Assignment No.

2
Brand Management

Submitted to:
Madam Maham Ijaz
Submitted by:
Sheraz Rehman
Roll No : 15102
Class : MBA 6th Semester
Question No:1
What are the effective marketing communications use by companies to build an effective
brand equity?Explain in detail.

What is a Brand?
Much more than a collection of marketing choices, brands comprise, brand names, brand
marks, trademarks, and trade names. The power of branding rests in the perceptions,
emotions and attitudes that consumers form towards a brand. Consumers feelings toward a
brand and their experiences with the brands, in addition to a brands symbolism and
experiences, differentiate one brand from another. A brand may consist of a single item or
many items.

Today, many companies also see brands as an asset. In fact, we have seen brand names
become more valuable than the companies that created them. Consider the case of brands
such as Polaroid, Magnavox and Zenith, whose companies went bankrupt years ago, and yet
their brand names continue to be licensed today.

Strong brands have high brand equity because they are valuable assets that offer a number
of competitive advantages. Brands with high equity enjoy high levels of brand awareness and
customer loyalty. Because consumers demand brands with high equity, the manufacturer has
more negotiation power with retailers. With consumer demand and a strong negotiation
position, manufacturers can more easily launch product lines and brand extensions. Brand
equity also provides some price protection because loyal consumers will pay more for the
brands they admire.

Brand Equity
All brands have some measure of brand equity. Powerful brands like Disney,
Apple and Nike have strong brand equity. Brand equity accounts for the
difference in customer response that a brand name makes. In essence, brand
equity is a factor of a brandis ability to keep and attract customers.
Consequently, a brand can have negative brand equity or positive brand
equity. For instance, consumers with strong brand loyalty respond less
favorably to unbranded products or other branded products in the same
market.

What Is Brand Equity?

Did you ever think of brands as valuable assets that determine the financial
strength of a business? If you are a brand manager, your charge is to produce
value for the company and its investors. You should improve the brands value
by developing and implementing strategies that promote the brand and
increase brand equity.

Brand equity makes one brand more preferable than another competing
brand. While opinions differ on the factors that influence brand equity, four
commonly mentioned factors are innovation, exceptional customer
experience, transparent values and strong market leadership. Companies
with high brand equity include Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Businesses with strong brands consistently outperform the markets where

they do business. As a companys brand equity improves, it generally
commands higher prices, profitability or market share relative to competitive
products.

4 Components of Brand Equity

Young and Rubican developed a model to measure brand strength. Brands that rank high
on each factor have high brand equity. Their model consists of the following four components.
1.Differentiation
All brands make promises to consumers. The strongest brands make unique promises that
they consistently uphold. These promises must differentiate from the promises of other brands
so that consumers have a reason to purchase them. However, differentiation doesnt
guarantee sales.
2.Knowledge
Consumers wont buy a brand if they dont know anything about it. Strong brands have
effective advertising and promotional campaigns that are successful in educating the
market. Brand stories must be told and retold to new generations of customers.
3.Relevance
Brands must address the needs of their market. Successful brands constantly adapt to
changing market conditions and evolving trends.
4.Esteem
Esteem represents how much a brand is respected. Esteem can be built by providing great
quality, service, support, etc. Consumers must demonstrate high respect for a brand to have
equity.

8 Strategies for Maximizing Brand Equity

Brand managers are responsible for implementing strategies that increase brand
equity, without damaging the brands reputation or long-term profitability. This is done
by focusing on the following 8 factors.

1.Brand strategy
Creating a brand that is recognized and respected is difficult. However, some
characteristics make successful branding feasible. At a minimum, a branded product
must be easy to label and identify. The brand should display consistent quality and
represent good value. It should also be easily available for purchase and meet legal
and ethical standards. To be profitable, a brand should also have an adequate life
cycle and demand. Developing successful branding strategies requires excellent
communications, planning, and coordination among all levels of manufacturing,
distribution and sales.
2.Communication
Brand equity cannot be achieved without a powerful communications strategy. Todays
multicultural marketplace further complicates matters and demands that
communication be multilingual, culturally sensitive, online and mobile. Working with
an established translation services company is necessary to ensure accurate and
professional communication across all markets. Marketing communications isnt the
only area where strong communication strategies are necessary. Brands also need
strong communicators to attract financiers, resolve legal matters, and direct cross-
functional groups.

3.Awareness
A brand may offer a strategic competitive advantage and address unmet needs, but
unless marketing research shows strong sales projections, none of that matters if
consumers arent aware of it. Brand awareness means that consumers can remember
a brand. Not always easy to achieve, nevertheless this makes a huge difference when
there are many competing products. In addition to traditional means of advertising and
promotion, brand managers must include social media and content marketing.

4.Reputation
In todays, Internet-based economy, a companys reputation can be built or destroyed
in minutes. Many factors can influence a firms reputation. When companies engage
in questionable conduct, they can damage their reputation and destroy customer trust.
But reputation can also be damaged by unreasonable clients who lodge unfair
complaints online and in social media. To protect your brands reputation, enlist a
skilled communicator who will respond quickly and professionally to customer
questions and negative publicity. A poorly communicated response will make matters
worse and damage a brands reputation.

5.Legal and ethical decision-making

Companies are expected to make legal and ethical decisions. When customers,
consumer protection groups, or businesses become upset over unfair practices, they
may call for lawmakers to legislate and regulate the unethical behavior. Legal and
ethical choices are a fundamental aspect of brand equity. Brands that operate legally
and ethically help build trust and long-term relationships.

6.Collaboration
Effective branding relies on productive collaboration and teamwork strategies.
Collaboration is the driving force that brings together people from diverse fields and
specialties to solve complex branding problems. Online collaboration tools make it
possible for people around the world to come together quickly and effectively in real
time to create marketing collateral, resolve technical questions, develop products,
conduct financial analyses and resolve legal matters.

7.Value
Branding is also about managing profitable customer relationships. To achieve such
relationships, a brand manager must attract new customers by promising superior
value and retain existing customers by delivering satisfaction. Brands that offer
superior value can benefit in numerous ways. Because distributors and retailers want
to carry brands that offer value, gaining distribution becomes simplified. Brands with
more highly perceived value command premium pricing, better margins, and wider
distribution.

8.Emotional Capital
Emotional capital is the adhesive that attracts consumers to a brand. Strong brands
retain customers through economic downturns, job changes, and other life challenges.
Emotional capital converts a consumer into a loyal brand advocate who gives positive
testimonials and word-of-mouth advertising. These customers commit to a brand and
remain loyal to it.

Role of Multiple Communications

How much and what kinds of marketing communications are necessary? Economic
theory suggests placing dollars into a marketing communication budget and across
communication options according to marginal revenue and cost. For example, the
communication mix would be optimally distributed when the last dollar spent on each
communication option generated the same return. Because such information may be
difficult to obtain, however, other models of budget allocation emphasize more
observable factors such as stage of brand life cycle, objectives and budget of the firm,
product characteristics, size of budget, and media strategy of competitors. These
factors are typically contrasted with the different characteristics of the media. For
example, marketing communication budgets tend to be higher when there is low
channel support, much change in the marketing program over time, many hard-to-
reach customers, more complex customer decision making, differentiated products
and nonhomogeneous customer needs, and frequent product purchases in small
quantities.5 Besides these efficiency considerations, different communication options
also may target different market segments. For example, advertising may attempt to
bring new customers into the market or attract competitors customers to the brand,
whereas promotions might attempt to reward loyal users of the brand. Invariably,
marketers will employ multiple communications to achieve their goals. In doing so,
they must understand how each communication option works and how to assemble
and integrate the best set of choices. The following section presents an overview and
critique of four major marketing communication options from a brand-building
perspective.

FOUR MAJOR MARKETING COMMUNICATION OPTIONS

Our contention is that in the future there will be four vital ingredients to the best brand-
building communication programs: (1) advertising and promotion, (2) interactive
marketing, (3) events and experiences, and (4) mobile marketing. We consider each
in turn.

Advertising
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Although it is a powerful means of creating
strong, favorable, and unique brand associations and eliciting positive judgments and
feelings, advertising is controversial because its specific effects are often difficult to
quantify and predict. Nevertheless, a number of studies using very different
approaches have shown the potential power of advertising on brand sales. As
Chapter 1 noted, the latest recession provided numerous examples of brands
benefiting from increased advertising expenditures. A number of prior research
studies are consistent with that view.6 Given the complexity of designing advertising
the number of strategic roles it might play, the sheer number of specific decisions to
make, and its complicated effect on consumersit is difficult to provide a
comprehensive set of detailed managerial guidelines. Different advertising media
clearly have different strengths, however, and therefore are best suited to play certain
roles in a communication program. Brand Focus 6.0 provides some empirical
generalizations about advertising. Now well highlight some key issues about each
type of advertising medium in turn.

Television.

Television is a powerful advertising medium because it allows for sight, sound, and
motion and reaches a broad spectrum of consumers. Virtually all U.S. households
have televisions, and the average hours viewed per person per week in the United
States in 2010 was 34 hours, an all-time high.7 The wide reach of TV advertising
translates to low cost per exposure.

Pros & Cons.

From a brand equity perspective, TV advertising has two particularly important

strengths. First, it can be an effective means of vividly demonstrating product
attributes and persuasively explaining their corresponding consumer benefits.
Second, TV advertising can be a compelling means for dramatically portraying user
and usage imagery, brand personality, emotions, and other brand intangibles. On the
other hand, television advertising has its drawbacks. Because of the fleeting nature of
the message and the potentially distracting creative elements often found in a TV ad,
consumers can overlook product-related messages and the brand itself. Moreover,
the large number of ads and nonprogramming material on television creates clutter
that makes it easy for consumers to ignore or forget ads. The large number of
channels creates fragmentation, and the widespread existence of digital video
recorders gives viewers the means to skip commercials. Another important
disadvantage of TV ads is the high cost of production and placement. In 2010, for
example, a 30-second spot to air during the popular American Idol on FOX ran
between $360,000 and $490,000. A 30-second spot on even a new network show
typically costs over $100,000.8 Although the price of TV advertising has skyrocketed,
the share of the prime time audience for the major networks has steadily declined. By
any number of measures, the effectiveness of any one ad, on average, has
diminished. Nevertheless, properly designed and executed TV ads can affect sales
and profits. For example, over the years, one of the most consistently successful TV
advertisers has been Apple. The 1984 ad for the introduction of its Macintosh
personal computerportraying a stark Orwellian future with a feature film lookran
only once on TV, but is one of the best-known ads ever. In the years that followed,
Apple advertising successfully created awareness and image for a series of products,
more recently with the acclaimed Get a Mac global ad campaign.

