INTRODUCTION

Brand loyalty's influence on consumer behavior In todays highly competitive environments, improving consumers' loyalty to brands permits marketers to maintain a comfortable and lasting position in the marketplace. The new millennium is not just a new beginning; it is a continuation of trends in human behavior that have been following cyclical patterns throughout our country's history. Just because we have entered a new era does not mean we have to start from scratch when it comes to interpreting why certain consumers are loyal to certain brands, and what type of factors influence these allegiances. Brand Loyalty is the consumer's conscious or unconscious decision, expressed through intention or behavior, to repurchase a brand continually. It occurs because the consumer perceives that the brand offers the right product features, image, or level of quality at the right price. Consumer behavior is habitual because habits are safe and familiar. In order to create brand loyalty, advertisers must break consumer habits, help them acquire new habits, and reinforce those habits by reminding consumers of the value of their purchase and encourage them to continue purchasing those products in the future. The image surrounding a company's brand is the principal source of its competitive advantage and is therefore a valuable strategic asset. Unfortunately, many companies are not adept at disseminating a strong, clear message that not only distinguishes their brand from the competitors', but distinguishes it in a memorable and positive manner. The challenge for all brands is to avoid the pitfalls of portraying a muddled or negative image, and instead, create a broad brand vision or identity that recognizes a brand as something greater than a set of attributes that can be imitated or surpassed. In fact, a company should view its brand to be not just a product or service, but as an overall brand image that defines a companys philosophies. A brand needs more than identity; it needs a personality. Just like a person without attention-grabbing characteristics, a brand with no personality can easily be passed right over. A strong symbol or company logo can also help to generate brand loyalty by making it quickly identifiable.

Loyalty Be Loyal is to be faithful to one's friends , principles , country , school , job , etc. Loyalty is a tenet that everybody have , animals have it too . Gorillas are a clear example of it . In Africa these great apes live in group . As many as thirty gorillas may live together, but there are more likely to be from six to seventeen animals in a group . The group always include at least one full-grown male that by this time has grown a saddle silver hair on his back . Whithin the group there are often one or more younger black back males , a few females , and a number of youngsters and infants . A mature silverback at.... Julius Caesar: Loyalty Thesis: Loyalty can be expressed in virtuous and corrupt manners, that in which many people cannot understand. Loyalty defined means faithfulness to one's friends, country, ideals, etc. What would one do when these things conflict with one another? When they coincide? One would have to choose. A choice that can make or break a man, which I believe broke many men in the play Julius Caesar. One did not know who was friend or foe. One's dearest friends actually your foes? Not possible, is it? Yes, it is. That is the story of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar, a great, noble man. A man for his country. A man love....

Men do not always watch the same TV channel, do not dine at the same restaurant, or, do not sip the same brand of wine. Then how can they be expected to use the same brand throughout and be loyal to it for life? The virtue of loyalty among the mortals is fast fleeting. Yet, it is this elusive factor that forms the fuel to drive financial success of the corporate players especially in today's volatile economy. And as the companies face the harsh realities of an economic downturn, they strive hard to hold on to their customers and to earn their loyalty with all their strength and might to keep their kitchen-fires burning.

Perspectives on customer loyalty Customer loyalty presents a paradox. Many see it as primarily an attitudebased phenomenon that can be influenced significantly by customer relationship management initiatives such as the increasingly popular loyalty and affinity programmes. However, studies show that loyalty in competitive repeat-purchase markets is shaped more by the passive acceptance of brands

than by strongly-held attitudes about them. From this perspective, the demand-enhancing potential on loyalty is more limited than might be hoped. There are broadly three perspectives on customer loyalty that can be best explained as three distinct models as detailed below:

Model 1: Loyalty as primarily an attitude that sometimes leads to a relationship with the brand Model 2: Loyalty mainly expressed in terms of revealed behaviour (i.e. the pattern of purchases) Model 3: Buying moderated by the individual's characteristics, circumstances and/or the purchase situation

1. Model 1: Loyalty as primarily an attitude that sometimes leads to a relationship with the brand Many argue that there must be strong "attitudinal commitment" to a brand for a true loyalty to exist. This is seen as taking the form of a consistently favourable set of beliefs towards the brand purchased. These attitudes may be measured by asking how much people say they like the brand, feel committed to it, will recommend it to others, and have positive believes and feeling about it - relative to competing brands. The strength of these attitudes is the key predictor of a brand's purchase and repeat patronage. Analyses of cases such as Federal Express, Pizza Hut franchises and Cadillac dealerships, reveal that attitudinally loyal customers are much less susceptible to negative information about the brand. Moreover, the revenue stream from them becomes more predictable and can become considerable over time. An extension of the "attitudes define loyalty" perspective is to suggest that consumers form relationships with some of their brands. So much so that loyalty becomes a committed and affect-laden partnership between consumers and brands. It is a partnership that will be even stronger when supported by other members of a household or a buying group, and where consumption is associated with community membership or identity. Examples in support of this argument include Skoal smokeless tobacco among some North American cowboys, the Beanie Babies craze and the classic case of Harley Davidson bikers. 2. Model 2: Loyalty mainly expressed in terms of revealed behaviour (i.e. the pattern of purchases) This is the most controversial, yet the best supported by data. The controversy come about because loyalty in this model is explained mainly

with reference to the pattern of past purchases with only secondary regard to underlying consumer motivations or commitment to the brand. Studies indicate that few consumers are "monogamous" (100 per cent loyal) or "promiscuous" (no loyalty to any brand). Rather most are "polygamous" (i.e. loyal to a portfolio of brands in a product category). From this perspective, loyalty may be explained as "an ongoing propensity to buy the brand, usually as one of the several". In this case, the researchers tend to adopt a market focus (e.g. key performance measures are brand shares, penetration, average purchase frequencies, repeat buying - for a defined period). Loyalty, here, is inferred to operate in the following manner. Through trial and error, a brand that provides a satisfactory experience is chosen. Loyalty to the brand (measured by repeat purchase) is the result of repeated satisfaction that in turn leads to a weak commitment. The consumer buys the same brand again, not because of any strongly-held prior attitude or deeply-held commitment, but because it is not worth the time and trouble to search an alternative. If the usual brand is out of stock or unavailable for some reason, then another functionally similar (or substitutable) brand (from the portfolio) will be purchased. However, with the over-repeated purchases, a weak commitment to the number of brands purchased in a product category can be formed. Those who subscribe to the "attitude drive behaviour" and "relationship" approach rule-out the revealed behaviour as a dominant measure of loyalty. 3. Model 3: Buying moderated by the individual's characteristics, circumstances and/or the purchase situation Proponents of Model 3, the contingency approach, argue that the best conceptualisation of loyalty is to allow the relationship between the attitude and behaviour to be moderated by contingency variable such as the individual's current circumstances, their characters and/or the purchase situation faced. That is, a strong attitude towards a brand may provide only a weak prediction of whether or not the brand will be bought on the next purchase occasion because any number of factors may so-determine which brand is deemed to be desirable. Individual characteristics are reflected in the desire for variety, habit, the need to confirm, the tolerance for risk, etc. Purchase situation effects include product availability, promotions/deals, the particular use of occasion (e.g. gift, personal use, family use) etc. A threefactor model emerges based on antecedents (including weak prior attitudes and characteristics of the consumer), contingency factors (including type of use of occasion and the purchase situation) and consequences (up-dated attitudes, intentions and the actual purchase behaviour).

The difference between this contingency perspective and the attitude perspective is that the contingency variable is elevated from the status of loyalty inhibitors in Model 1 to loyalty co-determinants in Model 3. Attributes of the individual and the purchase situation are conceptualised as "nuisance" variables that inhibit the natural evolution of customer loyalty whereas in the contingency model these variables are seen as playing a primary and inescapable role in explaining the observed patterns of purchase behaviour. This is even more evident where attributes are weakly held. Here it is repeated satisfaction and weak commitment that together with other relevant contingency variables co-determine future brand choices. Conceptual implications of the approaches to loyalty The aforesaid three perspectives of loyalty can be related to a framework for understanding customer loyalty that encompasses customer brand acceptance (CBA), customer brand commitment (CBC) and customer brand buying (CBB). All these loyalty patterns profile customers, not brands per se, i.e. consumers are distributed across the curves with respect to their loyalty to a brand. For instance, most customers may accept a number of airlines while a few customers may be committed to one or two airlines, and some other may buy purely on the price/route combination. These people's air travel schedules may result in them having quite a few brands in their portfolio. The loyalty patterns are elaborated hereunder. Customer Brand Acceptance (CBA) Brand distinctiveness affected The concept of Customer Brand Acceptance (CBA) is the base case of customer loyalty in competitive repeat-purchase markets. It draws heavily on Model 2, but also brings together some elements of Model 1 and 3. The contribution of Model 2 is that customers exhibit loyalty to a number of brands because there is little reason to develop attitudinal loyalty to any one of the brands purchased. A prime reason for this is that a proliferation of brands in most markets has destroyed one of the key reasons for exclusive loyalty viz. brand distinctiveness. Need arousal is a trigger to purchase process The concept of CBA can be well elucidated in terms of the five-stage model of customer choice. (See box: Customer Brand Acceptance) Need arousal is included as a trigger to the purchase process - but this operates mainly on product category decisions, not brand-based ones. For instance, for a desire to stay sober, the need is for low-alcohol beer, but not necessarily for any particular brand of low-alcohol beer. Since this is a model of ongoing CBA frequently purchased products, the

(external) information search and evaluation stages are assumed to have been completed after the initial one or two purchases in the category, and so are not explicitly included in the diagram. Choice among the functionally equivalent alternatives will reflect the accessibility, availability and conspicuousness of the brand at the point of purchase. Most likely, this will be seen as a set of acceptable brands that are ordered as first favourite, second favourite, third favourite and so forth. Typically, the relative likelihood of buying each brand will endure over successive purchase cycles, assuming the brands remain functionally adequate and accessible. Satisfaction with past purchases and any consequential habit formation explain most of a person's ongoing propensity to buy one or a number of acceptable brands. Unexpected purchase situation circumstances (e.g. an existing brand being on sale) may influence the actual brand chosen on a specific purchase occasion (drawing on Model 3). The introduction of new brands or the reformulation of current brands may alter the purchase propensities although the aggregate impact on short to medium-term brand loyalty is likely to be marginal. Similar attitudes reported for descriptive ttribute beliefs This is not to suggest that attitudes will not form towards these brands over time (Model 1), but they will be of secondary importance to functional adequacy of the brand. Indeed, for the markets which are the focus here, research shows that this belief may simply be a playback of the message content of the brand's advertising or publicity i.e. simple learning. This can be seen in the very similar attitudes reported for descriptive attribute beliefs (for example, "Volvos are safe," "United Airlines is friendly," "Woolworths offers fresh food") by both brand-users and non-users. Customer Brand Commitment (CBC) Brand component that drives choice and commitment The first exception to Customer Brand Commitment (CBA) concerns those consumers who value psychological and social value more than function. This is easiest to see when these consumers are buying high-identity products (luxury goods, expensive cosmetics etc) and thinking of life choices (education, sporting allegiances etc). Here, there may be a brand component that drives choice and commitment for a significant number of customers, especially the initial adoption of some distinctive brands such as the Apple Mackintosh, the Sony Walkman and Harley-Davidson motorbikes. This is what CBC is all about. In this situation, attitudes, values and social norms are seen as having a major influence and the consumer can develop a relationship with the brand - in keeping with Model 1.

These relationships defined in the consumer's mind may help to differentiate one brand from another and the buyers end up supporting a price premium for that brand. Allegiance, however, is never assured The aforesaid commitment is, however, not guaranteed - especially when the focus is on frequently-bought brands. First, even for cases where the level of consumer involvement is high, differentiation among brands may be relatively low (such as with most airlines and hotel chains) - resulting in the type of behaviour best described by CBA. For example, frequent fliers tend to use a number of different airlines; research on international travellers indicates that these people are typically members of multiple frequent-flier programmes and therefore show multi-brand loyalty to both the airlines and their programmes. It is mainly the infrequent flyers who are loyal to a single frequent-flier programme, but invariably, these are the less profitable customers. In most markets, the socio-psychological elements of competing brands may, in fact, offer limited scope for creating meaningful differentiation. Even loyalty leaders cannot be complacent Even where a relationship develops, it may not be the only one in a particular product category. For instances, customers who have "compartmentalised friendships" with different brands of coffee, say, Starbucks in the morning and Folgers in the afternoon. Moreover, with CBC, while the non-functional sources of value may be strong, they will not eliminate the need for the brand to "do the job". Harley-Davidson, one of the strongest personality-relationship brands, was forced to instigate a quality improvement programme to save the brand from Japanese competition. Customer Brand Buying (CBB) The other exception to CBA concerns those consumers who exhibit very low levels of loyalty. Their choices are shaped by considerations of immediate availability, price promotions etc. and - at most - weak attitudes (for e.g. users of an online travel agency may express liking for it because it obtains for them best price airfares). The concept of B is closely allied to Model 3, where contingencies are co-determinants of choice and not simply nuisance factors. Thus, CBC and CBB are the exceptions rather than the rule in most repeatpurchase markets. One way to see this is a sampling problem. Consider the example of car rental: if we were to draw from a large sample of the population, most customers of avis or Hertz would be characterized by CBA, and only a few by CBC (committed to Hertz) or CBB ( renting from literally any car hire firm that happened to be discounted at the time of purchase). This above notion of a loyalty continuum with the three anchor points of customer

brand acceptance, customer brand commitment and customer brand buying provides the necessary basis for evaluating the aims and potential commercial effectiveness of loyalty programmes in terms of customer-related issues. Loyalty programmes and their implications Loyalty programmes are schemes offering delayed, accumulating economic benefits to consumers who buy the brand. Usually this takes the form of points that can be exchanged for gifts, free products or aspiration rewards such as air-miles. Airline frequent-flier programmes have been a prototype for many of the schemes. Affinity programmes are a specific type of loyalty programmes as well, which are designed to enhance the emotional bond between the customer and the brand. Mechanisms are set up to enhance two-way communication for the customer to get to know the brand better and for the company to learn more about the customer. Examples include telephone helplines, club membership, alumni associations, newsletters, website "chat" groups etc. Hybrids also exist. For instance, where the focus is on enhancing the emotional bond between customer and brand, and a third party (e.g. a charity) receives a financial benefit; or the establishment of a club, where consumers pay for membership in return for access to special events and offers. This latter format is prevalent in countries like Germany where trading laws prohibit incentive based schemes (for instance, Volkswagen Club, Swatch the Club, Mercedes Mastercard etc). Loyalty resembles habit What gives poignancy to the concept of customer loyalty is the supposed justification it gives for managers to spend dollars on CRM programmes and the costly customer databases that support these. However, the critics argue that loyalty, both attitudinal and behavioural, for most customers is quite passive and resembles habit rather than serious commitment. And also, they assert, that there is little or no evidence that any changes in customer behaviour justify the enormous expenditure on these programmes. Supporters of loyalty programmes have in mind Model 1, where the programme is seen to reinforce CBC-type outcomes. Or they envisage a combination of Models 3 and 1, where consumers with no loyalty (CBB-types) are converted into singlebrand loyal (CBC-types) because of the customer benefits of the programme. Critics favour the multi-brand divided-loyalty model (Model 2) and assume that most of the customers are CBA types who are not strongly swayed by the programme. Loyalty programmes from an individual's perspective l It can be seen as a vehicle to increase single-brand loyalty, decrease price sensitivity, induce greater consumer resistance to counter offers or counter

arguments, dampen the desire to consider alternative brands, attract a larger pool of customers. l However, most of the customers are multi-brand loyal and loyalty schemes cannot turn them single-brand loyal overnight. l Most people buy only what they need and are not usually carried away by the schemes. l Loyalty programme is seen as a brand extension aid (for e.g. Tesco attempts to expose its Clubcard members to high-margin wines, financial services and electrical goods as well as lower margin groceries). Loyalty programmes from a market perspective At an aggregate level, repeat-purchase markets typically have a well-defined structure - viz. most brands exhibit a double jeopardy effect whereby small brands have fewer buyers who buy them less often than bid brands. Whatever their market shares, it is to be expected that, for all brands, there will be some CBB and CBC buyer and a majority of CBA buyers. This market structure gives rise to three strategies for enhancing the observed level of repeat-purchase or loyalty of a brand. A possible fourth strategy is also considered in this regard.

