In today’s ever competitive global market, marketers are finding themselves having to grapple with an increasingly difficult issue about branding and their brands. Many marketing managers have to deal with questions of what are the most effective and efficient means to building a strong brand and sustaining it. Pick up any marketing textbook and most will define brands as a name, design, terms, symbol, or any combinative feature that identifies and differentiates one seller’s good or service from those of other sellers. (American Marketing Association)
In other words, it is everything that a consumer can retain in their mind about the product or service produced by a particular organization. Brands are often evoked or symbolized using a variety of features belonging to the brand. These features represent all the past experience and expectation a consumer has received about that brand. When we think about brands in the likes of Apple, Bmw, Victoria Secret, and Disney, we not only read into them our experiences with the brand but their features triggers a mental model in our minds. It creates a certain perception of quality, expectations and position in our minds. They connect the products attributes and brand association between the corporations and users. (Biel, 1991)
With that said, branding that could create a lasting impression into the minds of its consumers plays an important part for any successful business. It can be used to enhance business performance as brand themselves are used as an implied tool that can positively influence people’s buying behaviors and work as a driving force to convey the business’ message and stay in the customer’s mind.
Consequently, studies have been made and the results showed that consumer’s ...
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...uality. It was often times like those where it was difficult to measure how good a product is from an unfamiliar brand, hence loyalty was a way of reducing risk. (Simonson & Rosen, 2014).
Consumers today are far better informed and likely to investigate the value of products than just to rely on intrinsic values of brands before purchase. Consumers are empowered to do their own research about whatever they want to buy. This trend started with Consumer Reports, which produced reports on objective studies about products and further enhanced with the rise of the internet, which has given ordinary consumers access to expert reviews, user feedback, and details about product data, in an assortment of product categories. A study conducted showed that in 2012, seventy-two per cent of consumers in the U.S look at online reviews before making major purchases (Coopers, 2012).
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.
The term “personal branding” has over the recent past been associated with Tom Peters, a renowned management guru. A brand can be described as the comprehensive, consistent value that a person receives from using a product or service. It conveys a whole set of expectations which can be either negative or positive. A brand is also described simply as a bundle of benefits, attributable to a product or service. Is branding limited to goods and services?
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,
The source of the brand features is in a connection between customers and companies that sell services or products. Consumers who choose a specific company fundamentally acknowledge to prefer that brand more than other brands rooted from the recognition of the brand’s worth.
Companies use a collection of brand equities to represent their products in the market (Voolnes, 2012). Brand equity refers to the commercial value that is derived from the perception of consumers on any given brand name of particular products in the market as opposed to the product itself. Ataman (2003) notes that the effect to the consumer is in the brand name and not the product itself. Companies use logos, trademarks and a collection of other symbols to present this information to the customers. The use of these symbols is meant to try and capture the customer mindset so that they can be thinking about the company products at all times through the items they possess at home (Estes, Gibbert, Guest, & Mazursk, 2012). This can well be explained by use of the customer-based brand equity model that brings together the requirements for a publicly renowned brand in the market.
Shoppers shape mark observations and desires in view of outside correspondence with the association and others; in any case, in light of individual involvement with a marked item a buyer will develop a brand personality. It is advantageous to take note of, that attributes that might be appealing to a buyer in one market fragment may not be alluring to shoppers in other market portions. Shoppers utilize brands to appraise, survey, or assess distinctive items in a market – this is frequently alluded to as item separation. Along these lines, an appealing brand gives a heuristic to quality and esteem and decreases
A brand identifies a seller’s product from a competitor’s product. There are three main purposes for branding product identification, which is the most important purpose, repeat sales, and new-product sales. Branding has a lot of terms that marketers use there is brand equity, global brand, and brand loyalty. Marketers also have different brand strategies that they use for different products or customers. It all depends on the consumer for them to decide which strategy they will use. The different strategies are generic products, manufacturer’s brands, private brands, individual brands, family brands, and co-branding. The branding purposes and the branding strategy make up the importance of branding.
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.
Every company seeks to create its own brand - a unique and effective image. Purpose of brand is attracting and retaining customers in its market share. Branding in marketing is a complex technology, aimed at making advantageous position a brand from the competition. Facilitating the search for the necessary goods to the buyer, branding in marketing becomes more effective if the consumer product features meet market requirements. It is especially necessary to identify the goods, for a case of unprepared buyer which can not assess the competitive characteristics (for example, high-tech products). The development of technology has had a huge impact on human society. It is reflected in the fact that we are surrounded by complex technical devices that we use every day and sometimes we have no idea of how this thing is located within. Here the brand comes to help the consumer that stands out from all those product characteristics that are important to the consumer and facilitates the understanding of the product.
Consumer behavior does not stop at buying and using a product. There is also post product evaluation which is our thoughts of the product weather we are satisfied or not and if the product is what we expected, are the reviews of the product meeting our standards. This post evaluation affects weather we ever consume the product again. Even a customer loyal to a brand can have a negative post evaluation. This result of satisfaction or dissatisfaction lies upon our fulfillment needs.
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People are buying the product which gives them prestige. Marketers have interest on consumer psychology and they are playing with every day by showing that their product will give prestige in the society. It’s true that the transparent societies now needs brands image. Marketers analyze the interest and needs of consumer than create the product according to the need of the society. Brand can attain the people attraction and the business can have the good reputation by giving satisfaction to consumer. If the brand gives satisfaction and function are according to the expectation of consumer than the brand gets good image on the mind of consumer. brand image is great weapon to use for the competitors it builds in years , at once the business gets brand image it has competitive edge from other brands in the market. When consumer rely on the brand the company can create the long term relation with the consumer, in other words (CRM) consumer relationship management. The brand image has effect on the choice of every individual there believe and attitude change their preferences. Brand image can be effected by price as price is an important part for consumer when they are making purchase decision if they find the value of brand is equal to the pricing they purchase that brand if not they refuse it. Similarly the image of brand can be effected by the attributes and features or
This article studies the relationship between advertising and sales promotions and their impact on brand equity. A main priority for most companies is to establish and achieve a strong and powerful brand name. A company can build a strong brand name by creating the market for their customers want. By creating a strong brand name, a company will become more established. Brand equity is important to the producer, retailer and consumer. The consumer knowledge of the brand says how the producer will produce and market the product. The consumer knowledge of the brand name also determines the quantity the retailer will sale. Brand equity can have a positive or negative effect. A positive effect would be for everyone to recognize the name and purchase the product. The negative effect would be to have the product recalled. Brand equity is important because it can offer many advantages for a company. Brand equity can create a high demand for your product, reduce marketing cost and the company’s brand name will have high credibility.
Branding on consumer purchase decisions. In order to comply with this a questionnaire was prepared and survey has been conducted among 100 respondents and data revealed that brands have strong influence on purchase decision.
Branding and marketing are both buzzwords that to the uninitiated seem interchangeable. After all, they’re both methods businesses can use to increase their profits and productivity. Despite this end goal, there are subtle differences in how and why the tactics are used.