Promotion

Although they do very different things, advertising and promotion often go hand-in-
hand. Sales promotions are short-term incentives to encourage trial or usage of a
product or service.37 Marketers can target sales promotions to either the trade or end
consumers. Like advertising, sales promotions come in all forms. Whereas advertising
typically provides consumers a reason to buy, sales promotions offer consumers an
incentive to buy. Thus, sales promotions are designed to do the following: Change
the behavior of the trade so that they carry the brand and actively support it Change
the behavior of consumers so that they buy a brand for the first time, buy more of the
brand, or buy the brand earlier or more often Analysts maintain that the use of sales
promotions grew in the 1980s and 1990s for a number of reasons. Brand management
systems with quarterly evaluations were thought to encourage short-term solutions,
and an increased need for accountability seemed to favor communication tools like
promotions, whose behavioral effects are more quickly and easily observed than the
often softer perceptual effects of advertising. Economic forces worked against
advertising effectiveness as ad rates rose steadily despite what marketers saw as an
increasingly cluttered media environment and fragmented audience. Consumers were
thought to be making more in-store decisions, and to be less brand loyal and more
immune to advertising than in the past. Many mature brands were less easily
differentiated. On top of it all, retailers became more powerful. For all these reasons,
some marketers began to see consumer and trade promotions as a more effective
means than advertising to influence the sales of a brand. There clearly are advantages
to sales promotions. Consumer sales promotions permit manufacturers to price
discriminate by effectively charging different prices to groups of consumers who vary
in their price sensitivity. Besides conveying a sense of urgency to consumers, carefully
designed promotions can build brand equity through information or actual product
experience that helps to create strong, favorable, and unique associations. Sales
promotions can encourage the trade to maintain full stocks and actively support the
manufacturers merchandising efforts. On the other hand, from a consumer behavior
perspective, there are a number of disadvantages of sales promotions, such as
decreased brand loyalty and increased brand switching, decreased quality
perceptions, and increased price sensitivity. Besides inhibiting the use of franchise-
building advertising or other communications, diverting marketing funds into coupons
or other sales promotion sometimes has led to reductions in research and
development budgets and staff. Perhaps most importantly, the widespread
discounting arising from trade promotions may have led to the increased importance
of price as a factor in consumer decisions, breaking down traditional brand loyalty
patterns. Another disadvantage of sales promotions is that in some cases they may
merely subsidize buyers who would have bought the brand anyway. Interestingly, the
more affluent, educated, suburban, and ethnically Caucasian a household is, the more
likely it is to use coupons, mainly becauseits members are more likely to read
newspapers where the vast majority of coupons appear. Sales promotions also may
just subsidize coupon enthusiasts who use coupons frequently and broadly (on as
many 188 items a year and up). Eighty-one percent of the products purchased using
manufacturer coupons in the first half of 2009 came from just 19 percent of U.S.
households. One extreme couponer prides herself on the fact that she saves 4060
percent off her weekly grocery trips and even hosts a blog
(www.MoneyWiseMoms.com) to share her couponing tips.38 Another drawback to
sales promotions is that new consumers attracted to the brand may attribute their
purchase to the promotion and not to the merits of the brand per se and, as a result,
may not repeat their purchase when the promotional offer is withdrawn. Finally,
retailers have come to expect and now demand trade discounts. The trade may not
actually provide the agreedupon merchandising and take advantage of promotions by
engaging in nonproductive activities such as forward buying (stocking up for when the
promotion ends) and diversion (shipping products to areas where the promotion was
not intended to go).39 Promotions have a number of possible objectives.40 With
consumers, objectives may target new category users, existing category users, and/or
existing brand users. With the trade, objectives may center on distribution, support,
inventories, or goodwill. Next, we consider some specific issues related to consumer
and trade promotions.

Consumer Promotions

. Consumer promotions are designed to change the choices, quantity, or timing of

consumers product purchases. Although they come in all forms, we distinguish
between customer franchise building promotions like samples, demonstrations, and
educational material, and noncustomer franchise building promotions such as price-
off packs, premiums, sweepstakes, and refund offers.41 Customer franchise building
promotions can enhance the attitudes and loyalty of consumers toward a brandin
other words, affect brand equity. For example, sampling is a means of creating strong,
relevant brand associations while also perhaps kick-starting word-of-mouth among
consumers. Marketers are increasingly using sampling at the point of use, growing
more precise about where and how they deliver samples to maximize brand equity.
For a $10 monthly subscription, one new firm, Birchbox, sends consumers a box of
deluxe-size samples from such notable beauty brands as Benefit, Kiehls, and Marc
Jacobs. Members can go to the Web site to collect more information, provide
feedback, and earn points for fullsized products. The beauty brands like the selectivity
and customer involvement of the promotion.42 Thus, marketers increasingly judge
sales promotions by their ability to contribute to brand equity as well as generate sales.
Creativity is as critical to promotions as it is to advertising or any other form of
marketing communications. The El-Ezaby pharmacy chain in Egypt uses creative
promotional appeals and multiple communication channels to engage in constant
dialogue with customers in their day-to-day health care issues.

Trade Promotions.

Trade promotions are often financial incentives or discounts given to retailers,

distributors, and other channel members to stock, display, and in other ways facilitate
the sale of a product through slotting allowances, point-of-purchase displays, contests
and dealer incentives, training programs, trade shows, and cooperative advertising.
Trade promotions are typically designed either to secure shelf space and distribution
for a new brand, or to achieve more prominence on the shelf and in the store. Shelf
and aisle positions in the store are important because they affect the ability of the
brand to catch the eye of the consumerplacing a brand on a shelf at eye level may
double sales over placing it on the bottom shelf.45 Because of the large amount of
money spent on trade promotions, there is increasing pressure to make trade
promotion programs more effective. Many firms are failing to see the brand-building
value in trade promotions and are seeking to reduce and eliminate as much of their
expenditures as possible.

Online Marketing Communications

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a headlong rush by companies
into the world of interactive, online marketing communications. With the pervasive
incorporation of the Internet into everyday personal and professional lives, marketers
are scrambling to find the right places to be in cyberspace. The main advantages to
marketing on the Web are the low cost and the level of detail and degree of
customization it offers. Online marketing communications can accomplish almost any
marketing communication objective and are especially valuable in terms of solid
relationship building. Leading trade publication Advertising Ages 2010 Media
Vanguard Awards for innovative uses of technology in media planning showed the
wide range of online applications that exist. Among the winners were Martha Stewart
for her multimedia vision, Financial Times for successfully managing its free Web
site alongside its paid online product, Kmart for showcasing a series of online videos
to promote merchandising in its stores, and Allstates relaunch of its Teen Driver
Web site to better speak in teen language and use interactive games and features
to engage them. Reviewing all the guidelines for online marketing communications is
beyond the scope of this text.46 Here, well concentrate on three particularly crucial
online brand-building tools: (1) Web sites, (2) online ads and videos, and (3) social
media.

Web Sites.

One of the earliest and best-established forms of online marketing communications

for brands is company-created Web sites. By capitalizing on the Webs interactive
nature, marketers can construct Web sites that allow any type of consumer to choose
the brand information relevant to his or her needs or desires. Even though different
market segments may have different levels of knowledge and interest about a brand,
a well-designed Web site can effectively communicate to consumers regardless of
their personal brand or communications history. Because consumers often go online
to seek information rather than be entertained, some of the more successful Web
sites are those that can convey expertise in a consumer-relevant area. For example,
Web sites such as P&Gs www.pampers.com and General Millss www.cheerios.com
offer baby care and parenting advice. Web sites can store company and product
information, press releases, and advertising and promotional information as well as
links to partners and key vendors. Web marketers can collect names and addresses
for a database and conduct e-mail surveys and online focus groups. Brand-building is
increasingly a collaborative effort between consumers and brand marketers. As part
of this process, there will be many consumer-generated Web sites and pages that
may include ratings, reviews, and feedback on brands. Many consumers also post
opinions and reviews or seek advice and feedback from others at commercial sites
such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Epinions. As will be discussed in greater detail below,
marketers must carefully monitor these different forums and participate where
appropriate. In creating online information sources for consumers at company Web
sites, marketers must provide timely and reliable information. Web sites must be
updated frequently and offer as much customized information as possible, especially
for existing customers. Designing Web sites requires creating eye-catching pages that
can sustain browsers interest, employing the latest technology and effectively
communicating the brand message. Web site design is crucial, because if consumers
do not have a positive experience, it may be very difficult to entice them back in the
highly competitive and cluttered online world.

Online Ads and Videos.

Internet advertising comes in a variety of formsbanner ads, richmedia ads, and

other types of ads. Advertising on the Internet has grown rapidlyin 2010 it totaled
$26 billion in the United States, surpassing newspaper advertising ($22.8 billion) to
rank second behind TV advertising ($28.6 billion).
Events and Experiences

As important as online marketing is to brand management, events and experiences

play an equally important role. Brand building in the virtual world must be
complemented with brand building in the real or physical world. Events and
experiences range from an extravagant multimillion dollar sponsorship of a major
international event to a simple local in-store product demonstration or sampling
program. What all these different kinds of events and experiences share is that, one
way or another, the brand engages the consumers senses and imagination, changing
brand knowledge in the process.

Question No.2
How to design and implement the branding strategies?Also explain the global branding
and its strategies used globally.what are the advantages and disadvantages of global
branding?

Answer
1. Branding strategy

Branding strategy is critical because it is the means by which the firm can help consumers
understand its products and services and organize them in their minds.Two important strategic
tools: The brand-product matrix and the brand hierarchy help to characterize and formulate
branding strategies by defining various relationships among brands and products.