Strategy 1: Grow the size of the brand This can be achieved by making the brand acceptable to a large number of potential customers (See box: Tesco Clubcard Scheme) - in keeping with the focus on CBA. Tactically, this means exposure at the point of purchase, offering greater perceived value, gaining wider distribution, suggesting more usage occasions etc. Strategy 2: Create a niche brand This can be done by aiming to keep the number of buyers relatively low but at the same time increasing the average bought by these buyers. This could be achieved by reducing the distribution coverage of the brand and using the money saved to better support or promote the brand to current customers. This strategy implies a higher proportion of behaviourally-loyal and committed buyers for the level of market share than predicted by the DJ effect. In its early years, the Body Shop was a successful niche brand. Strategy 3: Become a "super-loyalty brand" Here a brand is expected to become a "super-loyalty brand". These are brands that exhibit signs of strong commitment and that have higher than expected repeat purchase (i.e. an above average number of CBCs at a highlevel of market share). During the early 1990s, icon-status Nike appeared to be such a super loyalty brand.

Strategy 4: Exploit the desire of customers for change-of-pace A fourth strategy implied by the DJ effect is to exploit the desire of customers for change-of-pace. Here the penetration is higher and the repeatpurchase rate lower than predicted by the DJ effect. Some imported and premium beer brands fall into this category, though the typical beer brand of this type is really very small. This is primarily a penetration effect and cannot be seen as loyalty building unless an organization offers a portfolio of these brands.

Reasons behind this thrust on loyalty schemes In spite of all the negative reasons, the fact remains that more and more loyalty programmes are being introduced. And the reason for so much momentum behind these programmes is as follows: Vehicles for maintaining customer loyalty It is possible to see loyalty programmes as vehicles for maintaining customer loyalty (i.e. for keeping the brand in the customer repertoire) or for maintaining brand share (where the programme works in combination with other valued enhancements, including product and service improvements). Here, rather than trying to induce single-brand loyalty from customers who previously have exhibited divided brand loyalty, a more realistic aim is to build on existing levels of CBA. If the customers feel the need for affinity, or desire an explicit reward for their loyalty, they will join the programmes of the brands they buy. The critical issue then is for the programme to reinforce the value proposition of the parent brand - enhancing brand equity, not just building loyalty programme equity. The critical task for the programme manager is to design a cost-effective scheme to achieve this aim. Improves brand accessibility and market conspicuousness Another role for loyalty programmes can be to improve levels of accessibility and market conspicuousness for a brand. This can manifest itself as a more credible proposition to retailers in order to secure more shelf space and benefit from "retail push". In other cases it may provide more opportunities to talk with customers and, perhaps, more opportunity to sell brand extensions to customers. In their case, the aim of the programme is to get the brand into the customer's set of acceptable brands. This, however, is not a substitute for the inherent functional, psychological and economic value designed into the brand, but rather it simply makes the brand easier to consider. If for some people the programme provides additional emotional value, then this is a bonus.

"Me-too" pressure There is always a "me-too" pressure to follow others who have embarked on this path. Moreover, once this programme has been introduced, managers seem very reluctant to cancel them - even if their claimed benefits are not being realized. For instance, there are persistent rumours that many airlines would like to end their frequent-flier programmes if they could find an acceptable way to do this. So far, that goal has proved elusive, although the need to respond to deep discounting by companies such as Southwest and Virgin may force the hand of some operators. Just as there may have been first-mover advantages in creating a loyalty programme, there also might be first-mover drawbacks from snatching away much heralded customer benefits. However, there are instances of card-based loyalty programmes having been dropped (e.g. schemes operated by the DIY group Do-itAll and the grocery store Safeway in the UK, also Ford USA withdrew its credit card reward programme). Many organisations have clearly benefited from the implementation of the customer loyalty schemes. However, for many others they have become a necessary toolkit for doing business. Most schemes do not fundamentally alter the market structure; they might help to protect incumbents and might be regarded as a legitimate part of the marketer's armoury, but at the cost of increasing market expenditures. Hence, even as a large number of companies continue to show an

OBJECTIVES

Consumer Behaviour : Exploring Brand Loyalty : Brand loyalty has been an enduring topic of interest among both academics and managers. Customers can be loyal as well as fickle, and understanding, measuring and managing loyalty can be very complex but is imperative for marketers. The behavioural approach to understanding loyalty would involve research not only into purchase behaviour of consumers but also their psychographics. Is it the functional utility of a brand or its symbolic utility that which boosts his social ego that is driving the consumer? How sustainable is price-led loyalty boosted by frequent sales promotions and freebies? Can it prevent brand switching? What can companies do to understand customer expectations? In the intangible services category, what are the strategies marketers may adopt to build on the basic model of consumer behaviour with the distinctive stages of customer need, sources of information, consideration of alternatives, purchase and post purchase much depends here on the building of relationships. A study, illustrating the basic aspects of purchase involvement and brand loyalty issues, was conducted by the authors, probing into the expectations of loyal consumers in three product categories non-durable consumer goods (soaps), durable categories (colour televisions) and services (domestic airlines). The findings revealed some dimensions, which can be extremely important for marketing managers in understanding their respective brand contexts and for charting out a broad tactical level brand plan for the coming years. In this project my job is to collect the maximum available data (both primary and secondary form) related to this topic and evaluate those information to reach a meaningful logical conclusion.

METHODOLOGIES

Sample Brand Loyalty Survey

AVAILABLE AT ENTREPRENEUR.COM

This sample brand loyalty survey can be used to gauge how loyal consumers remain to a given brand and the reasons why they do or do not remain so. In this example, the product of interest is cars. 1.) Please check all types of cars your business owns in column A, how many in column B, and if your company plans to purchase a type of car within the next 12 months in column C. Types A Owns SUV Coupe Sedan Truck Minivan Sports car 2.) Please check all the makes of cars listed below that your business owns in column A and the makes of cars your business plans to purchase in column B. A Makes Huydai Maruti BMW TATA Chevrolet Chrysler SKODA Ford Honda Mahindra HM Owns B Plans to Purchase ? B How Many?
C

Plans to Purchase?

Other: _____________________

Brand Loyalty Survey Work Sheet

AVAILABLE AT ENTREPRENEUR.COM

This work sheet is a template for developing your own survey based on the type of product or service your company offers. Please refer to the Sample Brand Loyalty Survey as an example. 1.) Please check all types of ____ your business owns in column A, how many in column B, and if your company plans to purchase a type of ____ within the next 12 months in column C. Types A Owns B How Many?
C

Plans to Purchase?

2.) Please check all the makes of ____ listed below that your business owns in column A and the makes of ____ your business plans to purchase in column B. A Makes Owns B Plans to Purchase ? Brands A Owns B Plans to Purchase?

Other: _____________________

In this project I took the maximum help of internet to collect both primary and secondary type of data. For collecting primary data I visited Entrepreneur.com and QuestionPro.com , where one can easily make their own questionnaire with the help of inbuilt software . I then posted those Survey Questionnaires to 80 e-mail addresses ( which I sourced from IndiaMart Biz Directory).Out of 80 , I got response from 59 . I then evaluated those feedbacks which I have mentioned in the FINDINDS section. Beside this I have collected a critical mass of secondary information which really helped me to interprete my findings.

The Science Behind Brand Loyalty? The New York Times reported this week that companies are looking at brain-scan technologies to determine the effect that brands have. The goal is to go deeper than responses on surveys or in focus groups, which, as everyone knows, can be heavily influenced by peer pressure, conventional norms or other factors. The article described an experiment where 16 women, aged 22 to 66 years old, participated in a brain scan study. The study consisted of tracking brain blood flow while performing mental tasks. About one-third of the women said they were passionate about a particular department store, one-third said they liked shopping there but weren't especially loyal, and the remain third declard themselves neutral. Everyone had similar brain patterns when answering questions about trips to the bank or other routine activities. But those who declared themselves loyal to the store showed a particular brain pattern when asked questions like "this is the store for me." The brain patterns of those loyalists reflected extreme activity in the -- non brainsurgeons, stick with me now -- the "orbitofrontal cortex, the temporal pole and the amygdala." These sections are generally associated with strong emotions. By contrast, women who were mildly fond of or neutral about the store showed far less activation or no activation in those mental emotional areas. The study, although extremely limited, underscores the fact that all brands have an emotional as well as experiential and economic value.

If you hooked up a brain scan to your customers, what would the read-out look like? The cold greys of neutrality, or the bright reds and yellows of loyalty?

'Return On Loyalty' Metrics Drive Effective Brand Loyalty Strategies. A Forrester Research study shows that conventional loyalty strategies fail because they are one-sided and ignore critical loyalty drivers. To turn the tide, brands need to build consumer trust by making emotive connections, actively cultivating endorsements and minimizing costs. That, say the analysts, means knowing when, what and where to invest in loyalty -- and when to end unprofitable relationships. Forrester has dubbed this concept "symbiotic loyalty." Forrester defines symbiotic loyalty as a dynamic win-win association where brands engage consumers emotively and consumers reward them with increased wallet share and peer recommendations. Forrester presented the new study, "Brands That Engage Consumers Emotively Will Reap The Rewards Of Increased Wallet Share And Peer Recommendations", recently at its Consumer Marketing Forum in London. Hellen Omwando, Consumer Markets analyst at Forrester Research, explained: Most consumer-facing firms -- including those in the retail, CPG, telecom and media industries -- face a growing problem: declining customer loyalty. Consumers have become less loyal because: they believe that most competing products offer the same value and that price is more important than brand; they trust their peers more than they trust companies; and push marketing no longer resonates with them. To compound the problem, the Internet has made it very easy for consumers to compare product pricing and switch accordingly. The Forrester report describes how consumers of today have become promiscuous; most keep multiple email accounts from different providers and carry loyalty cards from competing stores. They shop with abandon for items in one category from different retailers and maintain simultaneous relationships with different mobile operators to suit their purposes. Technology has only exacerbated this trend: Armed with a remote control and 30 TV channels, nobody has to watch a TV ad; with a PC and modem, no one need be short of information. One of the issues here is that a customers and a firms perception of what constitutes loyalty are often not in sync. While customers tend to think Why does this firm keep sending me irrelevant messages?, a firm is more likely to wonder What else can this customer buy from us? Firms acknowledge that they

have a problem if they can't keep loyal customers, because loyalty is the key to sustained profits," said Omwando. "The problem is that the conventional methods they use to keep customers tend to focus on how much they can squeeze from their customers -- or they rely on consumers who can't be bothered to switch to other suppliers because of inertia. To thrive in the face of declining customer loyalty, according to Forrester, companies need a strategy that meets the requirements of both parties. Most firms should seek to win truly loyal customers -- those who buy stick with particular firms or brands because of their emotional connections -- rather than customers who stick to brands just because its convenient or because a brand is cheaper. Also, firms can only attract truly loyal customers if they have a win-win association with their customers. In its reports on Symbiotic Loyalty, Forrester describes how firms can do just this; it also ranks brands in terms of competition and emotive connections, demonstrating that symbiotic brands lead in revenue growth. Symbiotic loyalty rests on three pillars:

First, firms must develop emotive connections with their customers in order to build trust. Second, they must be sociable and actively encourage their customers to recommend their products and services -- emotively connected consumers are more likely to recommend products and services to their peers, and are therefore growth engines for companies/brands. Finally, firms must be dynamic enough to know when to make investments in loyalty or when to break off relationships with unprofitable customers.

So what can firms do to achieve symbiotic loyalty? Omwando concluded with a few of the recommendations that are elaborated on in the report: Firms need to find out who their emotively driven customers are. Measuring repeat purchases is just not enough. They need to start measuring the return on loyalty (ROL), which quantifies the value that loyal customers generate and will tell them when to invest in these loyalists -- or when its time to break up. Theory Of Varied Consumer Choice Behavior and Its Importance For decades, scholars and practitioners have been frustrated by the very limited capacity of either psychological or marketing models to predict individual choices on particular occasions. This paper discusses a theory which explains the degree to which the extant models omit important influences that produce varied individual choice behaviour. The focus of this paper is on the sequences of product purchases.

Discretionary actions and activities are also covered. THE THEORETICAL AND APPLIED RELEVANCE OF VARIED BEHAVIOUR The assumption that consumers make rational, utility-maximizing choices has played an.... Climbers and Decliners Kit A study that reveals category triggers to increase consumer loyalty. With at least 65 weeks of customer card data, Data Ventures identifies consumers who are climbing in quality over time and those who are declining in quality over time. Climbers and Decliners are clustered by purchase behavior that describes the way they shop your store. A study of each clusters behavior reveals the categories that are under the greatest competitive threat, the categories to which consumers have the most loyalty, and the categories that can bring consumers to higher levels of loyalty through promotion. Climbers and Decliners can be a one-time delivery or an integrated program to build loyalty through periodic direct mail communication and the tracking of the behavior of each group to measure success. With the Climbers and Decliners Kit you will: Understand how your best consumers shop - categories that are most important to them and what motivates them to purchase more.

Understand why your declining consumers are leaving categories where they have defected to other outlets and categories where they still are still engage.

Receive mailing lists of clusters of consumers and a set of optimal offers for each cluster to increase loyalty and share of dollars spent at your store.

Track success of programs for each cluster of consumers. Customer Loyalty Segmentation Kit A study that clusters consumers by behavioral quality tiers and describes key motivational points for each cluster. All retailers are different in their go-to-market strategies. Instead of tracking consumers by deciles or quartiles, Data Ventures provides the ability to cluster and measure consumers by the way they shop relative to your strategic positioning. Are you a high/low operator? We offer the ability to cluster consumers by their price responsiveness. Is Private Label central to your growth strategy? We will

cluster consumers by their degree of Private Label penetration. Do you strive to be a one-stop-shop? Data Ventures will cluster your consumers by the diversity of category and department shopping within your store. The Customer Loyalty Segmentation Kit drills down to describe the behavior of each cluster, (i.e. what they purchase, when they purchase it and at what level of discount) providing you with insight on the motivation behind each group. The Customer Loyalty Segmentation Kit allows you to monitor your progress in establishing and maintaining your unique market positioning by measuring your impact on the consumer groups that matter to you. It can be delivered as a onetime assessment of your consumer base or as an on-going score-carding of you progress in growing your most important consumer groups. With the Customer Loyalty Segmentation Kit you will:

Identify your most important consumers.

Understand which categories, brands, and levels of discount motivate your most important consumers. Receive mailing lists and a set of optimal offers to increase the loyalty of consumers who are poised to improve their quality.

Identify consumers who are cherry picking your store and learn how to discourage them from draining profit from your bottom line.

Brand Loyalty Kit A study that describes consumer brand loyalty and brand consumer purchase patterns. The Brand Loyalty Kit clusters consumers who purchase a particular brand, measures their loyalty to the brand, and quantifies their value to the brand, category and total store. With the Brand Loyalty Kit you will learn the habits of your consumers. One can select the clustering method based on his needs. Heavy/Medium/Light clustering reveals the habits and needs of your best consumers and offers insight in to how motivate Moderate and Light consumers to purchase more. Brand Loyal/Brand Switcher clustering gives you insight as to why consumers switch brands so that one can put programs into place to make fickle consumers loyal to his brand.

