Brand

BRANDING REVIEW QUESTIONS

1) What is a brand? What are basic characteristics of a good brand? What types of brand can be distinguished?

• A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those of competitor. It is a set of verbal and/or visual cues, and as such it is part of product’s tangible features. A brand name is that a part of brand that can be spoken, including letters, words and numbers; like BMW, Danone or Citibank. A brand mark is the element of a brand that cannot be spoken, often a symbol, design, or specific packaging, like the Mercedes logo or the Absolut Vodka bottle. A trademark is the legal designation indicating that the owner has exclusive use of the brand.

• Branding augments a core product with distinctive functional and emotional meanings and values which distinguish it from the competition. The functional or utilitarian abilities of a brand are called brand skills. Emotional or hedonic values are personality and fundamental characteristics concerning life-style and perceived values that build a relationship with individual consumers.

2) What are the characteristics of successful brands?

• Giving a brand name to a product does not always guarantee success. Successful brands have to meet a number of conditions. They are;

пÑ"? Top brands are invariably good quality products. Superior product quality is a prerequisite for successful branding.

пÑ"? The additional service with the product which is less easily copied by competitors.

пÑ"? Pioneers in one way or another often make successful brands. It can exploit new technologies, new distribution channels or new market segments. It can use gaps resulting from environmental change.

пÑ"? Good brands are differentiated (unique benefits, being different from the competition).

3) What are the benefits and disadvantages of line and brand stretching versus multi-branding? What are the implications of the two types of strategy for marketing communications?

• Strong brands have a number of benefits for the company, the retailer, the consumer and for society s a whole. Strong brands help the consumer to locate and identify products and evaluate their quality. It makes it easier for the consumer to develop attitudes and expectations.

• A brand name serves as a shorthand label for a large bundle of associations and the whole brand personality. Branding makes shopping more efficient in that it reduces the amount of decision-making time required and the perceived risk of purchase. As a result of the fact that a brand promises a constant level of quality.

• The essential characteristic of marketing communications for brand building is long-term consistency. As already mentioned, brand managers are often driven by short-term profit perspectives, using tools such as sales promotion which lead to immediate sales results, thereby neglecting and even damaging the long-term profit potential of a brand.

4) What is brand equity and what are its main components?

• High brand awareness puts the brand in the evoked set of many consumers, and may even give it a prominent place in this evoked set. The more brand is in the evoked set of consumers, the more probable it becomes that the consumer is going to buy it.

Brand equity components Benefits

Brand awareness Brand in evoked set

Influence

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