2. Branding Strategy or Brand Architecture

The branding strategy for a firm reflects the number and nature of common or distinctive
brand elements applied to the different products sold by the firm.Which brand elements
can be applied to which products and the nature of new and existing brand elements to
be applied to new products

3. The role of Brand Architecture

Clarify: brand awareness Improve consumer understanding and communicate similarity
and differences between individual products Motivate: brand image Maximize transfer of
equity to/from the brand to individual products to improve trial and repeat purchase

4. Brand-Product Matrix Must define: 1 2 3 4 A B C Products Brands

Brand-Product relationships (rows)Line and category extensions Product-Brand
relationships (columns)Brand portfolio71

5. Important Definitions
Product line A group pf products within a product category that are closely related
Product mix (product assortment)The set of all product lines and items that a particular
 seller makes available to buyers Brand mix (brand assortment)The set of all brand lines
that a particular seller makes available to buyers.

6. Breadth of a Branding Strategy

Breadth of product mix Aggregate market factors Category factors Environmental factors
Depth of product mix Examining the percentage of sales and profits contributed by each
item in the product line Deciding to increase the length of the product line by adding new
variants or items typically expands market coverage and therefore market share but also
increases costs.

7. Depth of a Branding Strategy

The number and nature of different brands marketed in the product class sold by a firm
Referred to as brand portfolioThe reason is to pursue different market segments, different
channels of distribution, or different geographic boundaries Maximize market coverage
and minimize brand overlap.

8. Ford Brand Portfolio

9. Designing a Brand Portfolio

Basic principles :Maximize market coverage so that no potential customers are being
ignored Minimize brand overlap so that brands arent competing among themselves to
gain the same customers approval

10. Brand Roles in the Portfolio

Flankers Cash cows Low-end entry-level High-end prestige brands.

11. Brand Hierarchy .A means of summarizing the branding strategy by displaying the
number and nature of common and distinctive brand elements across the firms products,
revealing the explicit ordering of brand elements A useful means of graphically portraying
a firms branding strategy.

12. Brand Hierarchy Tree: Toyota

CorporationToyota(SUV/vans)Toyota(Cars)ToyotaFinancialServicesToyota(Trucks)Lexus
MR2SpyderCorollaCamryAvalonCelicaECHOMatrixPriusPlatinumEditionXLXLSCE S LE
SE LEXLESESLE

13. Brand Hierarchy Levels

Corporate Brand (General Motors)Family Brand (Buick)Individual Brand (Park
Avenue)Modifier: Item or Model (Ultra).

14. Corporate Brand Equity

Occurs when relevant constituents hold strong, favorable, and unique associations about
the corporate brand in memory Encompasses a much wider range of associations than a
product brand.

15. Family Brands: Brands applied across a range of product categories.

An efficient means to link common associations to multiple but distinct products.

16. Individual Brands Restricted to essentially one product category.

There may be multiple product types offered on the basis of different models, package
sizes, flavors, etc.

17. Modifiers: .Signals refinements or differences in the brand related to factors such as
quality levels, attributes, functions, etc.Plays an important organizing role in
 communicating how different products within a category that share the same brand name
are

18. Corporate Image Dimensions

Corporate product attributes, benefits or attitudes Quality Innovativeness People and
relationships Customer orientation Values and programs Concern with the environment
Social responsibility Corporate credibility ExpertiseTrustworthiness Likability.

19. Hierarchy Decisions

The number of levels of the hierarchy to use in general How brand elements from
different levels of the hierarchy are combined, if at all, for any one particular product How
any one brand element is linked, if at all, to multiple products Desired brand awareness
and image at each level

20. Number of Hierarchy Levels

Principle of simplicity Employ as few levels as possible Principle of clarity Logic and
relationship of all brand elements employed must be obvious and transparent

21. Levels of Awareness and Associations

Principle of relevance Create global associations that are relevant across as many
individual items as possible Principle of differentiation Differentiate individual items and
brands

22. Linking Brands at Different Levels

Principle of prominence The relative prominence of brand elements affects perceptions of
product distance and the type of image created for new products

23. Linking Brands Across Products

Principle of commonality The more common elements shared by products, the stronger
the linkages

24. Brand Architecture Guidelines

Adopt a strong customer focus Avoid over-branding Establish rules and conventions and
be disciplined Create broad, robust brand platforms Selectively employ sub-brands as
means of complementing and strengthening brands Selectively extend brands to
establish new brand equity and enhance existing brand equity

25. Corporate Brand Campaign

Different objectives are possible: Build awareness of the company and the nature of its
business Create favorable attitudes and perceptions of company credibility Link beliefs
that can be leveraged by product-specific marketing Make a favorable impression on the
financial community Motivate present employees and attract better recruits influence
public opinion on issues

26. Using Cause Marketing to Build Brand Equity

The process of formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized
by an offer from the firm to contribute a specified amount to a designated cause when
customers engage in revenue-providing exchanges that satisfy organizational and
individual objectives

27. Advantages of Cause Marketing

Building brand awareness Enhancing brand image Establishing brand credibility Evoking
brand feelings Creating a sense of brand community Eliciting brand engagement
 28. Green Marketing: A special case of cause marketing that is particularly concerned with
the environment Explosion of environmentally friendly products and marketing programs.

29. Crisis Marketing Guidelines.

The two keys to effectively managing a crisis are that the firms response should be swift
and that it should be sincere.

Advantages and disadvantages of global

branding.

When a company looks to establish itself in the marketplace, it often turns to branding to help.
The concept of branding and identity is to create a look and feel immediately identifiable and
recognizable in the marketplace. Good branding can increase the value of the product and the
company itself. A companys identity in the marketplace can easily make or break its profitability
as a whole.
Advantage: Awareness

The harder a company works on its branding and identity, in most cases, the more awareness it
creates. For example, Coca-Cola is known worldwide for its product. A consumer can see it in a
foreign county, with labeling in a foreign language and know it is a Coca-Cola product. The red
color and shape of the bottle is an immediate trigger in many minds as to the fact that the drink is
a Coca-Cola product. This is branding and identity at its best.
Advantage: Consistency in the Marketplace

The more often a customer sees your brand in the marketplace, the more often he will consider it
for purchase. If the brand and identity are truly kept consistent, the customer is more likely to feel
that the quality is consistent and to become a loyal follower of the brand. However, this means
that the product must maintain a consistency that reflects the image as well.

a.Gives identity to the product

b.Makes it distinguishable from the other products.

c.Creates customer loyalty.

d.Creates and maintains organisation goodwill

Disadvantage: Can Become Commonplace

Many brands strive to be No. 1 in the minds of consumers. For example, in many parts of the
U.S., people request a Coke when they go to a restaurant, not necessarily meaning a Coca-Cola
product, but any soda. While it is the goal of branding to become the standard, it is not the goal
to become the generic term of a line of products.
Disadvantage: Negative Attributes

If a product or service experiences a negative event, that will become attached to the brand. For
example, a massive recall or unintentionally offensive ad campaign can tarnish a companys
brand and image, causing the company to need to build a whole new brand and identity to
recapture its place in the market.

a.High investment required.

b.May create negative image, if the brand fails in the market.

c.Unwillingness on part of the customers to pay extra amount for branded goods.

Question No.3
Consider a specific and unique business of your choice or develop a brand.Identify all its
branding representing something special.And describe its branding strategies.

Answer
. Uncover Your Personal Brand

Uncovering your personal brand is step one when it comes to branding yourself online.
Personal branding is not an act or a show you put on for others. Your personal brand is you
to the very core. The qualities and characteristics that comprise your personal brand are
unmistakable. If I asked ten members of your family how they would describe you, they would
describe you by using a few key words. This is what makes branding yourself so important.

To help you in this self-discovery phase, here are a few questions you are going to want to
ask yourself? Consider these questions, reflect on them and take your time in responding to
them.
a. What are my biggest strengths?

b. Where are my passion areas?

c. What makes me unique?

Once you have rolled up your sleeves and dug deep inside to find the substance that make
you uniquely you, you're halfway there. Understanding who you are is the jumping off point for
the rest of this process.

BrandYourself's tools help you

uncover your personal brand.

2. Make Your Personal Brand Targeted

Once you have discovered your personal brand: those qualities and characteristics that make
you authentic and passionate, the next step in the personal branding process is identifying
your target market. By pinpointing your target market, you will be able to position your talents
and skill-set in the best way possible, to land that dream job or close that sale or accomplish
a stated goal..

a. Determine Your Target: Who needs to know about your product or services?
Furthermore, which types of people would be interested in using your product? Of these
people, how many would be willing to shell out money for your product or service? Focus first
on those individuals and/or businesses that possess the pain points that you specifically can
resolve. Once you have identified these people, build your personal branding strategy around
this specific niche.

BrandYourself shows you who's Googling

and finding you online.

a. Identify Your Competition: Understanding your competition is absolutely essential to

your personal brand. Through understanding your competitors' core competencies, you are
better able to position your abilities to fit your audience's needs. And to take your skills even
further, you're able to do that, while differentiating yourself from your competitors. Not only are
you speaking the same language as your prospective customers, but you're providing a
compelling unique selling proposition on why they should choose you over your competitor.

b. Create a Brand Statement: Based on the above steps, create a 1-2 sentence "Brand
Statement" that encompasses who you are, what you do, and how you are different. Use these
personal brand statement tips.

3. Create a Communication Plan

Fortunately, there are dozens, if not hundreds of social profiles and online platforms where
you can promote your personal brand. In the last ten years, social media has flattened the
playing field and allows "everyday Joes" to reach their audiences, at multiple touch-points,
using hundreds of online tools. This amount of tools can become overwhelming if youre new
to the process of branding yourself. Deducing which platforms are right for you can be difficult
and time-consuming, especially considering the endless methods and platforms that are at
your disposal for reaching your target audience.

We built BrandYourself.com to walk you through each step of the process, including setting
up the most relevant social media profiles and optimizing them to make sure they show up
high when people Google your name.

BrandYourself helps you promote your

personal brand in all the right places.