With the Brand Loyalty Kit one will: Learn how often consumers purchase his brand - How much do they buy when they purchase and the value of their basket?

Learn how his brand consumer shops the store - How often do they shop? What other categories do they shop? How responsive are they to discounting?

Identify competing brands to which his consumers are likely to switch Which brands are his consumers likely to switch to due to promotion? These are some Basic Questions one should introspect before executing any loyalty promotion campaign: How close are you to your customers? How are your contact details being processed? What CRM management system do you use? Is Customer loyalty regarded as an important element in driving profitable growth in youe organization? Before one can set a loyalty strategy one needs to evaluate ones brand's level of customer loyalty. Some key questions to ask are: What is the annual and lifetime value of my loyal customers? How do we allocate marketing spend between our loyal customer, in revenue and profits? What is our brand's level of repeat purchase? How does this compare to your industry average? What is the profile of our loyal customers? How do we acquire more of them? How well do we reward our loyal customers? What opportunities can we give to loyal customers to buy more, or to recommend us to others?

The point to knowing what ones customers LCV (liftetime value and annual value) is so it can guide you economically of how much to invest to retain a loyal customer and allocate resources between existing & potential customers. You can segment your customers in a number of ways e.g. what type of flowers they buy, region, value, occasion etc.

CRM 2005: Will Technology Finally Live Up to Its Potential?

Each year for the past 11 years, CSO Insights, as part of our annual sales effectiveness study, has surveyed companies on the use of CRM technology to understand what they are buying (or not buying) and the results they are generating from these investments. CRM is finally living up to its ultimate potential--and truly helping all companies optimize the way they market to, sell to and service customers. Was 2004 that year? Disappointingly, no. We had more than 1,000 firms, worldwide, take part in most recent study. Of these organizations, 46.7 percent had evaluated and implemented a CRM system (either a commercially available product or an internally developed application). When the organizations are asked to rate the results they were achieving, the findings are the following: Achieving significant improvements in performance: Achieving minor improvements in performance: No measurable improvements in performance: Do not know: 28.4% 38.1% 19.4% 14.1%

Interestingly, the same numbers that they saw in 2002 and 2003, with just more than one-quarter of initiatives generating expected significant results. However, many more will be positioned to achieve significant results because of five key trends my study data surfaced: On-demand applications are no longer the exception: The year 2004 was a breakout year for on-demand CRM applications. SalesForce.Com, NetSuite and Salesnet all posted significant market-share gains from the previous year. Especially in the SMB marketplace, these applications are

easier to implement and maintain, as compared to hosted applications, and they are making CRM available to a whole new set of users.

The domain-expertise trend continues: New players continue to appear offering tools that have domain expertise for specific industries such as pharma, financial services, medical products, semiconductor and electronic products, sports marketing and industrial distribution. This trend is forcing traditional CRM vendors to create industry-focused versions of their systems to compete. The net result is that end-user companies are getting access to more out-of-the-box functionality specifically focused to deal with the customer relations issues they uniquely face in their marketplace. CRM/sales process integration is improving: Several years ago, we witnessed a whole slew of press releases touting how CRM vendors and sales process vendors were teaming together to tightly integrate their separate offerings. To be frank, I was initially underwhelmed. In many cases, when you looked under the covers, all you saw were basic sales process forms now available online via the CRM application. This past year, we saw some mind-blowing examples of how end-user firms were able to generate detailed, insightful analyses of exactly what was working or not working at every step in the sales process through the use of analytic tools. A quick comparison of study participants who implemented a formal sales methodology, and then used CRM to activity manage the process, showed they were outperforming other firms in key areas such as percentage of more reps making quota, higher win rates and less discounting.

CRM providing knowledge, not just data: Another trend that is significantly increasing the value of some CRM systems is the ability to populate them with insights and knowledge vs. just data. In essence, what reps can do is tell the CRM systems the specific types of information they are interested in, and the applications then serve as a virtual digital assistant, pulling data from such areas as external data sources, internal knowledge bases and best practices repositories, providing reps with targeted briefing books on how to sell more effectively. This trend is clearly making these CRM systems more valuable, and we are seeing significant increases in user adoption rates for firms who adopt this approach.

Improved sales and marketing alignment: A final trend we are seeing is the improvement of sales and marketing alignment resulting from the tighter integration of sales and marketing-focused CRM technologies. Marketing tools are allowing for more effective segmentation of their markets, and the implementation of more targeted campaigns than ever before. Leads can then be processed and tracked much more easily as they are passed from marketing to sales, and CRM applications also are now supporting an effective feedback loop to improve communications between these two functional areas.

These trends all bode well for improving the ROIs that firms will see resulting from their CRM investments. Eitherways, I would list a few steps that may prove to be helpful in fosteriing brand loyalty. 1. Learn more about the buying process from the incoming customers. (What are they buying, When, for Whom, is price a major factor?etc) 2.Get feedback at the end of the sale? (how was the experience, any suggestions) 3. Give incentive for a repeat buy. 4. Design a few good call-to-actions for referrals. 5. Contact customers on special occasions (Christmas, Valentines) and ask if they would like to order as you prioritize your existing customers. 6. Knowing the purchase patterns (% repeat, by frequency, by sale amount, etc.) and what it is customers like about your site. 7. Determine the ROI potential of your loyalty programs (incentives, advertising, etc.) this may vary depending on your products. 8. Keep it simple, the web customer has a short attention span. 9. Remember on the web its not necessarily all about the ads and promotions, the delivery is a key driver.

10. Understand your customers better than the competition. Fogdog.com was well funded, offered a popular product (sports equip) at low prices, had high awareness and good image. However the site foundered, in part because it was difficult to execute a transaction and also because the mgmt focused on talking at customers instead of with them. Transaction Marketing vs. Customer Relationship Marketing Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) represents a paradigm shift from Transaction Marketing (TM). TM companies focus on products and making a sale. CRM companies focus on building a long-term relationship that produces satisfaction for the customer and profitability for the company.
TM companies promote everywhere in search of customers. CRM

companies promote to a defined customer group and aim to make the right offer at the right time using the right channel to the right customer. All companies must practice a mix of TM and RM. TM will be stronger in companies facing a large number of customers; RM will be stronger in companies facing a small number of customers. Treat Different Customers Differently Most profitable customers Most unprofitable customers Most growable customers Most vulnerable customers

A 5 Step Model for Database Marketing 1. 2. 3. 4. Gather useful data on customers. Classify customers by their needs and by their value to the firm. Prepare business rules that select the best prospects. Customize marketing treatments for each prospect in terms of product offers, service mix, media, and channel.

5. Set up accountability procedures

Database Marketing is Expensive! Requires a tremendous investment in information gathering about individual customers and prospects. Requires constant updating of information. Some critical information may not be available. Requires a high investment in hardware and software. Requires integrating individual customer information from a variety of sources. Requires people skilled at data mining. Requires managing and training employees, dealers, and suppliers. Does Every Business Need CRM? No. The following businesses may not benefit from CRM: Businesses where the CLV is low. Businesses with high churn. Businesses where there is no direct contact between the seller and ultimate buyer. Companies that are in the best position to invest in CRM. Companies that collect a lot of data (banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, telephone companies). Companies that can do a lot of cross-selling and up-selling (GE, Amazon, etc.). Companies whose customers have highly differentiated needs and are of highly differentiated value to the company.

Consumers want a conversation, to dialogue, to participate, to be more in controlWere going from one-dimensional, product-myopic marketing to

three-dimensional marketing that offers better solutionsmore delightful experiences and the opportunity for on-going relationships. Alan Lafley, CEO, P&G The Evolution of Marketing Transactional Marketing Time frame 1950s View of value The company offering in an exchange View of market Place where value is exchanged Relationship Marketing 1980s The customer relationship in the long run Market is where various offerings appear Collaborative Marketing Beyond 2000 Co-created experiences

Role of customer

Role of firm

Nature of customer interaction

Market is a forum where value is cocreated through dialogue Passive buyers Portfolio of Prosumersto be targeted relationships to active with offerings be cultivated participants in value cocreation Define and Attract, Engage create value for develop and customers in consumers retain defining and profitable co-creating customers unique value Survey Observe Active dialogue customers to customers and with customers elicit needs and learn and solicit feedback adaptively communities

Design the Marketing From the Customer-Back

 Marketing must be run as a set of value finding, creation, and delivery processes, not 4P functions. The four Ps are seller oriented.

The 4As are buyer oriented. Awareness (A1) Acceptability (A2) Affordability (A3) Accessibility (A4) Market value potential = A1 x A2 x A3 x A4 If A1=100%, A2=100%, A3=50%, A4=50%, Then MV=25% (Courtesy:Jagdish Sheth)

Develop Metrics and ROI Measurement Products Brands Channels Customer Markets Segments

Relative Brand product awareness quality Perceived Brand esteem product quality Percentage Brand loyalty of sales from new products Product Brand profitability profitability

Channel Customer Market penetration satisfaction penetration Channel trust Channel efficiency Market share in each channel Channel profitabilit y Average Market transaction share size Customer Sales complaints growth Customer Market acquisition profitability costs Customer retention rate Customer profitabilit y

Source: Kumar

INDIAN RETAIL SENARIO

As competition heats up in Indian retail, major retailers are attracting more customers through quirky "event packages"/attractions or price promotions. Customers are encouraged to celebrate a special occasion with a celebrity as well as to spend money in the stores. It comprises specifications for a marketing operation that is limited in time and that is meant to draw increased attention to the enterprise (the retail outlet or the retail chain) in its sales market or the influencing trading area. As a rule, it has a sales-promoting effect. Setting objectives The launch of promotional activity for a store requires creative handling of one of the above ways of handling retail promotions. The most important factor to be considered for retail promotion is the objective for promotion. If Food World advertises that it has got the IR 8/20 rice at one of the lowest prices in the town, the objective is to use the destination category of the retail grocery store to attract greater store traffic. Promotions that increase footfalls and therefore improve store traffic may result in a competing stores loyal customers to visit and even try nonpromoted merchandise. At the same time it would increase store inter-visit time for the regular loyal store customers. Retail promotion objectives can be store specific or product specific but the intended result is something that has to be explicitly borne in mind while formulating a promotion plan. There is a need to review the same after the promotion. Shopper reaction The consumer perspective of retail promotion is also crucial in formulating promotions. Purchase event feedback is one of the crucial elements of the understanding of retail promotion. This concept means monitoring if the promotion enhances or detracts consumers from future brand purchase probabilities compared to non-promotion. In order to understand this concept, one should look at a key theory in psychology as applied to consumer behavior, the self-perception theory. Self-perception theory as attributed to the deal prone consumer, results in questioning by the consumer - 'Did I buy the product because of brand preference/ promotion?' The answer to this question by a majority of the consumers of your store determines the nature of promotion to be undertaken by the store. If for example Shoppers Stop has through its customer relationship management software a clear idea of the nature of customers especially on deal prone-ness, it can decide what to emphasize in its promotion. The decision to be taken is whether

it is the store/brand or the promotion/deal that would act as the primary reinforcement. The nature of promotion needs to adapt according to the understanding of consumer behaviour. In this effort, we would also be able to clearly track brand loyal as well as store loyal consumers.

behavioral effects of the consumer, when a promotion is on are reflected in the nature of buying and therefore implications for the retail outlet. Category purchase timing, brand choice, and purchase quantity are the three major dimensions that one has to track in order to see the effect of sales promotion. Category purchase timing refers to the decision by the consumer to alter the regular purchase cycle for the product. If Atta is bought once in a fortnight, does she buy Atta earlier because of promotion? Brand choice refers to the decision on being brand loyal inspite of a promotion on a comparable competitive substitute brand. Would a consumer change from Captain Cook to Tata salt because of promotion? Purchase quantity is a very important variable to monitor as it is directly related to the nature of consumption. This common effect of a promotion on a product or a brand is reflected in stockpiling. For example, buying a five-litre edible oil jar cheaper and storing the same for longer future use. Lets take the example of a specialty coffee outlet selling different brands of coffee. If we decompose the effect of sales promotion we may look, at lets say, contribution of the three dimensions in the following manner - brand switching (84 percent), purchase acceleration (14 percent), and stockpiling (2 percent). This decomposition may be used to compare the effectiveness of alternative promotional offerings and to determine the most suitable and effective promotion. Putting together the facts that sales promotions generate dramatic immediate sales increases and that brand switching accounts for a large percentage of this increase, we can conclude that sales promotions are strongly associated with brand switching. If promotion increases a brand's sales by 100 units, how many units come from other brands and how many units are due to category expansion, i.e. shifts in the timing and/or amounts of purchase. If three-fourths of the sales effect were due to other brands, retailers might conclude that promotional activities provide little benefit. That is, unless promoted items provide higher margins, the vast majority of the effect would simply be a reallocation of expenditures by households across items within a category. Manufacturers/national brand marketers might conclude that most of the effect increases competition between brands and would not support promotions. Therefore, stockpiling and/or consumption increases appear to be the dominant sources to look for sales effects due to temporary price cuts. Cannibalization of

future sales through stockpiling is an important consideration in the assessment of the effectiveness of sales promotions. In some product categories like beverages (Eg. soft drinks) a substantial component of the primary demand increase may represent enhanced consumption. One may drink more of Coke/Pepsi because of a price cut. But in other categories (like house cleaning liquids), households are unlikely to accelerate consumption. In these cases the effect of sales promotion may just result in changed inventory management by households. Price/brand promotion It has been proved by extensive research in the West that price promotions are detrimental whereas non-price promotions are neutral/positive. Price promotion of national brands erodes the loyalty of the national brands & therefore helps the private labels/ store labels to gain market share. While looking at it from store's viewpoint, the chain of causation could be - Price promotion would lead to loss of national brand loyalty, which would trigger greater trade allowances and therefore increase in store profit. However, the question of store image and loyalty are important. Discount stores like Margin Free shop could afford to continuously involve in price promotion whereas others cannot. Reaction from competitors is another aspect that should be guarded against. The conflict of promotion of store brands compared to the national brands would become a matter of concern in the future in India. Many retailers see the benefits of developing store loyalty as it can easily extend to store brands. There are very few store brands in India competing with large brands. However, for store brands, studies in the US have found that non-price promotions have a more favorable long term effect on store profit compared to price promotion. IT IN Promotions Several IT companies in the west have comprehensive solutions that increase productivity and sales from promotions. They allow supply chain participants to communicate more effectively throughout the various stages in the design, implementation and evaluation of retail promotions. This has been triggered by the significance of retail promotion. It is estimated that 60% of all retail activities are based around promotions and up to 40% of these promotions fail to meet expectations. It is estimated that the industry is losing Euro80 billion a year in retail promotions alone in Europe. Inefficiencies in available management information, monitoring and auditing of promotions result in:

time losses i.e. communication delays between suppliers and retailers communication errors in planning and execution among the various departments

real costs at the end of the promotion i.e. the lack of clear cost identification lack of evaluation & management information

A 'live' access through an internet enabled retail promotion software and communication between all those involved in the promotion cycle can greatly enhance efficiency of the promotion while dealing with a large number of formats & stores. In a large retail chain, a number of individuals like the brand/category manager, promotions specialist and the individual store manager are involved. A good understanding of the systems and an efficient IT backbone would eliminate the inefficiencies involved in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of promotions. It can reduce the number of communications between the brand sponsor, retailer, and supplier involved in any single promotion - traditionally by telephone, fax, or e-mail - by 30 percent. In addition, it can dramatically reduce current industry booking costs by as much as 60 percent through efficient document generation and promotion auditing. Thus, retail promotion in practice is akin to sales promotion by marketers. However, by the very nature of business, retailers need to create excitement around outlets in order sustain. Therefore, retail promotion has both short term as well as long term implications. A good mix of promotions to serve both the objectives and a continuous effort to test promotions through control stores & monitor store profitability will help in sustaining any retail organization. Sales, traffic and profit need to be compared as measures with base line sales/traffic in control stores in order to study the effects on brand share, chain share, market share. These would be measures that would provide the feedback on the right promotions to continue with in the future. Cost effective non price promotions, substantially unique promotion campaign that differentiates and positions your outlet, coordination of the complex transactions using a good information technology backbone corporate strategy oriented objectives and a constant eye on consumer feedback are the ingredients of a successful recipe called retail promotion.

