Brand Management Notes

Brands are merely symbols that evoke associations; These associations form a brand’s meaning.

Managing brands is about developing brand meaning and leveraging the associations for economic benefit:

1. Influencing consumer preference.

2. Commanding a price premium.

3. Leveraging awareness & meaning to enter new categories.

4. Influencing channel acceptance of the brand.

How Brands Influence Behaviour

5. Brand Awareness → increased consideration at purchase.

6. Brand Associations → perceived differentiation = reason to buy.

7. Brand Loyalty → less perceived risk = higher retention.

Key Points:

* Don’t confuse awareness with meaning!

* Managers tend to overweight the importance of awareness.

* Awareness only aids consideration. Meaning does the rest.

* Be careful about changing the identity meanings of your brand. Extending your brand to target a new market may be dangerous if it jeopardizes valuable identity meanings that current consumers are using.

* 1. 2. 3.

* Low differentiation = high price sensitivity.

* Commoditization can be a psychological state.

* Need to re-engage buyers who are past caring.

* Kodak Case

* -Jan 94; new strategy for film products

* -Jan 94; stock decrease 8% because of rumors of price cut on film

* -market share in past 5 years dropped from 76-70%, over past 5 years, market’s annual unit growth rate average 2%

* -previous strategy against competitors by introducing superpremium brand, Ektar

* -now propose to introduce cheaper brand, Funtime, at Fuji and Konica’s price level, 20% below flagship Gold Plus brand, available only in limited quantities during two off-peak selling seasons

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* u.s. photo film market

* -1993, 670 million 24-exposure rolls made, typical price consumer pay 2.50-3.50

* -fuji and Kodak only branded products, agfa, 3m

* -kodak cannot sell film on private label basis

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