4. Control Your Google Results

When your name is searched online, your name should appear in search results. Without an
online presence, or worse, a presence that is less than desirable, people you know and don't
know will likely have an inaccurate first impression of your personal brand.

If future bosses, colleagues, clients and customers are searching for you online, and you're
not showing up in the search results, you're already behind the eight ball... without even
knowing it! If what you find on Google is irrelevant or not you, then it's time you learn how to
brand yourself by improving your online reputation.

Your goal is to fill the first page of Google with as many positive results as possible. Depending
on your web history, here are the various treatment options and appropriate prescriptions.

Use BrandYourself to bury unwanted or

irrelevant results with positive ones.

1. I don't have a web presence, I have nothing that shows up when I'm Googled: The first thing
you need to do to start branding yourself is create the foundation for your online reputation
and that means creating profiles on sites that rank high in search engines.

Top sites to start with (in order of how high they rank):

Linkedin

Facebook

Twitter
 BrandYourself

Zerply

While these profiles tend to rank high on their own, it's important that you build them so that
they are optimized for search engines. This part can take a good amount of time, which is why
we created BrandYourself, a do-it-yourself platform that will walk you through the process of
creating these profiles and optimizing so they rank high.

While these profiles tend to rank high on their own, it's important that you build them so that
they are optimized for search engines. This part can take a good amount of time, which is why
we created BrandYourself, a do-it-yourself platform that will walk you through the process of
creating these profiles and optimizing so they rank high.

2. I have specific content I want to push up higher: You might already have a personal website,
a LinkedIn profile, or other content you want people to find when they search for you, but they
just aren't showing up high enough.

If this describes you, then you are going to need to learn some of the ins and outs of Search
Engine Optimization (SEO). A great place to start is Google's very own SEO starter guide.
You can also create an account on BrandYourself and submit any links you want to show up
high. Our system will automatically analyze those links and give you specific steps for boosting
them higher.

3. I have specific content I want to BURY: Perhaps you have something unflattering out there
about you, or you're also being mistaken for an ex-con. Unfortunately, you can't simply remove
a result from search engines.
 The only way to get rid of a negative result is to bury that result with positive links. Site
owners aren't required to remove it - in fact the law is on their side to keep it up. (And even if
they remove it, it's still archived by Google and it may continue to show up). Luckily, we created
BrandYourself to help people in this situation. Here are some steps you can take when you
create an account to bury something negative:

BrandYourself makes it easy to bury a negative result:

Build your BrandYourself profile. Our profile will rank high and help push your negative
result down.

Submit as many positive links as you can. The more you submit, the more you can use
to bury this result. The "My Links" section also helps you create new links easily if you need
them.

Fully boost all your positive links. We analyze your links and give you Boost Steps you
can take to make them rank higher. Make sure you complete every step so they will rank
higher than your negative result.

5. Nurture Your Network

You should consistently engage your audience via social media and provide and curate
relevant content for your audience that highlights your expertise. A blog is one of the most
effective ways for creating this type of "expert" content and branding yourself. With the right
platform you are able to disseminate this content to your audience with one click. Building a
platform such as a blog and nurturing and growing a community are rocket fuel for your
personal brand.
Personal Branding is Easier and Faster With BrandYourself

As you can see, there is a lot of work involved in understanding how to brand yourself but also
actively managing your personal branding strategy. That's why we created BrandYourself, to
make the personal branding process easier, more fun, and less time consuming.
BrandYourself is the easiest way to get positive content about you to the top of the search
results. BrandYourself serves as the hub of your personal branding efforts by building positive
content in search engines around your name. This positive content can help you bury any
unwanted or irrelevant results. BrandYourself is intuitive, simple (and free!) web-based
software.

Shazoo Crosscut perfume My personal brand

Table of Contents

Brand Your Personal Fragrances

Copyrights

Table of Contents

Introduction

The History of Perfumery

What Can Perfume Be Made From?

 The first steps in order to make your own perfume

- How to Go About Making your Own Perfume

What Supplies Do You Need and How to Get Them?

How to Make Your Own Perfume at Home

How to Create Aromatherapy Perfumes at Home

Excerpt From: "Brand Your Personal Fragrance" by sheraz Rehman.

This material may be protected by copyright.
Introduction

Why is it that women love perfume as much as men love cars? There are some
researchers who believe that a womans reason for loving perfume is because of the
pheromones their bodies produce. Often, certain scents or perfumes trigger the
increase of how much pheromone a womans body will produce.

While a perfume will help in increasing the production of a womans pheromone levels,
they are also liked by women because of the attention they get from a member of the
opposite sex or even from an-other woman.
In studies carried out, nearly 80% of all women will make a perfume purchase at least
once each year.
 Excerpt From: "Brand Your Personal Fragrance" by sheraz Rehman
This material may be protected by copyright.
we will be looking at ways of how to make your own perfume so that you can produce
a scent which is particular to you, and unlike any of those that you can buy either in
store or over the internet.
Objective Crosscut will discern new Culture contexts and insights relating to the
awareness, consideration, purchase, and consumption of fragrance. The primary
premise of this objective is to ascertain what consumer attitudes and behaviors are
shaping the Culture of fragrance, and how. We will evaluate and analyze the fragrance
market, consumer, product, and experience, in order to identify relevant and emergent
consumer tangents. This customized approach consists of TM Crosscutting , a
proprietary quantified measure of Culture in markets, layered on top of Crosscuts
strategic methodology - Evaluate, Measure, Apply - will identify alternative leading
directions for fragrance brand marketers. 3 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners,
LLC. All Rights Reserved.
5. Deliverable Crosscut will deliver a business opinion and strategic recommendations
via a comprehensive Power Point deck and presentation, including sources, findings,
insights, and implications. 4 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights
Reserved.
6. Crosscut Methodology Cut 1: Evaluate Audit of category Key Review and interrogate
Define Culture Performance Indicators: category, market, dimensions to track +
Drivers of Purchase consumer, channel, Qual research product, brand data Cut 2:
Measure Crosscutting Process Identify and correlate Extract simple outputs, Crosscuts
to category recommend direction EXTEND AND STRETCH ADOPT AND Cut 3: Apply
POSITION NEW COMMUNICATE FRAGRANCE FRAGRANCE Apply Culture to
CAGTEGORY/EQUITY RELEVANT CULTURE CULTURE INSIGHT 1 2 BEHAVIOR
3 business and revenue models as Market- Performing Culture LEVERAGE
CULTURE TO INFLUENCE REASON TO BELIEVE INCREASE CONSUMER
CATEGORY VALUE FOR PURCHASE Intelligence TARGETS DECISIONS
PROPOSITION 5 4 6 MANAGE BUSINESS AND BRAND RETURNS VIA
IMPLICATIONS 7 5 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights
Reserved.
 7. Qualitative Approach Crosscut will utilize a mix of qualitative and quantitative
research methodologies to begin to decipher where fragrance is headed, and why.
Expert Online Shopper Focus Groups Interviews Questionnaire Analysis NYC-based
focus group One-on-one interviews Comprehensive online Shop-a-long trips with
compromised of Heavy with leading questionnaire designed fragrance-involved
fragrance users, male practitioners in to test hypothesis and consumers; Store and
female. Objective: fragrance development, new learnings observations Attitudes,
Behavior, marketing, branding, regarding fragrance Perception, Usage trade, and
academia insights and exploratory areas 6 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners,
LLC. All Rights Reserved.
8. Quantitative Approach - Crosscutting TM Crosscut will poll approximately 50-100
consumers to identify what dimensions of Culture for fragrance are most relevant
today, and what will motivate them to seek new fragrance experiences tomorrow.
Commerce Culture AUTOMO BEER & CNSMER CELEBRITY CULINARY CURRENT
TIVE SPIRITS ELCTRONCS CPG DIGITAL INFLUENCE HABITS EVENTS DESIGN
DIVERSITY ENTERTAI ENVIRON FINANCIAL FOOD & HEALTH ENVIRO
ENTERTAIN FAITH FAMILY FASHION NMENT MENT SRVCES BEVERAGE CARE
NMENT MENT HOSPIT MEDIA & QSR & SOCIAL X GAMING & HEALTH & INNOV
INTOXI CAS RETAIL ATION LANGUAGE ALITY PUBLSHNG MEDIA HOBBY
FITNESS CANTS DINING TECHN TRAVEL & MUSIC ROLE SPORTS TELECOM
WIRELESS MEDIA SEXUALITY SUCCESS OLOGY LEISURE TASTE MODEL 7
2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
9. Culture Hypothesis While Crosscut views the category of Fragrance within
Consumer Packaged Goods, determining which Culture dimensions most influence
consumption is more difficult. Our hypothesis are the following dimensions may be
drivers Culture CELEBRITY CULINARY CURRENT DESIGN DIVERSITY
INFLUENCE HABITS EVENTS ENVIRO ENTERTAIN FAITH FAMILY FASHION
NMENT MENT GAMING & HEALTH & INNOV INTOXI ATION LANGUAGE HOBBY
FITNESS CANTS MUSIC ROLE MEDIA SEXUALITY SUCCESS TASTE MODEL 8
2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
10. Areas of exploration Brand awareness and trial Brand image and fragrance
attributes Consumer demographics Consumer usage behavior Sales channel
mix Seasonality, gifting, ancillary Innovation Adult, teen shopping incidence by
 retail format Product merchandising Advertising and communication
Adjacencies and other factors Gender perceptions Aroma and scent profiles 9
2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
11. Key consumer variables to examine Adoption Affinity Awareness Esteem
Loyalty Persuasion Preference Purchase Recall Respect Retention
Trust Value 10 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
12. Timeline Crosscut can fulfill this proposed research scheme in 30 working days:
W/O April 26, 2009: In field collecting data (qualitative) W/O May 3, 2009:
Crosscutting (quantitative) W/O May 10, 2009: Client interim briefing and status
W/O May 17, 2009: Further strategic refinement and development May 21, 2009:
Client presentation 11 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights
Reserved.
13. Benefits to SelectNY The benefits of a Crosscut engagement to explore the
fragrance marketplace accrue to SelectNY as follows: Leverage Culture to
understand fragrance market dynamics Discover what is driving purchase in
fragrance consumption Identify emerging trends in fragrance and consumer
behavior Modify and refine existing strategic decisions and tactics Optimize future
product launches, communications and strategies Develop competitive mitigation
strategies and plans 12 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights
Reserved.
14. Pricing & Terms $XX,XXX Assumes all direct and indirect costs and fee 50%
of total due in the first working week (five days from agreement) Net 15 days for
balance due 13 2009-2010, Crosscut Advisory Partners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
15. Thank you.