Godfrey Phillips to increase visibility

Riding on the back of new and rigourous marketing strategies and a focus on customer services in 2001-02, Godfrey Phillips India is expecting its cigarette business to grow at a rate of 7-8 per cent in 2002-03. `The cigarette industry is growing at five per cent per annum and we are expecting Godfrey Phillips to grow much faster than this,` Ram Poddar, chief executive, Godfrey Phillips, told myiris. The first five months of 2002-03 have seen the performance of Godfrey Phillips improving. The company has managed a marginal improvement in its market share, taking it up to 11.5 per cent from 10.5 per cent in the corresponding period last year. `From April 2002 to August 2002, sales of Godfrey Phillips have increased. While the volume of sales has gone up by 18 per cent, the increase in terms of volume has been by 15.5 per cent,` said RA Shah, chairman, Godfrey Phillips, while answering shareholders` queries at the company`s sixty-sixth annual general meeting held in Mumbai on Tuesday. Godfrey Phillips is hoping to sustain this level of growth in sales for the remaining part of 2002-03. The profit after tax (PAT) of the company has grown by 10 per cent. The prime reason for a drastic decline in sales of cigarettes in 2001-02, according to Ram Poddar, was the sharp hike of 15 per cent in the excise duty levied on cigarettes that led to a corresponding increase in the prices of several brands. `The masses prefer to buy single units of cigarettes and this hike in excise duty coupled with the luxury tax and entry tax have all led to an increase in the per stick cost of cigarettes. Our sales took a severe hit because of this. In addition to this, the influx of low priced cigarettes smuggled from neighbouring countries was also eating into our sales,` explained Poddar. Explaining the cigarette market in India, Poddar said that amongst the masses, brand loyalty is low. It is the price of cigarettes per stick that influences the purchase. `We face immense competition from the cheap smuggled brands. In addition to this, our prime competitor ITC, with a

market share of nearly 90 per cent, has been resorting to predatory pricing, which has been threatening to eat into our market share,` said Poddar.

The company is not planning any new product launches though it does intend to introduce other forms of tobacco like cigars, says the annual report. Godfrey Phillips is also aiming to increase visibility of its existing range of products, have a wider distribution network and forge stronger relationships with its trade partners. It sees a tremendous market for cigarettes in India since the population consuming tobacco is substantial and most of them do not consume tobacco in the form of cigarettes. `As the spending capacity increases, more of them will switch over to cigarettes, which are a more hygienic alternative to tobacco or bidis,` explained Poddar. Godfrey Phillips has paid a dividend of 185 per cent. The management has denied having any plans of issuing bonus shares. `We are looking at gradually sustaining and then increasing the dividend rather than giving a bonus to the shareholders,` said Shah. Godfrey Phillips incurred substantial professional and legal expenses in 2001-02. According to Shah, the main reason for the high professional expenses was the engaging of several experts to improve efficiency, enhance marketing efforts and carry out detailed marketing research in the company. The company has also been in the midst of a litigation with the government of Assam over excise duty. Godfrey Phillips had been sourcing manufactured cigarettes from Assam since at that time there was no excise levied by the state government. `But, ten months after we began sourcing manufactured goods (cigarettes) from Assam, the government withdrew this facility and now, Rs 26 crore worth excise duty has now become due to Godfrey Phillips,` explained Shah. Exports of the company have gone up to Rs 40 crore from Rs 15 crore in the previous year. Explaining the global scene in the cigarette industry, Shah told shareholders that there has been a global glut in manufacturing capacities. `Most manufacturers have more capacity than the market demand,` informed Shah. Godfrey Phillips no longer has any third party manufacturing arrangements tough it does do some outsourcing from Hilton Tobacco, Hyderabad. The company has stopped outsourcing from Assam and its production is now

carried out at its two factories in Ghaziabad and Mumbai. `The two plants manufacture high-quality low-cost cigarettes,` added Shah.

The tea business of Godfrey Philips has been declining steadily and the management has said that this business is stagnant and in fact declining. The company has justified its holdings in mutual funds saying that it has been holding them at historical costs and they are fetching returns of 9.5 per cent. The inter-corporate deposits of Godfrey Phillips are fetching it 16 per cent interest.

Saatchi & Saatchi Experience in India:

Every multinational product and service went with the same market share to China zero per cent and established brands thereafter. China is still new to terms like democracy, public opinion and emotions. India has had a history of multinationals, brands and advertising culture. The consumers have become morediscerning; the decision maker is not always the male and the Indian consumer adapts things from the west to suit his liking and is not merely aping. India is our second-best agency in the region after China and we see a lot of good work coming from here. Lovemarks speaks of strong emotional connections that inspire brand loyalty among consumers. Is emotion the only key ingredient for the success of a brand? A brand has to command respect and then it would transfer to love that is the strongest emotion one can have. When we say a brand is a Lovemarks, it means the love for it will never fade with time. A Harley Davidson, a Walkman or a Coke are Lovemarks for the same reasons. Lovemarks belong to the people and not the company. Five years ago, clients would have squirmed at the thought of selling products with love but today even a Toyota head wants his dealers to be the most loved dealer in their respective areas. Today, with proliferation of brands, how do you retain brand loyalty? Brands would have difficulty maintaining loyalty, not Lovemarks. A Lovemarks is love beyond reason and above loyalty.

Creating Brand Loyalty with Mobile Marketing: Now is the time to use the phone as a marketing channel for brand differentiation. Think of it as mobile marketing. This paragraph talks about the power and pitfalls of a successful campaign Make Mobile Marketing Work. Wireless subscribers have finally caught the mobile messaging bug. From ringtones to photo messaging, to playing games, even interacting with their favorite reality TV shows, subscribers are doing more with their wireless phones than ever before. With this explosion in popularity, now is the time to use the phone as a marketing channel for brand differentiation. Think of it as mobile marketing. As new avenues of data services emerge on phones, operators, media companies and mobile marketing agencies need to collaborate to figure out how to best take advantage of this new channel and launch successful mobile marketing campaigns. The opportunity is great, but it is important to understand the contexts where mobile marketing performs best. European operator Orange partnered with local movie chains in the UK to offer 2for-1 theatre tickets on Orange Wednesdays. It's an excellent example of a direct marketing offer that provides an incentive or reward. Offers like this facilitate viral marketing that is based on word-of-mouth, as recipients forward them to friends and colleagues, spike message traffic for operators and increase sales for content owners. A campaign like this also encourages subscribers to rely on their mobile browser to find the movie theater and related venues like food, gas station, ATMs and more. Wireless marketing is:

Personal. Mobile phones are personal items. They are generally not things that people like to lend out, not even to family. It's no surprise how popular ring tones, screensavers and logos have become in personalizing one's phone. More importantly, phone numbers are like an ID card; they identify the individual. They also provide marketers with the opportunity to deliver a precise message, targeting an audience like never before. Direct. It is person-to-person or a brand-to-person communication. There is no intermediation: no press, no distributor and no retailer between the brand and its consumers. What the marketer says is what the user gets.

Immediate. It can vary based on the number of messages sent and the traffic on the network, but making contact with the target audience is usually a question of minutes, even seconds. A message is sent and a user receives it. You can take advantage of this speed by delivering the right message at the right time (to the right person, of course). Reliable. Operators have the ability to know when and how a message is delivered. It does increase the overall cost of a campaign because you also pay for the communication from the user's mobile phone back to the system -- but if this level of awareness is required, it's available. Two-way. Like the Internet, wireless allows a two-way communication: you can talk and you can listen to your customers. You can even engage them in a relationship with your brand through direct and personal interaction. Measurable. Wireless provides you with a means to monitor your campaign with extreme precision. You can quickly measure the response rate and the response time, and you are therefore able to immediately evaluate and adapt your messages and marketing strategies. NOT a mass marketing tool. Technically speaking, wireless marketing allows you to reach a mass audience, but conducting untargeted marketing is very expensive. More importantly, you are ignoring the advantages of this personal communication channel. Wireless allows brands to deliver a persuasive personal message instead of an advertisement designed to appeal to a large audience. NOT only about wireless advertising. As we learned in school, but tend to forget, marketing is more than advertising. Wireless is not only a means to deliver a promotional message, it's a channel that also allows brands to establish a dialogue with its prospects and deliver a service to its customers. NOT a stand-alone method. The secret to success in wireless marketing is when it's integrated with other media. The best campaigns are integrated marketing efforts that reach customers through many points of contact -- not just via the phone. Align your mobile marketing efforts with traditional channels to get the best results. NOT for complex offers. SMS has no pictures and limited length: 160 characters. That's the technological limit but it is also the limit of your

audience's attention span. If the message is longer than 160 characters, the message will be split in two parts which means people will be less likely to read it and they may also miss the point. Learn to think short.

NOT a no man's land. People are sensitive and they want their privacy protected. An unsolicited commercial message could forever harm the relationship between your brand and your audience. Use wireless only to contact people who have given you permission. And always opt for pull over push communication. You don't want to be accused of sending SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony).

When all is said and done, using the mobile phone for marketing still requires discipline and respect. Heed the words of Daren Siddall, analyst at Gartner G2: "Wireless communication, using SMS, is quick and silent and can be very effective in capturing hot leads and initiating a dialogue with (shy) consumers who don't like to give away personal information to sales representatives. It's a lesson we learned the hard way with the Internet, but it's better to sound obvious and repeat it: wireless, like any other media, is not the marketers' panacea."

Eg:Yop goes mobile to increase brand loyalty Running across its range of Yop yogurt drinks, Yoplait Dairy Crests first on-pack SMS promotion played a crucial role in strengthening brand loyalty as well as creating a valuable database of opt-in consumers for future mobile marketing campaigns. In 2003, Yop began looking for an easily executable and cost effective way to uplift sales of its yogurt-based drinks by ten per cent over a six-month period. Based not just on a need to increase penetration of the product amongst target audiences, but to also create a database of Yop consumers who could be actively targeted to in the future,the brand chose to launch an on-pack SMS promotion to win a pair of trainers for life.Marketing agency Attention created the campaign, with the SMS infrastructure handled by mobile marketing services company Sponge and Netsize. Yop had not previously used the SMS format for a romotion, but believed that the medium would appeal to its young target market. The growth of SMS as a new marketing channel has been widely accepted as a highly interactive and effective tool which complements existing media. As a response mechanism, SMS provides immediate and direct feedback from consumers, which can help measure the effectiveness of other forms of advertising.

The promotion was used as a key mechanism to develop a relevant and motivating value-added campaign, and ran across 2.5 million bottles of the drink from July until December 2003. The prizes included free bottles of Yop and gift vouchers for JD Sports ranging in value from 25 - 100, with one overall winner receiving a pair of trainers for life. The campaign allowed people entering the on-pack competition to opt in to receive further information and offers from Yop.The execution invited consumers to submit, via SMS, a unique code found on the label of the drink. Entrants were immediately sent a text back informing them whether or not theyd been successful. The chance to enter and opt in via a traditional, paper-based option was also provided for people without access to a mobile. Anuj Khanna, UK marketing manager at mobile business and entertainment provider Netsize, which managed the messaging network and billing infrastructure, comments: Brands are increasingly turning to SMS as a unique and proven method of attracting new customers, retaining existing ones, increasing brand awareness and encouraging loyalty. SMS campaigns have response rates that outperform most other media, and with mobile marketing, companies can really understand consumer patterns of product use and personal preferences. Overall redemption figures exceeded targets by 53%. Data collected over the period showed that the highest number of entries (41%) came from strawberry 330g bottles, with fewest (11%) from raspberry 750g.

Whats a Brand?

Why is Brand Important? Branding = An External Perception of Alignment within the Institution (and an internal one) For the Best Brands/Companies, this is True For profits: higher company Value (6-7% higher stock value for public companies) Strategic alignment of operations, marketing, customer experience Greater control over actions Greater relevance in measures and performance Greater connection with customers Greater recognition and buyability for customers (Students, Alumni, Employees, Benefactors) Whats a Brand? A Brand is a Set of Beliefs. about a organizations personality, product offering, and operational strength. which operate in both rational and emotional ways. which are relevant to the target market (both external and internal) which are delivered through many communications and experience channels. which translate to real results. Types of Differentiating Beliefs: Functional Beliefs (Dominos) What does the brand do? Social Beliefs (BMW) Who else belongs to this brand? Private Beliefs (Viagra) How does the brand affect my private self?

 Spiritual (Subway) For what cause does the brand fight?

(Mix of All Four is Best: Apple Computer)

Brand Membership

Brand Membership Defined People who believe, resulting in: High Switching Costs Increase Barriers to Competitors Increase Relationship Lifetime Reduced Price Comparisons

Loy alty Re pe

rie pe Ex e nc
e ag Im

at P ur c has e

Tria l

Intr odu

the best brands are focused on beliefs

ctio

Anatomy of Brand Experience

Awareness campaigns can introduce beliefs, but experiences cement them.

fs ie el B
Brand Member Experience Cycle:

ns tio Ac

Results

Two Birds:
Focus on these initiatives High

Building Brand Membership Discover differentiated Brand Member Beliefs across all four belief areas. Identify Measures that are bottom-line focused (short, mid, long) Gauge Brand Member relevance for identified experiences Design and deploy images and experiences which are focused on the required beliefs. Use the Anatomy as a guide for building beliefs and measuring results put another way What Experiences Will Build Beliefs? What are the desired Beliefs? How would an adoption of those beliefs be measured against the bottom line? What ideas/concepts do we have for experiences that can build these beliefs, and what do our most loyal customers (current Brand Members) think of those ideas? Execute (and measure)

Value to the Brand

Low High

Customer Value

The Role of Brands What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. - William Shakespeare Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet . Which is why the single most important decision in the marketing of perfume is the name. - Al Ries and Jack Trout An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but a symbol. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge As the above visionaries dreamt of, a Company is formed with the aim of delivering products and services to the customer and a brand is the promise of a company to deliver specific set of features, benefits consistently to buyers.
1. The Role of Brands 2. What is brand creation? 3. Steps in brand creation 4. Corporate Branding 5. Case study : LG Electronics 6. Social Branding 7. Conclusion

A product is something that is made in a factory; a brand is something that bought by a customer. A product can be copied by the competitor; a brand is unique. A producty can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless The brand is the most powerful asset of a company. It is the instrument by which the products move. It is the handle that allows the customer to choose. It is the symbol of a company's promise. A brand is a distinguishing name and / or symbol (such as a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to diffentiatiate those goods or services from those of the competitors. A brand thus signals to the customer the source of the product, and protects both the customer and the producer from the competitors who would attempt to provide products that appear to be identical..Whenever we see a tick

mark we invariably think of Nike and an 'M' with curved top reminds us of the delicious burgers served at McDonald's. This is how a symbol reminds us of the brand when it becomes universal. A brand conveys:

Attributes: McDonalds reminds us of pure and hygienic food. Benefits: McDonalds gives us healthy food, which is ready to eat. Values: Wipro's values are to deliver best products and services by applying thought. Culture: Mercedes represents German culture: organized and efficient. Personality: Raymond's fabrics project a gentle, caring and lovable man. User: Barbie's user would be a small kid and not a teenager or an old man.

