Importance Of Branding, And Brand Loyalty, To Successful Marketing

Marketing and branding, two of the most common used words in the contemporary world, is closely linked to each other without doubts, but the importance of branding to successful marketing is enquired to measure in term of the question. In fact, various people have different ideas on marketing and branding. For most of people, or customers, the two are normally combined in their minds or even equal to each other. For example, people could raise Apple as the answer for both questions of "what is good branding" and "what is successful marketing". In fact, they are two separate topics on academic, and branding is just one of the numerous marketing activities apparently. However, the perception of consumers might be a good guide to answer the question.

In the following of this essay, the importance of branding and brand loyalty would be discussed in theory firstly, and further analysis would be made on them separately, supporting by examples of Virgin Atlantic airway. Finally, a conclusion will be given out.

In general, there are numerous definitions of marketing as it has various features to involve, and the one below has concluded main factors of it:

"Marketing consists of individual and organizational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas." (Dibb et al 2001, p1)

According to this, it is obvious that the objective of marketing is to satisfy demand of customers by those ‘individual and organizational activities’ like promotion or pricing of goods, which are all just means to achieve that. Additionally, organizations could stand out from their competitors once they meet the needs of customers better than others. Thus, it can be said that the successful marketing is to provide competitive advantages for organizations by doing better in satisfying customers’ desires through products and other marketing activities.

Product is the core of marketing, which including tangible goods like food or drinks or intangible services, as it is the major way to embody customers requirements; and, branding is directly associated with it. In fact, branding is all about decisio ns of products, like brand names or trademarks. Stork (2007) asserted that a brand is a unique business identity which represents the personality, quality or origin of products. And, such a product which added value by branding would appear in every activity of marketing, namely, branding is actually react on the whole marketing system directly and indirectly.