My branding strategies

1.) Define Your Brand

The first stage in brand building is defining your brand. This is a very critical step as it ultimately
determines what your brand truly stands for. When defining your business brand, you should
create a checklist of its core strengths. Similarly, if youre defining a personal brand, you should
look at the skills and expertise that you possess especially those which stand out. On the same
token, you also need to know what your brand stands for and what is important for your brand
(brand values). Your values should in one way or another show that you are contributing to
environmental, social, and economic well-being of consumers. You may not realize some of
these important aspects of brand building immediately, until you look at them objectively.
2.) Differentiate and Position Your Brand
Before embarking on brand building, you have to take time to differentiate it so that you
can attract attention and stand out from competitors. To differentiate your brand, you have to
create a unique advantage in the mind of consumers not merely getting attention by brand
building colors or logos or other superficial elements. Once you come up with a unique value
proposition, you should use a good branding strategy to position your brand in a way that will
help consumers see and appreciate the greater value of your brand over competing ones in the
market.

3) Build and Expose your Brand

As I indicated earlier, brand building is not a one off thing. Building a unique and powerful
personal or business brand takes time and consistency. To build your personal brand, you
have to keep reinforcing your values and skills by taking up new roles and assignments that will
give you more exposure. Alternatively, you can use promotional channels, blogs, forums,
and social media (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook) to create a voice for your personal or
business brand.

When building your brand, you should also endeavor to develop brand personality (what people
know, think, and say about you). This is what drives or motivates people to identify with and
engage with your brand. The truth is; if you execute your brand building strategies consistently,
then you will easily establish a pattern that will forever be associated with your brand name.

4.) Personalize your Brand

If you want your brand building campaign or brand to be successful, then you have to
personalize it. It is important to give your brand an identity. Let consumers see and experience
the personality of your brand in its entirety. Look at your brand as something that a consumer
wants to identify with pretty much as they would with their favorite cars, cellphones, or
computers.

As you engage in brand building, you should also invite customers to be co-creators of brand
values so that they can feel that they also own it and relate with it. Top brands encourage
consumer-brand interaction by personalizing products to meet the needs and preferences of
consumers. When you personalize your brand, you give consumers reason to participate and
engage with your brand for a lifetime.

5.) Review Your Brand

Your brand is not static; it will go through a range of motions in its lifetime. Depending on your
brand strategies, your brand will either grow in strength, or remain dormant, or recede with time.
In the brand cycle, new events, changes, and circumstances bring challenges and opportunities
to enhance the value of your brand or re-establish it. All these possibilities should give you the
impetus to take charge of your brand building activities.

As your brand name grows, so do the responsibilities and expectations to continue with brand
building. The best way of ensuring brand growth is reviewing your activities and evaluating your
successes through metrics such as levels of brand awareness and levels of engagements.
Regular reviews will help you seize and exploit new opportunities while upholding your
commitment to remain true to your vision and brand strategy. It will also help you steer your
brand in the right direction and keep it relevant as you move into the future.

Question No.4
Describe the nature of your brand with reason,its target market,its speciality 4 ps and
elaborate your customer mindset.

Answer.

Nature of my brand

1-The Brand Promise

At its core, a brand is a promise to consumers. What will consumers get when they purchase
a product or service under your brand umbrella? The brand promise incorporates more than
just those tangible products and services. It also includes the feelings that consumers get
when they use your products and services.

Example: Think about your favorite brand and what that brand promises to you. If youre a
Nike fan, the brand might represent athleticism, performance, strength, good health, and fun.
Your brand promises something to consumers. What is it?

2. The Brand Perceptions

Brands are built by consumers, not companies. Ultimately, its the way consumers perceive a
brand that defines it. It doesnt matter what you think your brand promises. The only thing that
matters is how consumers perceive your brand. You need to work to develop consumer
perceptions that accurately reflect your brand, or your brand is doomed to limited growth
potential.

Example: What are consumers perceptions of Lady Gaga? You can bet everything she does
is meant to create specific consumer perceptions.

3. The Brand Expectations

Based on your brand promise, consumers develop expectations for your brand. When they
pull their hard-earned money out of their pockets and purchase your products or services, they
assume their expectations for your brand will be met. If your brand doesnt meet consumer
expectations in every interaction, consumers will become confused by your brand and turn
away from it in search of another brand that does meet their expectations in every interaction.

Example: Imagine Rolls Royce launched a $10,000 car. To say the least, consumers would
be extremely confused because such a product doesnt meet their expectations for a luxury
brand.

4. The Brand Persona

Rather than asking, What is a brand? a better question might be, Who is a brand? Every
brand has a persona. Think of your brand as a person. What is that person like? What can
you expect when you interact with that person? From appearance to personality and
everything in between, your brand persona is one that consumers will evaluate and judge
before they do business with you.

Example: Think of it this way. Who would you rather spend time with Apple or Microsoft?
These two brands have very different brand personas. Your brand should have one, too.

5. The Brand Elements

Your brand is represented by the intangible elements described above as well as tangible
elements such as your brand logo, messaging, packaging, and so on. All of these elements
must work together to consistently communicate your brand promise, shape brand
perceptions, meet brand expectations, and define your brand persona. If one element is awry,
your entire brand can suffer. Remember what happened with the new Gap logo last year?
Dont make the same mistakes!

Example: There is a reason why that blue Tiffanys box has been around for so long. It means
something to consumers.

Bottom-line, a brand is clear, reliable, and believable to both your consumers and your
employees. However, brands arent built overnight. Before you can define and live your brand,
you need to do some research so you dont waste time taking your brand in a direction that
wont allow you to reach your goals. You must understand your competitors and audience, so
you can develop a brand that promises the right things to the right people. Research should
be first, definition, strategy, and execution should follow, and in time, your brand will grow.

Target market of shazoo crosscut perfume

1. Task: Advertising- Target Audience Profile Why is target audience important? Can I create
a target audience profile? What information do I need to include?

2. Planning your target audience Target Female Audience16-25year olds

3. Planning your product Female Circle bottle Slogan USP Musty pink, cream, browns
(expensive Target Product colours) Audience Older Emotion Young teenagers adults (16-19
(20-25) Sheer sweet Lust in love Name Brand

4. Target audience Profile You need to create a made-up person who typically reflects your
chosen target audience and would wear your product. You need to include: name, age, sex,
where they live, financial status, type of job, level of education, interests and hobbies. The
more detailed, the better! You have to choose an image from Google to suit your description
and would reflect your typical target audience.

5. What do I need to cover? Image Name /Sex /Age Financial status?/Where do they live?
Type of Job/ Hobbies/interests Level of Education

6. Conclusion End of todays lesson Plan your profile What image will you use? What
gender will you choose? What important information do you include? What desires might the
target audience have about themselves or their lives?

7. FINISHLINE Save your Target Audience Profile in your Media folder entitled Advertising.

4 ps of perfumery
We are all aware of the four Ps of Marketing mainly Product, Packaging, Price and
Promotion. While for a brand to be a success, the above 4 Ps are essential, so also
for a Perfume to be a success, the 4 Ps of Perfumery need to be there with any
perfume creation. The four Ps are:
1. Passion

2. Possessiveness

3. Perseverance

4. Presentation

Let us look at each of them in detail.

1. Passion : As is true for any art, passion is very important for creation of a perfume.
The people involved in the making of a perfume must be passionate about the whole
idea of creating a winning theme. This involves Perfumers,
Evaluators, Marketing team & Sales team who have to share the same passion and
excitement in the creation of each and every perfume. While each person has a
specific role to play, their common goal should be to bring out a classic perfume. For
this each one has to share the same passion and goal to achieve success.

2. Possessiveness : It is extremely important that the people involved in the making

of a perfume be possessive about it. Here, by possessiveness I mean that each
person in this process should love the perfume like his or her own child. Just like
parents do everything they can to help their child become a star, so also the
perfumery team should do all it can to create a great and unique perfume each and
every time. Nevertheless, being possessive does not mean that the team should not
be open to suggestions and improvisations.

3. Perseverance : Perseverance is what I call the constant urge to keep improving and
innovating what is already done. It is easy to make a perfume but to make it a winner
requires constant improvisation. The perfumer and the evaluator should keep
checking various options or what we call various blends to see which one has the
potential to make it to the top. Just making a good perfume is only half the job done.
To make it better than the rest and to make a mark requires extra effort which the
creative team should not overlook.

4. Presentation : Last but not the least, presentation of the perfume is equally
important. The ingredients used in making a perfume are more or less the same. But
the way it is presented makes all the difference. Like in music where the 7 notes
arranged in various combinations makes for different music, so also the arrangement
of the ingredients is what makes each perfume different. All perfumes use the same
floral, fruity, woody, musky, sweet descriptions but it is the presentation of these
various notes that make one a winner and the other the loser.

Having been associated with the perfume business for more than a decade and a
half, I sense that it is the four Ps of Perfumery that make a few perfumes
Question No.5
Position your brand in market and explain positioning strategies used in positioning also
develop the effective marketing communications to create your brand equity and value
chain.

Answer.
Positioning my brand

Brand positioning refers to target consumers reason to buy your brand in preference to
others. It is ensures that all brand activity has a common aim; is guided, directed and delivered by the
brands benefits/reasons to buy; and it focusses at all points of contact with the consumer.

Brand positioning must make sure that:

Is it unique/distinctive vs. competitors ?

Is it significant and encouraging to the niche market ?
Is it appropriate to all major geographic markets and businesses ?
Is the proposition validated with unique, appropriate and original products ?
Is it sustainable - can it be delivered constantly across all points of contact with the consumer
?
Is it helpful for organization to achieve its financial goals ?
Is it able to support and boost up the organization ?