What is brand creation? Brand creation is the birth of a strong brand, which reminds the user not only about the product but also the manufacturer. In today's era when more and more new companies are coming up with new and innovative products it is evident that those with strong brands will survive through thick and thin of thus competition. In today's environment, building strong brands is becoming more and more challenging. Increased pressures to compete on price, increased competition through product introductions and store brands, and the fragmentation of advertising and market segments are just a sample of the pressures being faced by companies in today's highly competitive environment. To quote some hard facts over 21,000 new brands were introduced worldwide in 1995 alone, yet history tells us that better than 90% of them disappeared from the shelf a year later. Why such a high failure rate and why has this been a historical trend? The development of a successful brand - which includes the product, the package, the product's name and identity - is a challenging, but not insurmountable task. The likelihood for success can be greatly enhanced if one focuses on certain critical issues. Brand creation does not end at forming a brand but at forming an identity of the products, brand awareness and brand loyalty .

Why brand creation? Throughout the 1980's and 90's, there has been a growing corporate emphasis on increasing shareholder value (i.e. making the stock price rise). Typical headlinegrabbing stories of these decades have included waves of layoffs, corporate restructuring and an emphasis on operating efficiencies. In today's shortsighted environment, the only concern the CEO is expected to have is how to keep the company growing, retain the loyal following of the investment community, and keep shareholders happy? One solution is to create and establish the brand. This serves to build consumer and investor confidence and loyalty to the company. A strong brand acts as a promise, leading faithful customers to pay a premium over competitive products. Clear brand definition and proper execution and implementation of that definition can lead to success and longevity in the market. Likewise, the stocks of highly reputable companies trade at premiums to others in their respective industries. Today branding is such a strong force that anything from salt to lemon juice and water is branded. The following are the advantages of branding to a seller:

Branding makes it easier for the seller to process orders and track down problems. Brand name and trademark provides legal protection of unique product features. It provides an opportunity to attract a loyal and profitable set of customers. It helps the seller to segment markets. Finally, strong markets help build a corporate image and makes launch of new products easier.

Corporate branding If you look into the Indian market place today, you will find a plethora of brands that are not very different from one another. After all how different can 20 brands of toothpaste or 15 brands of soap be. This phenomena has shifted the focus from what companies offer in the form of products to what they think, do and support as companies. Company credentials have become the main reason for buying products, seeking employment, providing finance etc. Hence, creation of a corporate brand is an important idea whose time has come.

The corporate brand is not just what you make or have to say, it is who you are". It is what the company stands for and why it exists. It provides focus and sense of direction with the ultimate objective of maximizing the companies competitive advantage and building a long lasting relationship with its audience. Corporate brand is made up of core values and core purpose. Need for corporate brand:

Retail strength- the confidence booster In Indian markets retailer plays an important role and time and money invested by him is directly related to his confidence in the company. The retailer not only welcomes the companies products but also goes one step further and recommends them top the customer. The new consumer The corporate brand simplifies the consumers decision making process. It provides the customer with a high level of comfort and choosing easier.

Diversification the simplifier The corporate brand seeks to project a consolidated corporate identity for the entire group of companies rather than projecting individual identities.

The identifier It acts as a benchmark to measure companies products as well as behavior.

Anatomy of the corporate brand:

It must provide values to the customer and to the company also in the form of profitable ways of doing business. Corporate brand must strive to be distinctive and competitive.

Everything the organization does must be an affirmation of the corporate brand.

Case Study of LG Electronics In this case study we shall see how LG Electronics effectively applied the various rules of brand creation to create a company brand and became Indias second largest consumer electronics brand only next to BPL with Videocon at the third spot. In 1997 LG the Korean chaebol set up a 100% subsidiary in India. The perception of LG brand was miles below the Japanese giants like Sony & national Panasonic.There were street smart players like BPL, Videocon who could give the Koreans a run for money. How did LG go about doing this?

R & D investments LG has put up an application before the Foreign investment board to clear investments worth $100m over the earlier limit of $296m. This indicates the companys commitment towards introducing product with latest of the technology.

Fast mover Being a 100% subsidiary LG moved at a fast pace. Within a period of 5 months it was able to complete a nationwide launch. Most other companies took 2 years for the nationwide launch.

Geographic scope Most other companies had ignored the eastern India however LG continued their distribution efforts in this region. Currently 20% of their turnover

comes from the east

Differentiation In an environment where their consumer was being given various exchange offers, LG differentiated their products on the basis of technology. They realized that the Indian customer was not price but value conscious. The televisions were launched with the Golden eye technology & the refrigerator with the preserve nutrition technology which has been patented by LG. The washing machine was introduced with the chaos punch plus three technology.

Innovation Innovative features are constantly added to their models. The most imaginative of these was in field of television; multilingual screen display (the menu appears on the screen in five Indian languages)

Then just before the world cup last year LG loaded a cricket game in its television (it was developed by LGs software arm in Bangalore. These two features caused a spurt in sales by 15%. Consumer behavior LG carried out the customer value analysis to study its competitors' vis--vis itself. After a careful and extensive study, LG offered products that gave value for money.

Company orientation The company is oriented towards the consumer need. For the rural markets, LG have launched the stripped down version of the existing range called Sampoorna. Today almost 20% of its volumes comes from this range.

In semi automatic washing machine instead of launching a 4.5 kg machine that dominated the entire market, LG launched 6 kg machine which was

more convenient for large Indian households.

Advertising LG used the world cup cricket as a means of advertising. It sponsored a substantial bill of the world cup. Indianizing its advertisements is one of the themes used by them.

Future Orientation Against all advice LG went into the microwave market .The market which was then only 20000 per annum today has expanded to 100000. Now LG is comfortably in charge of 23% market share. LG for the first time tapped the retail segment in air conditioners when the norm was to sell to the institutional buyers. Currently it is second to only Carrier.

Thus LG was successful in creating a corporate brand LG Electronics. Social Branding Every nation in the world is experiencing social problems that its citizens & government are attempting to solve. Solving social problems involves social change changing the way individuals & groups lead their lives by transforming adverse or harmful practices into productive ones, changing attitudes and values in communities and creating new technologies that uher in desired changes and elevate the quality of peoples life. The dominant idea is that social and individual life can be shaped, changed and improved by rational action-by individuals, by groups of people working together, by the government or by a combination of citizen and governmental action.

Case study for social branding India's national family planning programme, which started in 1952, is the oldest in Asia. The Indian family planning programme is a social idea which is marketed as a brand. Its basic aim is to change the attitude of the people towards family planning. Environment Scanning: This involves understanding the current environment and the needs of the nation. At independence, in 1947, India's population was 350 million. In 1991, it had risen to 846 million and by now, it is about 1 billion. India has 2.4% of the world's land, but supports 16% of the global population. According to the (1991) census report, India has a population of 846.30 million. Since the last census (1981), the country's population has gone up by 150 million. But the latest census figures have also brought some hope and indicated that efforts being made in the field of family welfare have not gone entirely waste. For the first time, the growth rate of population declined to 2.14% from 2.22% (in 1981). Social Change Management Technology Question The task

What is the fit between the idea and what Defining the fit (Understanding the needs the target-adopter group is looking for of the nation, hindrances, advantages to

the target adopters like per capita income increase) What makes a good fit Designing the fit (Use of existing infrastructure like clinics, hospitals etc, and help from the NGOs and voluntary organisations) Delivering the fit (Advertising on television, radio, newspapers, clinics) Defending the fit (Budgetary allocations, positive attitude of the successive governments)

How do I bring this fit to my target adopter group How do I sustain or change the fit to defend it against a premature demise The Demographic Challenge

Barriers to family planning include low literacy (male: 64%; female: 36%), the low status of women, high infant mortality (ranging from 15 to 112 per 1000 live births), and socio-cultural factors such as son preference and early marriage of girls. Family Planning - The Unmet Need

About one in five married women who would like to use family planning, does not use it. Couples who would like to limit their family size or delay the next birth, but do not use contraception. The inter-state variation of unmet need is from 10% - 30 % Half of all women with less than three children expressed a desire to wait for two years before having their next child. And yet, practice of modern birth spacing methods is less than 6% of all users. The desire for no more children rises rapidly after women have had about two children. Married Women Wanting No More Children by Number of Living Children Less than half (41%) of all couples are currently practicing family planning (urban: 45%; rural: 33%). Sterilisation predominates (over 30%). Non-government sources provide the majority of temporary methods while government is the major source for sterilisation.

If all couples who wanted to delay or limit childbearing used family planning, use would rise to 60 per cent, i.e. there would be 30 million more couples practising family planning. Goals to be achieved by 2000 A.D Current Level of achievement 2.03 29.0 9.0 44.1 89.0 59.0

National Goals

Population Growth Rate (%) Crude birth rate (births / 1000 population) Crude death rate (deaths / 1000 population) Effective couple protection rate (%) Infant mortality rate (infant deaths /1000 live births) Life expectancy at birth (years)

1.2 21.0 9.0 60.0 60.0 64.0

Major Strategic Plan Thrusts

Adopt a holistic approach based on the inter-relatedness of family planning as a human right, sustainable development and ecological balance. Spearhead a people's movement for family planning by creating and assisting a National Network of NGOs, urban and rural. Develop a closer partnership with voluntary organisations. Devise and extend tailor-made package-programmes for raising women's status, male responsibility and youth awareness in measures relevant to human sexuality, family planning and reduction of population growth. Be a major training resource for educational, medical and managerial aspects of family planning programmes. Improve the quality and coverage of services based on user perspectives.

Increase the effective participation of volunteers and staff at all levels and strengthen the complementarity of their roles. Providing information and advice to help couples to plan the spacing and number of their children

Apart from the above mentioned activities the following are the concentrated efforts organised by the government of India

Several million persons are reached annually through the co-ordinated use of group and mass approaches and interpersonal contacts. Publications and audio-visual materials are developed in-house to supplement and reinforce the family planning activities. Social marketing through Branch/Project outlets Organising conferences, seminars, to share experiences and generate, intensify and widen programme support or involvement among elected people's representatives and leadership groups, FP/ health and other professionals, NGOs etc. Promoting population, family life and sex education programmes to develop responsible attitudes among youth Conducting age-appropriate short and long-term courses for young people in the formal and non-formal sectors. Training teachers and educators of non-formal and other youth serving institutions Organising special projects for underprivileged young men and women, combining family life and sexuality education with income-generating skills. Training health professionals including indigenous medical practitioners, field workers, urban and rural volunteers and opinion leaders etc. to extend family planning education and services.

Stimulating community participation in reproductive health and family planning through various developmental activities.

Community action includes: - Educational activities including running balwadis, schools, adult literacy classes.

- Family planning activities including talks, group discussions on primary healthcare, reproductive and sexual health. Counselling for FP and MCH, and operating contraceptive distribution outlets. - Community and social welfare services. - Economic activities including skills training for income-generation. - Developing community facilities. - Activities for improving girl's/women's status. - Resource mobilisation.

Conducting research and evaluation for feedback and development of innovative approaches and projects. Hindrances in the path of the success of the creation of social family planning campaign brand - There is something about the uninformed people that makes them hard to reach no matter what the level or nature of the information - The likelihood of an individual responding to a new information increases with the audiences interest or involvement in the issue. If few people are interested, few will respond - The likelihood of the individual being receptive to the new information increases with the informations compatibility with the audiences prior attitude. - People will read different things into the information they receive depending on their beliefs and values. For example, the main opposition for the family planning programme was the belief that more the hands the better it is. Conclusion

Conditions associated with the successful campaign Monopolization : The campaign enjoyed a monopoly in the media as there were no messages that were contrary to the campaigns objectives. Canalisation : Commercial advertising is effective because it is more attractive and catches the imagination of the target audience. Here, the idea is to change the behaviour and hence, attitude towards family planning. For example, in case of LG

the aim was to attract people towards its brand and not to convince people to watch television for entertainment. Supplementation : Social campaigns work best when mass media oriented communication is supplemented by face to face communication. The family planning programme planned its social marketing mix to include product positioning, branding, packaging, advertising, selling and distribution, pricing, promotion and point-of-purchase service delivery. Brand positioning In designing the programme the government assessed the target-adopter segments contraceptive needs, particularly its acceptance of the condom. The attitudes and practices of wives were the most significant marketing factors in motivating men to use condoms. These findings led to the positioning concept: "The use of the condoms is what wives expect of the husbands, and husbands owe it to their wives to use them." The Branding program With the adoption of the positioning concept, the FPP moved to a decision on an effective brand name that would reinforce product positioning. The govt-supplied condoms already carried the name "Nirodh" on the individual pieces. The symbol of inverted triangle and the punch line "Hum do, hamare do" did catch the peoples imagination. The Advertising Programme Close supervision began with the first advertising decision: what to say (the ad message) and how to say the message (the ad execution). The ad message already was determined by the choice of a positioning concept. The Adoption processes The government identified four different models of how target adopters can be moved to the final decision to adopt the idea of family planning. These models are

"Learn-feel-do" adoption "Do-feel-learn" adoption "Learn-do-feel" adoption "Multipath" adoption

Time horizon

Distributing the social brand: Mass communication media has been engaged in the "message distribution" or "message delivery". Therefore, the media are the prime channels for marketing and distributing intangible social brands. The different forms of media used by FPP were Television, radio, newspapers (Local and national), magazines (local and national), trade journals, foreign publications, outdoor advertising (billboards, illuminated posters), cinema, transit advertising (buses, commuter trains etc.) High quality services that are performed by the professional and the volunteers are likely to be an essential adjunct to the distribution of social product. Professionals In social campaigns to persuade people to adopt family planning, professionals are the primary distribution channels. Doctors and NGOs are the retailers of this product. The retailing is done by coercive or legal means or by rewards and benefits. Volunteers In case of volunteers the retailing is done by motivation. Thus Government of India was successful in creating a social brand for family planning which helped them in achieving what they have. We have seen the need of well-established brands and how important they are in the present times. Lets look at the process by which a brand is created. Brand creation is not just naming or symbolically tagging a product but it goes much beyond this. It is birth of a brand, which is headed towards fulfillment of all

promises and guaranteeing top class services and products. Such a brand enjoys top of mind recall from its customers and a high level of brand loyalty. Inception of an name or symbol successful launch brand top of mind Idea or product of product of product recognition recall Above process shows the way in which a true brand is born and becomes deep rooted in minds of the customers. Name and symbol as a brand: The name is the first skirmish in the battle for consumer recognition and it is very important to make it a preemptive strike. The most important aspect of a brand's name and symbol is that it silently speaks everything about the company or product. Every name and symbol is associated with certain values, features and it tries to build a relationship with the company or product. Nike is the best example of how a symbol is best utilized and exploited and its strong association with the products. Nike is symbolized by a tick mark or something which is always right. The business card of a Nike employee has a tick on it instead of the company name and still people make out the company where the person is employed just by looking at the tick Many companies have failed to make a mark, as they could never convince their customers in the shortest way i.e. through a meaningful symbol what they were promising to do. Well-established companies are now spending crores of rupees to get a new logo that revamps their image and creates a new brand of a company that has a new vision. Videocon, Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata's are a few examples to give. A coporate punch line is also an attempt to go one step forward and share your vision with other people and this also helps in creation and establishment of a strong brand. No wonder Wipro, the company headed by the richest Indian spent a massive amount of Rs.35 crore rupees for a new logo, the bright sunflower and an impact punch line, Applying thought. Successful launch of a product: Brands are created to serve the customer so it becomes mandatory for a company to first know what the customer wants. A successful brand creation calls for a thorough survey of market to find out what features are desired by customer in the product and whether he really wants the product or not. A top class brand with best features and best services can fall flat on its mouth if customer does not need it. This is what precisely happened with Real Value a company that introduced

vaccumisers and fire fighting instruments in India. But the Indian consumer was not ready for this product because of which the company failed completely in introducing a good product. The extensive market research is a prerequisite for the successful lanch of a brand.

