold Medal), beer (Budweiser),
salt (Morton), oatmeal (Quaker), pickles (Vlasic), bananas (Chiquita), chickens
(Perdue), pineapples (Dole), and even water (Perrier)
Branding involves creating mental structures and helping consumers to organize their
knowledge
An Example of Branding a Commodity
e.g. De Beers Group added the phrase A Diamond Is Forever

Marketers can benefit from branding whenever consumers are in choice situations.
Physical goods : Coca Cola, BMW, Sony
Services: Hotel Marriot, City NA, DHL
Retailers and Distributors: Sears, Agora, Aarong
Online products and services: Amazon.com, Google
People and Organizations( Channel/ Magazine): Jenifer Lopez, Sachin, Red Cross
Sports, Art and Entertainment : Man U, R Madrid, Lord of the Rings

Geographic locations Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore

Ideas and Causes WWF, AIDS ribbons

The Brand Equity Concept

No common viewpoint on how it should be conceptualized and measured

It stresses the importance of brand role in marketing strategies.
Brand equity is defined in terms of the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the
brand.
Brand equity relates to the fact that different outcomes result in the marketing of a product or
service because of its brand name, as compared to if the same product or service did not
have that name.
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What distinguishes a brand from its unbranded commodity counterpart and gives it equity is
the sum total of consumers perceptions and feelings about the products attributes and how
they perform, about the brand name and what it stands for, and about the company
associated with the brand.
It is the positive differential effect that knowing the brand name has on customer response to
the product or service
Brand equity is a set of brand assets and liability linked to a brand, its name, and symbol,
that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that
firms customers.*
Common Terms Used in Brand Management
Brand Equity: The financial and commercial value of the brand to the organization, which
owns and utilizes it.
Brand Awareness: The percentage of consumers or potential consumers who have
knowledge of or can identify a particular brand. Brand awareness is the ability of a potential
customer to recognize or recall that the brand name is a type of retailer or product or service.
Aided recall is when consumers indicate they know the brand when the name is presented to
them.
Top-of-mind awareness is the highest level of awareness, arises when consumers mention a
brand name first when they are asked about the type of retailer, a merchandise category, or
a type of service.
Brand Cannibalism: Introducing a new brand which will eat into the market of other brand
of the organization
Brand Audit: Assessing the current situation among the brands managed by a particular
company.
Brand Extension: If a Brand is successful, the management or maker seeks to extend the
brand by introducing variations of it in the same area.
Brand Stretching: An increasingly common strategy involving applying an existing brand to
a completely different business area or a new product or service.
Brand Loyalty: A measure of the commitment or obligation felt by consumers to purchase
or use a particular brand.
Brand association: Brand associations are anything that linked to or connected with the
brand name in a consumers memory.

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Brand image: Brand image is a set of associations that are usually organized around some
meaningful themes. Thus the associations that a consumer might have about McDonalds
might be organized into groups such as kids, service and type of food.

STRATEGIC BRAND MANAGEMENT PROCESS

1.
2.
3.
4.

Identifying and establishing brand positioning and values. .

Planning and implementing brand marketing programs
Measuring & interpreting brand performance
Growing and sustaining brand equity

Branding Challenges and Opportunities

Savvy (rational/confidence)customers
Brand proliferation( line and brand extension)
Media fragmentation
Increased competition
Brand extension
Deregulation ( Boundaries)
Globalization
Low priced competitors ( Imitating products)
Increased costs
Greater accountability

Note: For details please see text & reference books.

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