In order to create a distinctive place in the market, a niche market has to be carefully chosen and a
differential advantage must be created in their mind. Brand positioning is a medium through which an
organization can portray its customers what it wants to achieve for them and what it wants to mean to
them. Brand positioning forms customers views and opinions.

Brand Positioning can be defined as an activity of creating a brand offer in such a manner that it
occupies a distinctive place and value in the target customers mind. For instance-Kotak Mahindra
positions itself in the customers mind as one entity- Kotak - which can provide customized and one-
stop solution for all their financial services needs. It has an unaided top of mind recall. It intends to
stay with the proposition of Think Investments, Think Kotak. The positioning you choose for your
brand will be influenced by the competitive stance you want to adopt.

Brand Positioning involves identifying and determining points of similarity and difference to ascertain
the right brand identity and to create a proper brand image. Brand Positioning is the key of marketing
strategy. A strong brand positioning directs marketing strategy by explaining the brand details, the
uniqueness of brand and its similarity with the competitive brands, as well as the reasons for buying
and using that specific brand. Positioning is the base for developing and increasing the required
knowledge and perceptions of the customers. It is the single feature that sets your service apart from
your competitors. For instance- Kingfisher stands for youth and excitement. It represents brand in full
flight.

There are various positioning errors, such as-

1. Under positioning- This is a scenario in which the customers have a blurred and unclear
idea of the brand.
2. Over positioning- This is a scenario in which the customers have too limited a awareness of
the brand.
3. Confused positioning- This is a scenario in which the customers have a confused opinion of
the brand.
4. Double Positioning- This is a scenario in which customers do not accept the claims of a
brand

5. Positioning is the space your brand occupies in the brains of your customers. It makes
customers view your product in a unique way and makes it stand out from the
competition. It is the reason why the customers buy your product.
6. Brand positioning is an act of designing the companys offering and image to occupy
a distinct place in the mind of the target market. Philip Kotler.Positioning creates a
bond between the customer and the business. Its that friend of the customer wholl
always stay in their subconscious mind and will make them recall about the company
whenever they hear about the any of its product or a particular feature which makes it
stand out.
7. Examples of Brand Positioning
8. Colgate is positioned as protective.
9. Patanjali can be trusted as it is fully organic.
10. Woodland is tough and perfect for outdoors.
11. Coca Cola brings happiness.
12. Axe deodorants have a sexual appeal.
13.
14. Positioning: Characteristics, Types, Examples & Ideas
15. Relevant
16. The positioning strategy you decide should be relevant according to the customer. If
he finds the positioning irrelevant while making the purchase decision, youre at loss.
17. Clear
18. Your message should be clear and easy to communicate. E.g. Rich taste and aroma
you wont forget for a coffee product gives out a clear image and can position your
coffee brand differently from competitors.
19. Unique
20. A strong brand positioning means you have a unique credible and sustainable position
in the customers mind. It should be unique or its of no use.
21. Desirable
22. The unique feature should be desirable and should be able to become a factor which
the customer evaluate before buying a product.
23. Deliverable
24. The promise should have the ability to be delivered. False promises lead to negative
brand equity.
25. Points of difference
26. The customer should be able to tell the difference between your and your competitors
brand.
27.
28. Recognizable Feature
29. The unique feature should be recognizable by the customer. This includes keeping
your positioning simple, and in a language which is understood by the customer.
30. Validated by the Customer
31. Your positioning strategy isnt successful until the time it is validated by the customer.
He is the one to decide whether you stand out or not. Hence, try to be in his shoes
while deciding your strategy..
32.
33. Types of Positioning
34. A positioning strategy depends on many factors which include current market
conditions, your product, USP of your product, competitors, their products and the
USPs of their products. Marketers plan of how they want their product to be seen by
the customers in future also plays a vital role in deciding which type of positioning
strategy to choose.
35. While there are numerous position strategies in marketing to choose from. The task
for the marketers is to complement their promise to the product features they have to
offer.
36. Lifestyle Positioning
37. By positioning itself as a lifestyle brand, a brand tries to sell an image and identity
rather than the product. The main focus is to associate the brand with a lifestyle and
focus is more on the aspirational value than the product value. Cigarette, Alcohol, and
Tabacco companies are often seen to use lifestyle positioning while marketing their
products.

Positioning strategies
Positioning is the space your brand occupies in the brains of your customers. It makes
customers view your product in a unique way and makes it stand out from the
competition. It is the reason why the customers buy your product.

Brand positioning is an act of designing the companys offering and image to occupy
a distinct place in the mind of the target market. Philip Kotler.Positioning creates a
bond between the customer and the business. Its that friend of the customer wholl
always stay in their subconscious mind and will make them recall about the company
whenever they hear about the any of its product or a particular feature which makes it
stand out.

Examples of Brand Positioning

Colgate is positioned as protective.

Patanjali can be trusted as it is fully organic.

Woodland is tough and perfect for outdoors.

Coca Cola brings happiness.

Axe deodorants have a sexual appeal.

Positioning: Characteristics, Types, Examples & Ideas

Relevant

The positioning strategy you decide should be relevant according to the customer. If
he finds the positioning irrelevant while making the purchase decision, youre at loss.

Clear

Your message should be clear and easy to communicate. E.g. Rich taste and aroma
you wont forget for a coffee product gives out a clear image and can position your
coffee brand differently from competitors.
Unique

A strong brand positioning means you have a unique credible and sustainable position
in the customers mind. It should be unique or its of no use.

Desirable

The unique feature should be desirable and should be able to become a factor which
the customer evaluate before buying a product.

Deliverable

The promise should have the ability to be delivered. False promises lead to negative
brand equity.

Points of difference

The customer should be able to tell the difference between your and your competitors
brand.

Recognizable Feature

The unique feature should be recognizable by the customer. This includes keeping
your positioning simple, and in a language which is understood by the customer.

Validated by the Customer

Your positioning strategy isnt successful until the time it is validated by the customer.
He is the one to decide whether you stand out or not. Hence, try to be in his shoes
while deciding your strategy..

Types of Positioning
 A positioning strategy depends on many factors which include current market
conditions, your product, USP of your product, competitors, their products and the
USPs of their products. Marketers plan of how they want their product to be seen by
the customers in future also plays a vital role in deciding which type of positioning
strategy to choose.

While there are numerous position strategies in marketing to choose from. The task
for the marketers is to complement their promise to the product features they have to
offer.

Lifestyle Positioning

By positioning itself as a lifestyle brand, a brand tries to sell an image and identity
rather than the product. The main focus is to associate the brand with a lifestyle and
focus is more on the aspirational value than the product value. Cigarette, Alcohol, and
Tabacco companies are often seen to use lifestyle positioning while marketing their
products.

8 Strategies for Maximizing Brand Equity

Brand managers are responsible for implementing strategies that increase brand
equity, without damaging the brands reputation or long-term profitability. This is done
by focusing on the following 8 factors.

1.Brand strategy
Creating a brand that is recognized and respected is difficult. However, some
characteristics make successful branding feasible. At a minimum, a branded product
must be easy to label and identify. The brand should display consistent quality and
represent good value. It should also be easily available for purchase and meet legal
and ethical standards. To be profitable, a brand should also have an adequate life
cycle and demand. Developing successful branding strategies requires excellent
communications, planning, and coordination among all levels of manufacturing,
distribution and sales.
2.Communication
Brand equity cannot be achieved without a powerful communications strategy. Todays
multicultural marketplace further complicates matters and demands that
communication be multilingual, culturally sensitive, online and mobile. Working with
an established translation services company is necessary to ensure accurate and
professional communication across all markets. Marketing communications isnt the
only area where strong communication strategies are necessary. Brands also need
strong communicators to attract financiers, resolve legal matters, and direct cross-
functional groups.

3.Awareness
A brand may offer a strategic competitive advantage and address unmet needs, but
unless marketing research shows strong sales projections, none of that matters if
consumers arent aware of it. Brand awareness means that consumers can remember
a brand. Not always easy to achieve, nevertheless this makes a huge difference when
there are many competing products. In addition to traditional means of advertising and
promotion, brand managers must include social media and content marketing.

4.Reputation
In todays, Internet-based economy, a companys reputation can be built or destroyed
in minutes. Many factors can influence a firms reputation. When companies engage
in questionable conduct, they can damage their reputation and destroy customer trust.
But reputation can also be damaged by unreasonable clients who lodge unfair
complaints online and in social media. To protect your brands reputation, enlist a
skilled communicator who will respond quickly and professionally to customer
questions and negative publicity. A poorly communicated response will make matters
worse and damage a brands reputation.

5.Legal and ethical decision-making

Companies are expected to make legal and ethical decisions. When customers,
consumer protection groups, or businesses become upset over unfair practices, they
may call for lawmakers to legislate and regulate the unethical behavior. Legal and
ethical choices are a fundamental aspect of brand equity. Brands that operate legally
and ethically help build trust and long-term relationships.

6.Collaboration
Effective branding relies on productive collaboration and teamwork strategies.
Collaboration is the driving force that brings together people from diverse fields and
specialties to solve complex branding problems. Online collaboration tools make it
possible for people around the world to come together quickly and effectively in real
time to create marketing collateral, resolve technical questions, develop products,
conduct financial analyses and resolve legal matters.

7.Value
Branding is also about managing profitable customer relationships. To achieve such
relationships, a brand manager must attract new customers by promising superior
value and retain existing customers by delivering satisfaction. Brands that offer
superior value can benefit in numerous ways. Because distributors and retailers want
to carry brands that offer value, gaining distribution becomes simplified. Brands with
more highly perceived value command premium pricing, better margins, and wider
distribution.

8.Emotional Capital
Emotional capital is the adhesive that attracts consumers to a brand. Strong brands
retain customers through economic downturns, job changes, and other life challenges.
Emotional capital converts a consumer into a loyal brand advocate who gives positive
testimonials and word-of-mouth advertising. These customers commit to a brand and
remain loyal to it.