Understanding the customers, their needs, likes and dislikes helps to know what the customers want. Analysing the competition: Competitors are companies which satisfy the same customer needs. Once a company identifies its primary competitors, it must ascertain their characteristics, specially their strategies, objectives, strengths and weaknesses, and reaction patterns. A customer value analysis should be carried out to reveal the company's strengths and weaknesses relative to various competitors. Identify the major attributes customers' value. Assess the qualitative importance of the different attributes Assess the company's and competitors' performances on the different customer values against their rated importance Examine how customers in a specific segment rate the company's performance against a specific major competitor on an attribute-by-attribute basis Monitor customer values over time

The important steps involved are

After the desired features are incorporated in the product and it is given a name, its future lies in a launch that positions it at the right place and right time. A company should thus know where it's customers are. Aggressive advertising coupled with proper distribution will ensure proper availability of the product. In case of a long lasting product, attention should be paid to after sales service, which plays a major role in differentiating between two companies. Brand recognition: A Company has only one chance of impressing a customer through a first class product and so once a customer is satisfied with the product and he goes for a repeat purchase brand recognition results. The consumer now recognizes the product with its name and attributes. He associates the product with a set of assets and qualities and this creates brand equity for the product.

Creation of a strong brand as has been said does not end in launching a brand but ends where its forms an identity of its own. Successful creation of a brand depends on the following attributes: Brand awareness: Your product enjoys top of the mind recall in that category of products.

Perceived quality: There is a reason to buy your product as you have differentiated your product from others. It is the customer's perception of the overall quality or superiority of a product or service wrt its intended purpose, relative to alternatives. Brand associations: Your brand is associated with certain emotions, feelings, and qualities and also with some tangible benefits like freebies. Brand loyalty: Consumer returns back to your product even after having a choice of many other products in market. Creating and maintaining Brand Loyalty

Treat the customers right Stay close to the customer Measure/manage customer satisfaction Provide extras

If a company ensures that its brand passes through all above stages successfully then it will be a mother of a successful brand that is born to stay in the mind and heart of the consumer and this is how a product band and a corporate image is created. Summary of brand creation:

Identify the questions to be answered and problems to be solved Conduct qualitative & quantitative research to understand fully who the customers are; how they perceive the brand & the buying process

Define the brand which includes positioning, brand association, brand naming, brand symbol (graphics, tag lines) & brand personality Develop a brand strategy & market communications plan to apply the brand definition to all customer relationships Create & execute an integrated marketing communication program Manage the brand continuously & track it through research to grow, maintain & leverage brand equity.

Brand Equity Research

Building Brand Equity

MARKETING IS THE ART OF BRAND BUILDING IF YOU ARE NOT A BRAND, YOU ARE A COMMODITY. THEN PRICE IS EVERYTHING AND THE LOW-COST PRODUCER IS THE ONLY WINNER A Strong Brand Improves Demand and Supply On the demand side: higher price increased sales volume lower churn more brand stretching On the supply side: greater trade acceptance, more favorable supplier terms, lower rejection lower staff acquisition and retention costs lower cost of capital better scale economics through higher volume A Brand Must be More Than a Name 1. A brand must trigger words or associations (features and benefits). 2. A brand should depict a process (McDonalds, Amazon). 3. A great brand triggers emotions (Harley-Davidson). 4. A great brand represents a promise of value (Sony). 5. The ultimate brand builders are your employees and operations, i.e., your performance, not your marketing communications.

How do I justify spending millions on creating an image. Thats millions my customers have to spend when they buy from us. Tom Parker, CEO of Clarks shoes. Brands are built by performance, not advertising. Tools for Building Brands Advertising (e.g.,Absolut Vodka) Sponsorships (e.g., Kodak and Olympics) Clubs (e.g. Nestles Casa Buitoni Club) Company visits (e.g., Cadburys theme park, Hallmarks Museum) Trade shows Traveling exhibits Worldwide web casts of presentations, roundtables, entertainment Distribution outlets (e.g., Haagen-Dazs) Public facilities (e.g., Nestle Nestops) Social causes (e.g., American Express) High value for the money (e.g. buzz created by Ikea, etc.) User community building (e.g., Harley-Davidson) Founders personality (e.g., Colonel Saunders) Celebrity spokespersons What Makes a Strong Strong brand = Product Benefits x Distinct Identity x emotional Values (Peter Doyle, Marketing Management & Strategy, 1997) THE Y&R MODEL OF BRAND STRENGTH A successful brand has brand vitality and brand stature. Brand vitality consists of: 1. Differentiation, the brand is distinct 2. Relevance, the brand is meaningful and personally appropriate.

Brand stature consists of: 1. Esteem, the brand is seen to have quality and momentum. 2. Familiarity, the brand is known and understood by many people. Some conclusions: 1. A brand that has high familiarity but low likeability is a troubled brand. 2. A brand that has high likeability but low familiarity has high advertising potential. 3. A brand with high vitality but low stature has excellent potential. 4. When a brands differentiation and relevance start slipping, esteem will slip next, and then familiarity will decline. Characteristics of Strong Brands 1. Provides superior delivery of desired benefits. (Starbucks, FedEx, Amazon) 2. Maintain innovation and relevance for the brand. (Gillette, Charles Schwab) 3. Establish credibility and create appropriate brand personality and imagery. (Apple, Virgin) 4. Communicate with a consistent voice. (Coca-Cola, Accenture) 5. Strategically design and implement a brand hierarchy and portfolio. (BMW, The Gap)

Loyalty Rankings 2004 Brand Loyalty Rankings

(04 Ranking | Brand | 03 Ranking) 1. Google.com (2) 2. Avis (1) 3. Verizon Long Distance (4) 4. KeySpan Energy (9) 5. Samsung Mobile Phone (7) 6. Hyatt Hotels (19) 7. Sprint Long Distance (3) 8. Canon Office Copier (8) 9. Yahoo.com (14) 10. Miller Genuine Draft (5) 11. Ritz-Carlton Hotels (17) 12. PSE&G (15) 13. Amazon.com (12) 14. Marriott Hotels (13) 15. Swissotel (NR) 16. Discover Card (27) 17. Diet Pepsi (31) 18. Budweiser (16) 19. Motorola Mobile Phone (10) 20. Coors (NR) 21. Netscape.com (59) 22. Sony Ericsson Mobile Phone (93) 23. Capital One Credit Card (29) 24. L. L. Bean Catalogue (20) 25. Wal-Mart (33) 26. Skechers (NR) 27. New Balance Athletic Shoe (22) 28. Miller Lite (87) 29. Starbucks (6) 30. Radisson (48) 31. BP Gasoline (79) 32. Inter-Continental Hotels (NR) 33. Sears Catalogue (30) 34. Verizon Wireless (37) 35. Schwab.com (26) 36. Diet Coke (47) 37. Mobil Gasoline (25) 38. T-Mobile Wireless (76) 39. Bell South Long Distance (28) 40. Adidas Athletic Shoe (23) 41. ETrade.com (42) 42. J. Crew Catalogue (54) from Brand Keys, a research consultancy

43. FedEx (50) 44. Westin Hotels (73) 45. Excite.com (35) 46. Hilton Hotels (36) 47. HotBot.com (34) 48. Sanyo Mobile Phone (NR) 49. MSN.com (38) 50. AltaVista.com (51) 51. AT&T Long Distance (24) 52. Spring PCS Wireless (60) 53. Pepsi (61) 54. Target (62) 55. Jet Blue Airways (67) 56. Bud Light (32) 57. Sears Store (40) 58. Sheraton Hotels (46) 59. Land's End Catalogue (55) 60. Hampton Inn Hotels (NR) 61. Nokia Mobile Phone (11) 62. MCI Long Distance (83) 63. Holiday Inn Hotels (NR) 64. Ameritrade.com (104) 65. Best Western Hotels (NR) 66. Lycos.com (39) 67. Wyndham Hotels (68) 68. Xerox Office Copier (82) 69. Today (NBC) (56) 70. NFL (70) 71. MLB (58) 72. AOL.com (88) 73. Fox & Friends (Fox News Channel) (NR) 74. Southwest Airlines (64) 75. Exxon Gasoline (43) 76. DHL/Airborne Express (45) 77. BarnesandNoble.com (152) 78. AskJeeves.com (113) 79. Embassy Suites (86) 80. Nextel Mobile Phone (148) 81. SBC Long Distance (21) 82. TDWaterhouse.com (49) 83. Apple Computers (66) 84. Budget Rent A Car (71) 85. Subway (91) 86. Coors Light (81) 87. Texaco Gasoline (18) 88. Poland Spring (NR) 89. Chevron Gasoline (44)

90. J.C. Penney (75) 91. Expedia.com (85) 92. Fidelity.com (65) 93. Qwest Long Distance (41) 94. Visa Card (100) 95. UPS (127) 96. Aquafina (NR) 97. Gateway Computers (53) 98. Hertz (84) 99. Amstel Light (97) 100. Amoco Gasoline (101)

What Are the Most Frequent Causes of Brand Failure? Failure to live up to the brand promise. Failure to adequately support the brand. Failure to adequately control the brand. Failure to properly balance consistency and change with the brand. Failure to do brand equity measurement and management.

Achieving Deep Customer Focus

Create strategic excitement. Enlist points of light.

Articulate the new market space focused on customer outcomes. Identify the value opportunities through using the customer

activity cycle.
Build a compelling case (not through a plan but a story).

Size the prize. Modeling the concept with a few chosen customers. Get people working together. Get critical mass. Gather momentum.

Building Customer Equity Reduce the rate of defection. Increase the longevity of the relationship. Enhance the growth potential of each customer through cross-selling and up-selling. Make low-profit customers more profitable or terminate them. Focus disproportionate effort on high value customers. Components of Customer Equity Customer equity is driven by: Value equity Brand equity Relationship equity. Companies must decide which driver(s) underlie each equity. Making Brand Research Actionable Once the data is in, brand research findings are very actionable. Here are some typical uses: Prioritize actions that will improve brand loyalty. Should your focus be more on improving overall brand awareness, or differentiating yourself from competitors? Should you move forward in developing a product in a different product category, or focus on establishing partnerships with complementary organizations to enter new markets? Armed with objective data about your (brand) position, you can allocate resources to those areas that will maximize your return. Identify brand strengths to leverage in sales and marketing initiatives. Brand research identifies multiple brand attributes and benefits you can use in sales and marketing efforts. These are the things customers and prospects associate with your product or service category and your brand. Promoting along these lines will

assure your message resonates in the marketplace. By contrast, promoting elements that are not associated with your brand can lead to customer disconnect, which can damage your brand. Measure the effectiveness of marketing spending. How much did awareness increase with your latest marketing initiative? By measuring awareness before and after launch of a specific campaign, you can measure how much bang you got for your buck. Guide collateral development and placement decisions. Brand research identifies sources your current and potential customers use for trusted information about your product category-from articles they read in publications to seminars they attend at tradeshows to white papers you make available on your corporate Web site. This information will help you make critical investment decisions. Examples of Actions These are real examples of actions Sage's clients have taken to increase brand loyaltyactions they took due to market research results:

Continued to focus on educating the marketplace on a recent name change Established partnerships with complementary organizations to enter a new market rather than moving forward with an internally developed product Promoted its established track record of being a technology leader Purchasing loyalty on behalf of Fido far exceeds that for Baby Junior when it comes to the grocery store, according to a recent survey of 500 grocery shoppers conducted by InsightExpress, a professional online marketing research company. The new survey reveals that Americans report little brand loyalty when shopping for themselves or their children in the supermarket, with the most loyalty inducing products cited by participants being soft drinks at 41% and condiments at 33%. Baby food and baby items rated just 27% brand loyalty. But when purchasing food for their pets, more than one half of consumers purchasing pet food (53%) say they are more likely to stick with one brand. Below are loyalty levels by product category:

Category Pet Food Soft Drinks/Juices Condiments Baby Items & Food Pasta Sauce Cereal & Breakfast Foods Ice Cream/Novelties Cheese and Dairy Household Cleaners Snacks (Cookies, Chips & Crackers) Frozen Dinners/Pizza Milk and Eggs Pasta and Rice Meats/Poultry Canned Goods Baking Products

Percentage of Loyal Shoppers 53% 41% 33% 27% 26% 24% 19% 19% 19% 19% 18% 17% 16% 15% 14% 14%

When asked about compelling reasons to switch brands, nearly four in five consumers cited price (78%), followed by product quality (66%), an available promotional offer or coupon (40%), and the sheer availability of other products or brands (33%). "In an attempt to affect loyalty and drive purchase behavior, stores and manufacturers have been using an ever-increasing array of tactics, not all of which are effective," said Lee Smith, president of InsightExpress. "Traditional, tangible methods should be the method of choice for marketers," said Smith. Participants indicated weekly store flyers produced the highest level of awareness and translated into greatest level of sales, followed by in-aisle coupon dispensers, and individuals offering free samples. Other methods include In-Store Method Weekly store flyers Participants Citing Aware Participants Awareness Citing Purchase Impact 84% 83%

In-aisle coupon dispensers Person offering free samples Store window advertisements Store announcements Above-aisle product banners Shopping cart advertisements On-shelf flashing lights Product trial packages On-floor product advertisements

79% 74% 49% 37% 35% 35% 30% 29% 19%

46% 49% 48% 37% 30% 11% 24% 66% 17%

The survey also revealed that while 86% of Americans guide the shopping efforts using a grocery list, only 28% adhere to the list they created at home thereby remaining uninfluenced by in-store promotional activities. "Marketers need to recognize the tremendous power and influence they have when consumers are walking the aisles of their favorite grocery store. With shoppers spending an average of 47 minutes in the grocery store, there are enormous opportunities to induce trial," said Smith. "Understanding what drives peoples' decisions in the grocery store helps consumer packaged good manufacturers better compete, increase revenue, and gain market share in a business that is oversaturated with choices." The survey was created, distributed and tabulated during a 24-hour period in late September 2002. The data has a tolerance of +/- 4.4%. BRAND LOYALTY IN AUTOMOBILE SECTOR : A brief evaluation of brand loyalty reveals that today, this particular business discipline has been transformed into one of the most sought after areas by small and large organizations alike. Take the name of Japanese automobile names of Toyota, Honda or even the German made Mercedes vehicles, one may observe that each has successfully gained a significant market share of the global automobile

industry, simply because of the efforts and endeavors put in to make their brands customer friendly, efficient, economically viable and perhaps most important of all the safety element. The object of creating brand loyalty, as of recent studies, is to build a relationship with the customers, as well as to instill in ideas within their minds as to the nature of the organization, their category of customer, and how the respective organization extends its relationship with the customers at large. In addition, brand loyalty also transcends the respective products, as is the case of our present paper, which will discuss brand loyalty's influence on automobile purchases.nd LThis transcending element emerges from the brand communication which not only strives to bring in an entire culture both from within an organization as well as the organization's customers, the same also effectively influences the external audience, otherwise commonly known to all of us as customers. Yet another important aspect in today's competitive business environment is the factor of profitability and the customer expectations regarding category values. Thus, one may observe that consumer values are shifting at a relatively faster pace than the name of the brands. In this context, if the respective organization fails to take into account the changing customer values, it may probably end up with loosing its customer base to a competitor, hence the value and importance of maintaining brand loyalty and its due influence on the customer's purchase choice . Though Internet usage seems to be the savvy choice of millions of consumers across the globe for practically every product, the purchase of automobile too was not far behind, a fact confirmed by a survey titled "Automotive Internet Activity Analysis" by a private firm. This particular mail survey revealed that during the period of October 1998 and September 1999, there was a sharp increase of online sales between those with new vehicles and those who previously owned a vehicle. Though Internet usage amongst the purchasers of automobiles also increased significantly, from 51.6 percent to 57.7 percent during the years of 1998 and 1999 respectively, the Online purchases only showed a 27 percent rise over the same period. Another significant factor to influence Online purchases was the designated market areas, according to which the buyers in Washington D.C. were found to rank 1st in vehicle shopping. The same survey found that 75 percent of the purchasers of new vehicles in Washington D.C. chose the Internet as the medium for purchasing new vehicles. The reasons for Washington D.C.'s top ranking was attributed to the technically savvy category of residents of the nation's capital. In a similar survey, Los Angeles, more commonly famous as the "car capital" of

the United States showed that its residents actually purchased vehicles Online more than any other city including Washington D.C. Statistics to that respect revealed that the final count of Online buyers of automobiles in Washington D.C. was only 5.7 percent of all new vehicles buyers, compared to 6 percent for Los Angeles. Though the rise in online purchase of automobiles was attributed to the technical savvy nature of the residents of both the cities, the actual reasons have however remained a mystery with decision factors limited to facility of test-driving a new vehicle, prior experience of particular brands and advertising campaigns of consumer magazines. Yet another important factor for the rise of online purchases of automobiles was the marketing and other endeavors of automobile manufacturers. A comparison with a number of manufacturers revealed that European brands remained ahead of their American counterparts in Online purchases with Sweden's SAAB and Germany's BMW topping the list. Surprisingly there wasn't a single American automobile manufacturer in the top five companies . When it comes to brand loyalty in the PC business, one manufacturer stands taller than all the rest: Dell. For the second consecutive year, Dell leads all other PC brands with the highest repurchase rate among the major manufacturers. The Repurchase Brand Loyalty measure is calculated annually by MetaFacts, Inc. as part of their Technology User Profile study. The 2003 research is based on a survey of 11,175 respondents and leaves no doubt that Dell is the PC repurchase brand leader. According to the study, Dell has attracted the most-loyal PC buyers, rising to rank first among the major brands with a 77% repurchase rate. This is off the heels of the 2002 research which had Dell at an industry-leading 64.7% repurchase rate, a 19% year-over-year increase. Apple came in second in 2003 with a 57.6% repurchase rate, improving nearly 11% over its 2002 result. Although Compaq alone enjoyed a healthy 43% year-to-year improvement, when you combine HP & Compaq, the two brands are stronger than last year by 17% though still ranked third among the leaders. With Gateway decreasing from 54.5% to 47.5% from the 2002 to 2003, IBM Clones now rank fourth with 48.4%.

