Marketing - Branding

Brands

Definition:

If you ask ten marketing professionals or brand managers to define the word "brand", you very well may get ten different answers. Most of the answers you receive, hopefully, will at least have some commonalities.

The definition of brand: A brand is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value.

In its simplest form, a brand is nothing more and nothing less than the promises of value you or your product make. These promises can be implied or explicitly stated, but none-the-less, value of some type is promised.

Brand Equity:

When developing a new product, branding is an important decision. The brand can add significant value when it is well recognised and has positive associations in the mind of the customer. This concept is referred to as “brand equity”

Brand equity is an intangible asset that depends on associations made by the consumer. There are at least three perspectives from which to view brand equity.

1. Financial – One way to measure brand equity is to determine the price premium that the brand commands over a generic product. For example, if a consumer is willing to pay £100 more for a branded TV over the same unbranded TV, this premium provided important information about the value of the brand.

2. Brand extensions – A successful brand can be used as a platform to launch related products. The benefits of brand extensions are the leveraging of existing brand awareness thus reducing advertising expenditures, and a lower risk from the perspective of the customer. Furthermore, appropriate brand extensions can enhance the core brand. However, the value of brand extensions is more difficult to quantify than are financial measures of brand equity.

3. Consumer – based – A strong brand increases the consumer’s attitude strength toward the product associated with the brand. Attitude strength is built by experience with a product. The importance of actual experience by the customer implies that trial samples are more...