Role of Multiple Communications

How much and what kinds of marketing communications are necessary? Economic
theory suggests placing dollars into a marketing communication budget and across
communication options according to marginal revenue and cost. For example, the
communication mix would be optimally distributed when the last dollar spent on each
communication option generated the same return. Because such information may be
difficult to obtain, however, other models of budget allocation emphasize more
observable factors such as stage of brand life cycle, objectives and budget of the firm,
product characteristics, size of budget, and media strategy of competitors. These
factors are typically contrasted with the different characteristics of the media. For
example, marketing communication budgets tend to be higher when there is low
channel support, much change in the marketing program over time, many hard-to-
reach customers, more complex customer decision making, differentiated products
and nonhomogeneous customer needs, and frequent product purchases in small
quantities.5 Besides these efficiency considerations, different communication options
also may target different market segments. For example, advertising may attempt to
bring new customers into the market or attract competitors customers to the brand,
whereas promotions might attempt to reward loyal users of the brand. Invariably,
marketers will employ multiple communications to achieve their goals. In doing so,
they must understand how each communication option works and how to assemble
and integrate the best set of choices. The following section presents an overview and
critique of four major marketing communication options from a brand-building
perspective.

FOUR MAJOR MARKETING COMMUNICATION OPTIONS

Our contention is that in the future there will be four vital ingredients to the best brand-
building communication programs: (1) advertising and promotion, (2) interactive
marketing, (3) events and experiences, and (4) mobile marketing. We consider each
in turn.

Advertising
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Although it is a powerful means of creating
strong, favorable, and unique brand associations and eliciting positive judgments and
feelings, advertising is controversial because its specific effects are often difficult to
quantify and predict. Nevertheless, a number of studies using very different
approaches have shown the potential power of advertising on brand sales. As
Chapter 1 noted, the latest recession provided numerous examples of brands
benefiting from increased advertising expenditures. A number of prior research
studies are consistent with that view.6 Given the complexity of designing advertising
the number of strategic roles it might play, the sheer number of specific decisions to
make, and its complicated effect on consumersit is difficult to provide a
comprehensive set of detailed managerial guidelines. Different advertising media
clearly have different strengths, however, and therefore are best suited to play certain
roles in a communication program. Brand Focus 6.0 provides some empirical
generalizations about advertising. Now well highlight some key issues about each
type of advertising medium in turn.

Television.

Television is a powerful advertising medium because it allows for sight, sound, and
motion and reaches a broad spectrum of consumers. Virtually all U.S. households
have televisions, and the average hours viewed per person per week in the United
States in 2010 was 34 hours, an all-time high.7 The wide reach of TV advertising
translates to low cost per exposure.

Pros & Cons.

From a brand equity perspective, TV advertising has two particularly important

strengths. First, it can be an effective means of vividly demonstrating product
attributes and persuasively explaining their corresponding consumer benefits.
Second, TV advertising can be a compelling means for dramatically portraying user
and usage imagery, brand personality, emotions, and other brand intangibles. On the
other hand, television advertising has its drawbacks. Because of the fleeting nature of
the message and the potentially distracting creative elements often found in a TV ad,
consumers can overlook product-related messages and the brand itself. Moreover,
the large number of ads and nonprogramming material on television creates clutter
that makes it easy for consumers to ignore or forget ads. The large number of
channels creates fragmentation, and the widespread existence of digital video
recorders gives viewers the means to skip commercials. Another important
disadvantage of TV ads is the high cost of production and placement. In 2010, for
example, a 30-second spot to air during the popular American Idol on FOX ran
between $360,000 and $490,000. A 30-second spot on even a new network show
typically costs over $100,000.8 Although the price of TV advertising has skyrocketed,
the share of the prime time audience for the major networks has steadily declined. By
any number of measures, the effectiveness of any one ad, on average, has
diminished. Nevertheless, properly designed and executed TV ads can affect sales
and profits. For example, over the years, one of the most consistently successful TV
advertisers has been Apple. The 1984 ad for the introduction of its Macintosh
personal computerportraying a stark Orwellian future with a feature film lookran
only once on TV, but is one of the best-known ads ever. In the years that followed,
Apple advertising successfully created awareness and image for a series of products,
more recently with the acclaimed Get a Mac global ad campaign.

Promotion

Although they do very different things, advertising and promotion often go hand-in-
hand. Sales promotions are short-term incentives to encourage trial or usage of a
product or service.37 Marketers can target sales promotions to either the trade or end
consumers. Like advertising, sales promotions come in all forms. Whereas advertising
typically provides consumers a reason to buy, sales promotions offer consumers an
incentive to buy. Thus, sales promotions are designed to do the following: Change
the behavior of the trade so that they carry the brand and actively support it Change
the behavior of consumers so that they buy a brand for the first time, buy more of the
brand, or buy the brand earlier or more often Analysts maintain that the use of sales
promotions grew in the 1980s and 1990s for a number of reasons. Brand management
systems with quarterly evaluations were thought to encourage short-term solutions,
and an increased need for accountability seemed to favor communication tools like
promotions, whose behavioral effects are more quickly and easily observed than the
often softer perceptual effects of advertising. Economic forces worked against
advertising effectiveness as ad rates rose steadily despite what marketers saw as an
increasingly cluttered media environment and fragmented audience. Consumers were
thought to be making more in-store decisions, and to be less brand loyal and more
immune to advertising than in the past. Many mature brands were less easily
differentiated. On top of it all, retailers became more powerful. For all these reasons,
some marketers began to see consumer and trade promotions as a more effective
means than advertising to influence the sales of a brand. There clearly are advantages
to sales promotions. Consumer sales promotions permit manufacturers to price
discriminate by effectively charging different prices to groups of consumers who vary
in their price sensitivity. Besides conveying a sense of urgency to consumers, carefully
designed promotions can build brand equity through information or actual product
experience that helps to create strong, favorable, and unique associations. Sales
promotions can encourage the trade to maintain full stocks and actively support the
manufacturers merchandising efforts. On the other hand, from a consumer behavior
perspective, there are a number of disadvantages of sales promotions, such as
decreased brand loyalty and increased brand switching, decreased quality
perceptions, and increased price sensitivity. Besides inhibiting the use of franchise-
building advertising or other communications, diverting marketing funds into coupons
or other sales promotion sometimes has led to reductions in research and
development budgets and staff. Perhaps most importantly, the widespread
discounting arising from trade promotions may have led to the increased importance
of price as a factor in consumer decisions, breaking down traditional brand loyalty
patterns. Another disadvantage of sales promotions is that in some cases they may
merely subsidize buyers who would have bought the brand anyway. Interestingly, the
more affluent, educated, suburban, and ethnically Caucasian a household is, the more
likely it is to use coupons, mainly becauseits members are more likely to read
newspapers where the vast majority of coupons appear. Sales promotions also may
just subsidize coupon enthusiasts who use coupons frequently and broadly (on as
many 188 items a year and up). Eighty-one percent of the products purchased using
manufacturer coupons in the first half of 2009 came from just 19 percent of U.S.
households. One extreme couponer prides herself on the fact that she saves 4060
percent off her weekly grocery trips and even hosts a blog
(www.MoneyWiseMoms.com) to share her couponing tips.38 Another drawback to
sales promotions is that new consumers attracted to the brand may attribute their
purchase to the promotion and not to the merits of the brand per se and, as a result,
may not repeat their purchase when the promotional offer is withdrawn. Finally,
retailers have come to expect and now demand trade discounts. The trade may not
actually provide the agreedupon merchandising and take advantage of promotions by
engaging in nonproductive activities such as forward buying (stocking up for when the
promotion ends) and diversion (shipping products to areas where the promotion was
not intended to go).39 Promotions have a number of possible objectives.40 With
consumers, objectives may target new category users, existing category users, and/or
existing brand users. With the trade, objectives may center on distribution, support,
inventories, or goodwill. Next, we consider some specific issues related to consumer
and trade promotions.

Consumer Promotions

. Consumer promotions are designed to change the choices, quantity, or timing of

consumers product purchases. Although they come in all forms, we distinguish
between customer franchise building promotions like samples, demonstrations, and
educational material, and noncustomer franchise building promotions such as price-
off packs, premiums, sweepstakes, and refund offers.41 Customer franchise building
promotions can enhance the attitudes and loyalty of consumers toward a brandin
other words, affect brand equity. For example, sampling is a means of creating strong,
relevant brand associations while also perhaps kick-starting word-of-mouth among
consumers. Marketers are increasingly using sampling at the point of use, growing
more precise about where and how they deliver samples to maximize brand equity.
For a $10 monthly subscription, one new firm, Birchbox, sends consumers a box of
deluxe-size samples from such notable beauty brands as Benefit, Kiehls, and Marc
Jacobs. Members can go to the Web site to collect more information, provide
feedback, and earn points for fullsized products. The beauty brands like the selectivity
and customer involvement of the promotion.42 Thus, marketers increasingly judge
sales promotions by their ability to contribute to brand equity as well as generate sales.
Creativity is as critical to promotions as it is to advertising or any other form of
marketing communications. The El-Ezaby pharmacy chain in Egypt uses creative
promotional appeals and multiple communication channels to engage in constant
dialogue with customers in their day-to-day health care issues.

Trade Promotions.

Trade promotions are often financial incentives or discounts given to retailers,

distributors, and other channel members to stock, display, and in other ways facilitate
the sale of a product through slotting allowances, point-of-purchase displays, contests
and dealer incentives, training programs, trade shows, and cooperative advertising.
Trade promotions are typically designed either to secure shelf space and distribution
for a new brand, or to achieve more prominence on the shelf and in the store. Shelf
and aisle positions in the store are important because they affect the ability of the
brand to catch the eye of the consumerplacing a brand on a shelf at eye level may
double sales over placing it on the bottom shelf.45 Because of the large amount of
money spent on trade promotions, there is increasing pressure to make trade
promotion programs more effective. Many firms are failing to see the brand-building
value in trade promotions and are seeking to reduce and eliminate as much of their
expenditures as possible.