What's ahead? For Dell, repurchase brand loyalty is a key measure for PC makers as they look to expand beyond the maturing personal computer market and into the highly competitive consumer-electronics market. With new products such as portable digital-music players, an online music stores and flat-panel television sets, leveraging their strong brand loyalty with consumers will be a major factor in obtaining success in these new markets. Background & Methodology Factual, decision-making information like this is only found in one place, the Technology User Profile from MetaFacts. The Technology User Profile market research information service is based on extensive primary research selected and balanced to represent the American population - including technology users and non-technology users..

Alliance Program for Web Design Firms Are your web customers seeking to create 'community' Web design firms are under increasing pressure to add community features to their customers web sites. Forrester Research Inc. notes that 60 percent of online merchants and brand marketers have or plan to offer community-building features such as chat, message boards and members-only areas within the year Deliver this and more in our Alliance Program The netVillage Alliance Program is a lead referral and shared development program for web design firms interested in adding our community enabling software applications to their customers web sites. NetVillage is an e-community application service provider. We provide a suite of tightly integrated interactive software applications that provide community features to a website. We also offer hosting services for these sites. We do NOT focus on providing initial web site design or ongoing web page maintenance. That is where YOU come in. NetVillage will refer our customers interested in using our community toolset and hosting services to our partners for their web page development and maintenance. In return, web design firms will be able to strengthen their value proposition of web page design by adding community features and hosting services through netVillage. Why partner with netVillage?

To add value to your current services To increase your ability to serve your clients To offer your clients fully-integrated interactive web collaboration tools To help your clients:
o o o o

build their brand increase 'stickiness' drive e-commerce increase revenues add community to their web site

Why Community? By adding interactive community features, a web site can grab surfers attention, keep them on the site, and encourage them to return. The ability for interactive sites to keep users on their sites longer (three times the average according to Businessweek) extends the opportunity to interest users in the sites e-commerce programs. In addition, by engaging customers with a netVillage interactive community The netVillage difference

One Stop Shopping We are unmatched in the breadth of plug-and-play integrated services we can incorporate into a community. From auctions to video broadcasting you can offer your customers a wealth of interactive plug-and-play community services Completely Integrated Services Probably the most important requirement of an online community. Our community services were designed and developed to work with each other from the ground up. Rather trying to cobble together software applications from multiple vendors (resulting in a hodgepodge mix of services and a disruptive, inconsistent community experience), you can use our integrated services benefiting from: single login, all services contained under the customers site, and integrated e-commerce across all services. Feature Rich Our community software has been developed and fine-tuned over many years. We've incorporated feed back from a very large customer base and as a result our software is highly configurable with a vast array of configuration features (5,000 at last count!). This gives you the flexibility to create an ideal online service for your customers. Powerful User Management & Security All of the community services are integrated into our User Management System. Its purpose is to identify users, decide internally which activities and resources they can access, and possibly charge users for access to those areas. Our locks & keys approach to managing access rights gives your customers unparalleled power for member access and control. Unique Credits-based E-Commerce Accounting We offer a Credits based e-commerce system across all community services. Credits are a communitys unit of currency. They are the the mechanism by which For-Profit systems can charge for services. A user

maintains an electronic wallet (in the form of 'credits' applied to his account) and use this currency across all community services. It is a way a customer can surcharge for premium areas in his online community.

Web Hosting and Outsourcing Options Most companies are looking to outsource their web site to a hosting company and many web design firms are not in that business. By working with netVillage you will be able to provide an outsourcing solution to your customers.

Rapid Time to Market Using our tools you can get a customers site up and running in days. In an age where being late to the Internet game may spell doom for an Internet company, customers are looking to be able to deploy rapidly and cost-efficiently.

E-Loyalty: The new form

From Brand Loyalty to E-Loyalty: A Conceptual Framework With the rapid growth of E-commerce and on-line consumer shopping trends, the importance of building and maintaining customer loyalty in electronic marketplaces has come into sharper focus in marketing theory and practice. This paper integrates previous research in the field of brand loyalty to present a conceptial framework of "e-loyalty" and its underlying drivers. Implications for emarketing practice and future research directions are also presented. Building and maintaining brand loyalty has been a central theme of marketing theory and practice in establishing sustainable competitive advantage. In traditional consumer marketing, the advantages enjoyed by a brand with strong customer loyalty include ability to maintain premium pricing, greater bargaining power with channels of distribution, reduced selling costs, a strong barrier to potential new entries into the product/service category, and synergistic advantages of brand extensions to related product/service categories (Reichfeld, 1996). The advent and growth of "Business to Consumer" (B2C) e-commerce has magnified the importance of building a loyal visitor base to an e-commerce website (e-loyalty). Most B2C e-business models have relied initially on an intensive effort to generate a large enough customer base and subsequently on achieving profitability based on a lifetime revenue potential from each loyal customer (Porter, 2001). Despite the importance of e-loyalty to business success in online consumer marketing, little theoretical research has been done so far in this field. Most of the research has been confined to practitioner-oriented suggestions on how to build loyalty to commercial websites (Smith, 2000; Reichfeld & Schefter, 2000). The objective of this conceptual research paper is to interpret traditional brand loyalt y literature in the context of online buyer behavior in order to bring out the similarities and differences between traditional brand loyalty and e-loyalty. In this process we develop a conceptual framework of e-loyalty and its underlying drivers. Also considered are the implications for e-marketing practice and the direction future research might take. 2. Prior Research The concept of brand loyalty has been extensively discussed in traditional marketing literature with the main emphasis on two different dimensions of the concept: behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Oliver (1997) has presented a conceptual framework of brand loyalty that includes the full spectrum of brand loyalty based on a hierarchy of effects model with cognitive, affective, conative (behavioral intent), and action (repeat purchase behavior) dimensions. A definition integrating this multidimensional

construct has been given (Oliver, 1999) as: "a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior." The concept of e-loyalty extends the traditional brand loyalty concept to online consumer behavior. Although the underlying theoretical foundations of traditional brand loyalty and the newly defined phenomena of e-loyalty are generally similar, there are unique aspects of it in the area of Internet based marketing and buyer behavior. Schultz (2000) describes customer/brand loyalty in cyberspace as an evolution from the traditional product driven, marketer controlled concept towards a distribution driven, consumer controlled, and technology-facilitated concept. In addition, e-loyalty also has several parallels to the store loyalty concept (Corstjens & Lal, 2000)such as building repeat store visiting behavior as well as the purchase of established brand name items in the store. As extensively discussed in Schefter and Reichheld (2000), e-loyalty is all about quality customer support, on-time delivery, compelling product presentations, convenient and reasonably priced shipping and handling, and clear and trustworthy privacy policies. The sections that follow illustrate the similarities and differences between traditional brand loyalty and e-loyalty. Attitudinal Loyalty The traditional conceptualization of attitudinal brand loyalty includes cognitive, affective, and behavioral intent dimensions. Conventional brand loyalt y development efforts have relied substantially on brand image building through mass media communications. In e-marketplaces, however, database technology makes it possible to put more emphasis on the cognitive dimension by offering customized information. As for strengthening the affective dimension, in e-loyalty the roles of trust, privacy, and security come into sharper focus. Generally speaking, loyalty implies satisfaction, but satisfaction does not necessarily lead to loyalty. Consequently, there is an asymmetric relationship between loyalty and satisfaction (Waddell, 1995; Oliver, 1999). This phenomenon is particularly important in e-marketplaces, since (dissatisfied) customers face a greater variety of choices. Through extensive research, Baldin ger and Rubinson (1996) have validated that highly loyal buyers tend to stay loyal if their attitude towards a brand is positive. In addition, the ability to convert a switching buyer into a loyal buyer is much higher if the buyer has a favorable attitude toward the brand.

Behavioral Intent Behavioral intent is an intermediary between attitude and behavior (Mittal & Kamakura, 2001). It represents the intention to act in the buying decision process. Behavioral intent appears in various forms such as a predisposition to buy a brand for the first time or a commitment to repurchase a current brand. Brand loyalty research has focused on factors related to maintaining and augmenting this repurchase commitment (Oliva & Oliver, 1992) and converting behavioral intent to an actual purchase (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1985). In e-loyalty, which has a relatively compressed buying cycle time, the main emphasis is on converting behavioral intent to immediate purchasing action (Strauss & Frost, 2001). Behavioral Loyalty Traditionally, behavioral loyalty has been defined in terms of repeat buying behavior. Examples of conceptual and measurement issues related to behavioral loyalty can be found in Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001) and Dick and Basu (1994). Behavioral loyalty can be expressed in different ways. For example, customers can be loyal to brands and/or they can be loyal to stores as discussed in Corstjens and Lal (2000). When the concept of behavioral loyalty is extended to the e-marketspace, both the conceptual and measurement issues become more complex and sophisticated. Factors such as repeat site visits without purchases and extent of time spent at the e-commerce site (site stickiness) have to be considered (Smith, 2000). The importance of satisfying a customer in order to create behavioral loyalty is discussed extensively in Schultz (2000). A satisfied customer tends to be more loyal to a brand/store over time than a customer whose purchase is caused by other reasons such as time restrictions and information deficits. The Internet brings this phenomenon further to the surface since a customer is able to collect a large amount of relevant information about a product/store in an adequate amount of time, which surely influences the buying decision to a great extent. In other words, behavioral loyalty is much more complex and harder to achieve in the e-space than in the real world, where the customer often has to decide with limited information. Brand Building Activities Brand building activities are divided into two major areas: brand image building and frequency programs. Short-term marketing activities such as promotional tools are traditionally used to shape a brands image (Knox, 1996). These short-term tools have to be balanced with long-term activities, e.g. product development to create a favorable brand image. The interactive nature of the Internet enables managers to convert this concept

into practice in a different way. The one-way mass communication model of traditional advertising campaigns can be replaced by a two-way or even a group communications approach in e-brand building. One example of the Internets ability to perform long-term marketing activities is the appearance of various customized products on the Internet. Frequency programs have always been an important technique to retain customers. Traditionally, loyalty cards have been used in the real space to prevent brand switching at a product or store level (Dowling & Uncles, 1997). Frequency based loyalty building programs are easier to implement in e-markets due to the presence of database technologies that are an essential component of e-commerce sites (Deitel et al., 2001). However, since it is easy to copy these concepts (Smith, 2000), it is hard to derive a sustainable competitive advantage from them. They are mainly a defensive tactic to prevent brand switching. Promoting and supporting user groups to reinforce positive brand image and loyalty has been an important tool used in traditional brand management practice. Examples include the Volkswagen Owners Association and the Mickey Mouse Club." In these types of traditional consumer brand organizations, communications about the brand and the relationship are managed by the marketer. In contrast, the online community has the unique advantage of peer-to-peer brand related communications as well as the unique 24/7 (24-hour/7-day a week) access and global reach of the Internet. McWilliam (2000) has summarized the emerging importance of building stronger brands through online communities and techniques for managing these communities. Trust and Loyalty The role of trust in building and maintaining brand loyalty has been researched extensively in both consumer and business-to-business buying situations (Cowles, 1997; Doney & Cannon 1997; Chaudhuri & Holbrook 2001). Trust plays a central role in augmenting both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty which in turn influences marketing outcome related factors like market share maintenance and price elasticity. In the field of e-loyalty several structural models of trust and its relationship to repeat visits to e-commerce sites have been presented (Jevons & Gabbott, 2000). Privacy has emerged as a unique and important dimension of e-loyalty (Ratnasingham, 1998). 3. E-loyalty : A Conceptual Framework Based on the above review of the literature, we propose the following model of e-loyalty (see Figure 1) with the underlying drivers consisting of

(1) Value Propositions (2) Brand Building (3) Trust and Security (4) Website & Technology and (5) Customer Service.

Value Propositions Product customization and interactivity are two unique value propositions that contribute to e-loyalty in online buyer behavior. A recent Modem Media and Greenfield survey showed that a majority of web shoppers prefer websites that offer customized products and information. This clearly indicates the importance of mass customization in creating e-loyalty. Customization is the result of the interactive involvement of the customer in the design of his/her ideal product. The computer manufacturer, Dell, has successfully implemented the approach of build your own computer through the use of Choiceboards (Slywotzky, 2000). The high involvement in the product design on the part of the buyer inherently creates a stronger affective relationship with the brand that subsequently leads to brand loyalty. The accumulated customer knowledge base over several transactions allows the e-marketer to sharpen the customized offerings and prevent competitive inroads. The combination of customer involvement in product design and a well-known brand with associated product quality and guarantees increases the probability that product performance meets customer expectations. Traditional brands with high brand loyalty have enjoyed a certain degree of immunity from price-based competition and brand switching (Dowling & Uncles, 1997). In e-markets, however, this immunity is substantially diminished due to how easy price comparing among shopping agents is (Turban et al., 2000) and due to the fact that competition is just one click away. So being in a competitive price range is more important for e-businesses in developing and maintaining customer loyalty (Reichheld & Schefter, 2000). Brand Building Brand image building as a strategic tool for developing brand loyalty has been discussed a lot from both theoretical and managerial perspectives in the literature (Bhat & Reddy, 1998; Yoo, Donthu, & Lee, 2000). Park, Jaworski, and MacInnis (1986) have proposed brand concept management on the basis of symbolic and functional dimensions. In e-business the significance of brand building has increased with the exploding number of competitive choices that have appeared in a short period of time. The Internet offers unique tools of interactive brand building that have

previously not been available through traditional mass media oriented brand-building strategies. A study of the trends in brand building on the Internet (Nemes, 2000) has shown the importance of domain names as brand name extensions. Not only do consumers prefer well known and easy to remember website names, but the website content also plays a significant role in enhancing the overall brand image.