Online Marketing Communications

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a headlong rush by companies
into the world of interactive, online marketing communications. With the pervasive
incorporation of the Internet into everyday personal and professional lives, marketers
are scrambling to find the right places to be in cyberspace. The main advantages to
marketing on the Web are the low cost and the level of detail and degree of
customization it offers. Online marketing communications can accomplish almost any
marketing communication objective and are especially valuable in terms of solid
relationship building. Leading trade publication Advertising Ages 2010 Media
Vanguard Awards for innovative uses of technology in media planning showed the
wide range of online applications that exist. Among the winners were Martha Stewart
for her multimedia vision, Financial Times for successfully managing its free Web
site alongside its paid online product, Kmart for showcasing a series of online videos
to promote merchandising in its stores, and Allstates relaunch of its Teen Driver
Web site to better speak in teen language and use interactive games and features
to engage them. Reviewing all the guidelines for online marketing communications is
beyond the scope of this text.46 Here, well concentrate on three particularly crucial
online brand-building tools: (1) Web sites, (2) online ads and videos, and (3) social
media.

Web Sites.

One of the earliest and best-established forms of online marketing communications

for brands is company-created Web sites. By capitalizing on the Webs interactive
nature, marketers can construct Web sites that allow any type of consumer to choose
the brand information relevant to his or her needs or desires. Even though different
market segments may have different levels of knowledge and interest about a brand,
a well-designed Web site can effectively communicate to consumers regardless of
their personal brand or communications history. Because consumers often go online
to seek information rather than be entertained, some of the more successful Web
sites are those that can convey expertise in a consumer-relevant area. For example,
Web sites such as P&Gs www.pampers.com and General Millss www.cheerios.com
offer baby care and parenting advice. Web sites can store company and product
information, press releases, and advertising and promotional information as well as
links to partners and key vendors. Web marketers can collect names and addresses
for a database and conduct e-mail surveys and online focus groups. Brand-building is
increasingly a collaborative effort between consumers and brand marketers. As part
of this process, there will be many consumer-generated Web sites and pages that
may include ratings, reviews, and feedback on brands. Many consumers also post
opinions and reviews or seek advice and feedback from others at commercial sites
such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Epinions. As will be discussed in greater detail below,
marketers must carefully monitor these different forums and participate where
appropriate. In creating online information sources for consumers at company Web
sites, marketers must provide timely and reliable information. Web sites must be
updated frequently and offer as much customized information as possible, especially
for existing customers. Designing Web sites requires creating eye-catching pages that
can sustain browsers interest, employing the latest technology and effectively
communicating the brand message. Web site design is crucial, because if consumers
do not have a positive experience, it may be very difficult to entice them back in the
highly competitive and cluttered online world.

Online Ads and Videos.

Internet advertising comes in a variety of formsbanner ads, richmedia ads, and

other types of ads. Advertising on the Internet has grown rapidlyin 2010 it totaled
$26 billion in the United States, surpassing newspaper advertising ($22.8 billion) to
rank second behind TV advertising ($28.6 billion).
Events and Experiences

As important as online marketing is to brand management, events and experiences

play an equally important role. Brand building in the virtual world must be
complemented with brand building in the real or physical world. Events and
experiences range from an extravagant multimillion dollar sponsorship of a major
international event to a simple local in-store product demonstration or sampling
program. What all these different kinds of events and experiences share is that, one
way or another, the brand engages the consumers senses and imagination, changing
brand knowledge in the process.

My Brand Value chain

Brand value chain is a structured approach to assessing the sources and outcomes of
brand equity and the manner by which marketing activities create brand value. It
provides insights to support the various decision makers in the company and stresses
that every member of the company contribute to this branding effort. It believes that
the value of rand ultimately resides with customers.

The Brand Value Chain is a model constructed in 2003 by Keller and Lehmann. The
Brand Value Chain helps marketers track brand value from the first stage of a
marketing investment to the final stage of shareholder value.

Stages

1. Marketing Program Investment

The marketing programme element deals with those efforts in which brand-owning
firms take to influence their brand. It can deal with products that are offered under the
brand name as well as pricing, channel decisions (place), and promotion.Marketing
Program Investment is any marketing program investment that potentially can impact
brand value, intentionally or not. This link in the model includes product research and
development as well as product design. Secondly, all investments in communications
are included, such as advertising, promotion, sponsorships, publicity and public
relations and thirdly, investments in trade or intermediary support. The fourth example
of a marketing program investment that can affect brand value are all investments in
employees, this includes selection, training, and support. A marketing program
investment can be a commercial or a sponsorship.

2. Customer Mindset

Customer mindset is the second stage and includes everything that happens in the
minds of the consumers in respect to the brand: thoughts, feelings, experiences,
beliefs, and attitudes. As stated, importance of the brand to the customer is referred to
by brand equity. The customer mindset includes associations linked to the brand in a
customers memory, or everything that exists in the minds of customers with respect
to a brand (e.g. thoughts, feelings, experiences, images, perceptions, beliefs and
attitudes. Because brand value ultimately relies with the customers, this stage will be
the focus for this research, and will be the instrument used to compare Nike and adidas
in this thesis. Customer mindset is the only stage in the value chain that fully focuses
on the consumer, making it the stage where brand equity is best measured and
created.Five elements, or dimensions, came forth from previous research as primary
measures for the customer mindset:

awareness

associations

attitudes

attachment

activity

There is an explanation why the five dimensions are ranked this way. Awareness
supports associations, which drive attitudes that lead to attachment and activity.This
means that a high level of awareness creates brand value in this stage.Customer
mindset can be assessed by customer surveys.
 Brand Awareness

The first factor is brand awareness. How well can customers recognize the brand and
the products made by the brand? What company do consumers view as the leader in
a particular market? Recognizing the brands means identifying various brand
elements, e.g brand name, logo, symbol, character, packaging, and slogan. Brand
awareness features depth and breadth . The depth of brand awareness relates to what
extend a brand is recognized or recalled. The breadth of brand awareness relates to
the variety of situations a brand comes to mind when purchasing a product.

Brand Associations

The second element is brand associations, which considers the strength, favourability,
and uniqueness of perceived attributes and benefits for the brand. Associations are
descriptive thoughts that a person holds about something. For example, consumer
have brand associations for Apple such as Mac and iPod, Cool and Awesome,
Design and Innovative, and Expensive and Computer . Brand associations are
formed with advertisements, word of mouth publicity, quality of the product, celebrity
associations, and point of purchase displays.

Brand Attitudes

The third element is brand attitudes and overall evaluations of the brand in terms of
quality and satisfaction it generates. Brand equity is not essentially affiliated only with
high-quality products. Equity depends on the credibility of the quality claims . When a
company cheats consumers by promising high quality but delivering low quality, they
will lose return on their brand investments, their reputation for high quality, or both
(Shaprio, 1983, 1985). Only high-quality companies may preserve a high price
because signalling high quality but delivering low quality is not likely to be successful
in the long run (Erdem, 2001). Some brands have higher brand equity because of their
price value. Honda cars have brand equity because of their performance compared to
price, whereas Lexus cars have their equity with the help of their high performance
and social image.

Brand Attachment
Fourth is brand attachment, which represents the loyalty of customers. How likely are
consumers to continue to choose/repurchase the brand? How likely are consumers to
recommend the brand to a friend/associate? Brand loyalty emerges as a consequence
of brand equity rather than its predecessor . Attracting new customers is more costly
than retaining customers. Greater customer retention indicates a more stable customer
base that provides a somewhat predictable source of future revenue as customers
return to buy again, and is less vulnerable to competition and environmental changes.

Brand Activity

The fifth and last element is brand activity. This represents the extent to which
customers purchase and use the brand, talk to others about it, search brand
information, promotions, and events. Another example is how the brand activity is used
on social platforms like Instagram. Instagram is an application to exchange pictures on
mobile devices. Searching Instagram.com using #Samsung shows 3,1 million
messages, while #apple reveals 5,6 million messages. This means more people are
talking about Apple than Samsung.

3. Brand Performance

Market- or brand performance can be defined as how customers react or respond in

the marketplace to the brand in a variety of ways, as in what customers actually have
done in relation to a brand, which is manifested in market performance data, such as:
market share, sales, sales growth, market penetration, (actual) price premium or
share-of wallet. What these responses have in common is that they decide the cash
flows that a brand contributes. While it should be self evident, it is important to highlight
that a 100% link between mindset and performance is never present and a brands
market performance is not solely influenced by its status in the customers mindset
(contextual factors, such as competitive actions, distribution and relations to channel
partners, moderate the relationship) How the market responds to customer mindset
and marketplace multiplier depends on six aspects or dimensions of that response.

The first is price premium. How much is the customer willing to pay more for
the brand, compared to a similar competitive product?
 Second is price elasticity. How much does the customers demand increase or
decrease when the price rises or declines?

The third dimension is market share. This dimension measures the impact of
the marketing program investment on product sales.

Together, these three dimensions determine the direct revenue stream for the brand
over time. Brand value grows with higher market share and larger price premiums.
Companies get larger price premiums partly from elastic response to a price decline
and inelastic response to a price increase.

The fourth dimension is expansion success. How well do new products sell that
are launched in related categories? This dimension shows the potential that brand
expansions have for the brand.

The fifth dimension is cost structure.How well can companies reduce the cost
of the marketing program investment for the brand because of beneficial customer
mindset? When a company has an effective marketing program, it can lower the total
costs of the marketing investment .

For example, by doing less reruns of TV-commercials or other adds, because

consumers remembered it effectively the first time they were exposed to the add or
commercial.

These five dimensions combined lead to brand profitability, the sixth dimension.

Concluding, in this stage brand value appears with profitable sales.

4. Shareholder Value

Shareholders value is the value a company creates and is reflected in the stock price
and dividend disbursed by the company. The fundamental assumption of shareholder
value is that the true value of a company is the based on future cash flows, discounted
by the cost of capital (Clarke, 2001). A company that fails to deliver value to customers
is acting against long-term interest of shareholders. The conservation of customers
positively affects shareholder value by reducing the volatility and risk associated with
anticipated future cash flows (Anderson et al, 2004).Three indicators that are
important: stock prices, price/earnings ratio and market capitalization. Brand value
reacts positively on high and stable stock prices, a high price/earnings ratio, and large
market capitalization.