Trust and Security Trust, particularly the unique dimensions of transactional security and privacy (Hoffmann et al., 1999), play a critical role in generating customer loyalty to an e-business. A recent study by Ratnasingham (1998) has shown that fear of online credit card fraud has been one of the major reasons customers have not done more extensive online buying. Moreover, privacy concerns have led to a public relations fiasco for some major e-businesses resulting in substantial brand image erosion (Advertising Age, 2000). Several unique tools and techniques are available to e-businesses to enhance customer trust in their website. This includes third party approvals, encryption, authentication, and non-repudiation strategies. Encryption assures data security in transmission, authentication guarantees the identity of the participants involved in the electronic contract, and non-repudiation means maintaining an authentic transcript of the specific terms and conditions of the contract agreed to by both parties. Passwords are most commonly used in authentication processes. Verisign.com and Authentidate.com are the leading providers of authentication technology. Trust, which is closely related to security, is a very important factor in the online buying process behavior process. In general, you cannot feel, smell, or touch the product. You cannot look into the salespersons eyes. Therefore, these ways of developing trust are excluded on the Internet. Brand trust usually contributes to a reduction of uncertainty. In addition, trust is a component of the attitudinal component of loyalty. So it is obvious that loyalty in general and brand trust in particular can help to overcome some of the Internets disadvantages, e.g. to overcome perceptions that the Internet is an unsafe, dishonest, and unreliable marketplace. In fact, these perceptions are still stopping some potential customers from doing business on the web. A third party approval is a tool to generate trust. Companies like TRUSTe.com assure customers that merchants participating in their program meet specific standards of consumer privacy and transactional security.

Website and Technology A unique factor in e-loyalty is the critical role of the first impression created by a website as well as its ease of use (Smith, 2000)- easy navigation, fast page loads, server reliability, quick shopping and checkout processes, and a personalized interface. Szymanski and Hise (2000) figured out that convenience and site design are among the major factors that
determine customer satisfaction, which in turn influence the decision to re-patronize a site.

A website has to be designed for a targeted customer segment, which means that the content of the site has to match the preferences of its targeted customer group. Global e-marketers should consider offering language-changing options since a website can be accessed from all over the world. In addition, it is advisable to change the content of a site to suit local conditions. This concept is successfully imple mented by Amazon and Stepstone, which is a European online career portal. Local adaptation should be based on a complete understanding of a customer groups culture. For example, people of different countries perceive colors differently or people with a different reading direction (such as Arabic or Chinese) do not look at the same spots on the screen as people in Western countries do. An e-business has to be aware of the fact that a lot of customers are suffering from time constraints. If a web page ta kes too much time to load, it may keep potential customers away. Furthermore, navigating through a website has to be easy, which implies that browsers should be able to find the items they are looking for in an adequate amount of time. According to Forsythe, Ring, Grose, Bederson, Hollan, Perlin, and Meyer (1996), 58% of users make two or more navigational errors while searching for information. Web users make fewer mistakes if the hierarchical structure of the site is broader rather than deeper (Bernard, 2001). Ideally, information should be organized in three hierarchical levels from the initial homepage. Norman and Chin (1998) have recommended that complex websites adopt a concave structure that is broad at the top and the bottom levels and narrow in the intermediate levels. This has been shown to substantially increase ease of navigation. Buyers of different products often follow different buying patterns. For example, an e-business has to know whether most of its buyers come to the website with or without any intent to buy. If customers visit a site without any intent to buy, placing good offers on the first page is important. On the other hand, for an e-business whose customers visit the site with the intent to buy, establishing a website with an effective search function is important.

In addition to web design issues, factors such as server reliability and fast response times represent key technical issues that have a major influence on e-loyalty. A server crash while browsing a website or even worse, while placing an order, will have an adverse impact on the decision to visit the site again. Customer Service Order fulfillment and rapid delivery systems are as critical to e-loyalty development as the other factors. A thoughtful logistics system that guarantees a fast delivery after the checkout process contributes to customer satisfaction, which in turn contributes to loyal behavior. In addition to the speed of delivery, the logistics system should allow different ways of delivering products. Some customers prefer to get the product delivered by parcel services, like FedEx and UPS. Others might want to pick up a product in a physical store in order to have somebody to talk to. Customer service is another crucial area for e-marketers (Helmsley, 2000). Sometimes website designers cannot avoid a certain degree of complexity in the architecture of a website. Therefore, it is necessary to have a thoughtful customer service system. Links to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and links to online representatives are useful in order to assist customers in the selection or buying process. A marketer should not just offer online assistance. In many cases, it is more convenient for customers to call a company. Therefore, the use of a toll free phone number for customers should be considered. A customer who buys something on the Internet has one major disadvantage compared to a customer in real space. Internet customers cannot touch, smell, or experience the good before they buy it. This makes a shopper insecure about buying a product. In order to minimize this insecurity, an e-business should offer brands that are well-known, good product quality, and, of course, guarantees. 4. Managerial Implications The drivers of e-loyalty presented in the framework above have immediate implications for marketing management in terms of developing and maintaining brand loyalty in e-space. However, the relative importance of the drivers of e-loyalty in brand strategy formulation depend on the type of ebusiness as well as the type of market situation. Figure 2 presents a contingency framework, which can be used to derive brand loyalty management strategies for different marketing situations. One dimension of the framework is whether a business is a pure e-business or whether it is a traditional business moving into e-space (bricks to clicks). The other

dimension is the market position of the business in terms of being a market

share leader or a market follower.

The following brand loyalty strategies emerge from the above framework: Pure E-Business Market Leader This group already has the threshold level of brand recognition with associated trust and reputation in the e-market space. Their brand loyalty strategy must focus on facilitating repeat buying through improved use of web technologies such as ease of navigation and one-click purchasing for repeat buyers. In addition, focusing on improving logistics and customer service will strengthen the existing e-loyalty of their current customers based on increased satisfaction levels. Recent experiences of delivery delays and lack of infrastructure to handle customer returned merchandise resulted in serious blows to brand credibility of major e-retailers during a recent holiday season sales period (Neuborne, 2000). Pure E-Business Market Follower This group has to build brand recognition and to create trust in order to get new customers. This implies focusing on attitudinal brand loyalty. Using techniques like third party approvals (TrustE) and strategic partnerships

with companies with established reputations will increase the trust level to accomplish it. Here attititudinal loyalty is created first leading to behavioral loyalty. An alternative approach is to facilitate behavioral loyalty first in order to bring about attitudinal loyalty, if overall performance meets or exceeds customer expectations. Offering customized products, giving incentives for brand switching, as well as using frequency programs are methods to achieve this. It should be noted, however, that pure e-business market followers do

not have the same degree of brand recognition when compared to traditional space market followers by virtue of the shorter time e-brands have existed. This implies that greater effort is needed to build brand recognition and trust before e-loyalty can be established. Bricks to Clicks Market Leader Transforming existing brand loyalty to e-loyalty should be the main goal for this group. Brand extension with identical brick and click brands or moving to related e-brands are the two main routes that can be followed by this group. Of course, both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. For example, a company that uses an identical real space and e-space brand name (Wal-Mart Walmart.com) will have instantaneous brand recognition in e-space but will have to face the problem of cannibalization from brick sales to click sales. On the other hand, using a different brand name in e-space (KBToys KBKids.com) though not capitalizing to the full extent on the brick brand name does allow for creating a unique market positioning in the e-world which is different from the brick positioning. Bricks to Clicks Market Follower This group has to focus on a niche strategy with unique offers to narrowly defined market segments. USAIR, for example, was the first to offer travel bargain hunters the option of searching for the cheapest flights by keeping travel dates flexible. Brick market followers should take advantage of the opportunity to define new markets in e-space before their rivals. Here they can leap frog over their real space competitors and develop stronger
customer loyalty in e-space through pioneer advantages.
5. Implications for Future Research

Based on the conceptual framework of drivers of e-loyalty presented in this paper, several important future research questions arise. First, there is the need to move from practitioner oriented descriptive research to a more theoretically based model of e-loyalty. For instance, there needs to be: ? study of the relative importance of the different drivers in building e-loyalty--are trust and security factors more important than website navigation ease in building e-loyalty. ? comparative research on the relative importance of the different factors in driving brand loyalty in traditional and e-marketplaces. Another dimension of research deals with the measurement issues in e-loyalty. Due to the easy availability of a multitude of behavioral measures of e-loyalty (such as the repeat visit rate to websites, the amount of time spent by an individual at a website, etc.), there has been a preoccupation with the use of site visit statistics as a surrogate for brand loyalty.

However, as has been suggested in our framework, it is important to go beyond just the behavioral dimension of loyalty and also consider the attitudinal and behavioral intent dimensions. An integrated measure of e-loyalty would be the objective of such a measurement and metrics oriented type of research. After the initial euphoria of the promises and potential of B2C e-commerce and the subsequent sobering reality of recent disappointments, online buying and marketing is expected to grow. E-loyalty will continue
to be a key success factor in e-commerce. Building and ma intaining e-loyalty will be a challenge in the highly competitive and fickle world of

online shopping. Understanding the drivers and dynamics of how customer loyalty is developed and maintained in cyberspace with the help of an integrated theoretical framework is critical to developing future marketing strategies in this area.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (C.S.R)

Cause-Related Marketing : Altruism. Corporate responsibility. Philanthropy. These are often used to describe cause-related marketing, an activity in which businesses join with charities or causes to market an image, product, or service for mutual benefit. Embracing a cause makes good business sense. Nothing builds brand loyalty among today's increasingly hard-to-please consumers like a companys proven commitment to a worthy cause. Other things being equal, many consumers would rather do business with a company that stands for something beyond profits. Powerful marketing edge Cause-related marketing can become a cornerstone of your marketing plan. Your cause-related marketing activities should highlight your company's reputation within your target market. Cause-related marketing can positively differentiate your company from your competitors and provide an edge that delivers other tangible benefits, including:

Increased sales Increased visibility Increased customer loyalty Enhanced company image Positive media coverage By choosing a cause you are passionate about, cause-related marketing is emotionally fulfilling. It's a way to merge your profit center with your "passion center" and build a business that mirrors your personal values, beliefs and integrity. If your cause also resonates with your target market, your activities will generate tremendous goodwill and media attention can be its side effect. Real-World Success Story Cosmetic dentist Mark McMahon made himself a media mini-celebrity with a thriving practice due in part to his high-profile pro bono work in his community, a strategy that landed him radio and TV appearances in areas where he worked. McMahon established partnerships with local charities, including a homeless shelter and a shelter for battered women, and offered free dental services to their members. Before each event, he contacted local media and let them know what

he was up to. Several TV crews showed up, filmed him treating patients, and later aired the segments on the evening news. "These events were surprisingly easy to arrange, and every year, they'd help us get press simply by doing these charitable promotions," McMahon says. "Local television news stations loved the emotional element. And it was obviously rewarding to see patients after we'd treated them who'd been in pain for months talking about how glad they were to be relieved of their toothaches." Another project involved the Delancey Street Foundation, a residential education center for former substance abusers and ex-convicts. "I agreed to treat some of their members' acute dental needs," McMahon says. "I quickly appreciated the media appeal of transforming the appearance of these roughlooking guys with terrible smiles." McMahon captured the event with before and after photos. "These guys had missing teeth and terrible smiles," he says. "So I had a professional photographer capture before pictures of these guys in street clothes with their snarling faces. After I fixed their teeth, we took more pictures, but this time dressed the guys in suits and ties, now looking like lawyers and accountants, with me sitting right in the middle. The media loved it, and it was great seeing these men looking like new." McMahon's TV appearances created name recognition. "After I did the story on a local television show, I was recognized in my gym by a masseuse who had seen the show," McMahon recalls. "She said, 'I was thinking about you this morning while I was flossing my teeth.' She became a great source of referrals." (Excerpted from the book Get Slightly Famous: Become a Celebrity in Your Field and Attract More Business with Less Effort, by Steven Van Yoder) Getting Started Cause-related marketing yields mutual benefit. Look for partners with a similar agenda whose goals can be better achieved by partnering with your business. Take inventory of the assets that make you an appealing partner in a causerelated venture. There are many types of mutually beneficial relationships you can form with your cause-related partner, including special events, sales promotions and collection plans. An easy way to embrace a cause is to team up with a charity. Whenever Johnny "Love" Metheny, a slightly famous nightclub owner in San Francisco, opens a new club, he shares the limelight with a local charity. "I have

a history of including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in my grand openings," says Metheny, who was voted the society's Man of the Year in 1991. "It's not only something I feel good about, but it helps us market our businesses to the community and media at the same time." Volunteer with an organization. When Eunice Azzani, an executive recruiter, volunteered to serve on the board of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, she didn't anticipate that it would connect her with executives from Mervyn's, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo Bank, all of who eventually hired her to work for them. "People don't hire a piece of paper or a process. They hire people they trust," Azzani says. "Volunteering for a position at a local organization makes you very trustworthy." She advises business owners to target causes they believe in. "If you're helping with a cause you believe in, people will see that you care. And they'll realize you will probably care as much about your work." As your partnership takes shape, become ambassadors for each other. Talk about the charitable organization and have flyers available. Promote the organization (and your partnership) on your website and in your newsletters. Ask your partner to extend the same courtesies to you. Never lose the marketing focus of your community partnership efforts. Even though the work is philanthropy, your cause should generate interest in your company and motivate people to buy from it. Select a cause that is important to your target market, and make sure your target market sees that connection.

FINDINGS

Owner's Pie

13% 11%

4% 12%

Huydai Maruti BMW TATA Chevrolet Chrysle Skoda 7% Ford Honda Mahindra HM 4%

13%

11% 5% 9% 11%

This Pie-Diagramatic Description of the information that I collected during my online survey.This Figure Shows How many of those 59 respondent are the above mentioned cars.

Loyalty pie

8% 8%

11% 11%

Huydai Maruti BMW TATA Chevrolet Chrysler SKODA

8%

6% 6% 11% 15% 8%

8%

Ford Honda Mahindra HM

This figure shows which respondent is planning to buy which brand.In other words this shows their satisfaction level about that brand they are possessing.

Return on loyalty:
ROL Pie
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 owning planning2buy Huydai 6 4 Maruti 8 4 BMW 2 3 TATA 7 5 Chevrolet Chrysler 4 3 2 4 Skoda 6 2 Ford 5 2 Honda 3 3 Mahindra 6 3 HM 7 3

As the Comparative analysis shows , the brands like BMW, Chrysler, Honda are really excellent in maintaining the loyalty of its customers. These are the brands which are premium priced but post-purchase customer satisfaction level is very high in their case. Customers still want to buy their product after using it .

Two Models of Management Profit-based management Reduce costs Reduce compensation Replace people with technology Price to extract maximum value Sell more products Acquire lots of customers Loyalty-based management Invest in marketing assets Give superior compensation Leverage people with technology Price to reward customers Deepen customer value Acquire customers selectively Creating Buzz on the Streets Chryslers PT Landcruiser appeared in fashionable areas and college tailgate parties. 250,000 prospects requested information before official ad campaign began in April 2000. Models drove around Los Angeles on Vespa scooters and chatted with customers in cafes and bars. Ford identified 120 people in six key markets and gave them a Focus to drive for 6 months and promotional material. Vans builds skateboard parks at malls and sponsors Vans Triple Crown. Hasbro enlisted cool pre-teens to play the POX game and tell their friends about it. Tourist goes into lounge and her telephone rings and picture of the caller appears on the phone.

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

References: Strategic Marketing: Online Philip Kotlers recent presentation here in Delhi regarding Holistic Mktg,Lateral Mktg & Hi-Tech Mktg ( Indiatimes MindScape Summit)

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