Hey Guys, I have one assignment for the subject of Strategic Brand Management, Where you have to write a journal answering 5 questions from the five different weeks which I have provided you in the w

MMK739 – Strategic Brand Management

Assignment- 2 Learning Journal

By:

Yash Parikh

(218034504)

Week 1 (Q1): 3

Week 1 (Q2) 3

Week 2 (Q1) 4

Week 2 (Q2) 5

Week 2 (Q3) 5

Week 2 (Q4) 6

Week 3 (Q1) 6

Week 3 (Q2) 7

Week 8 (Q1) 7

Week 8 (Q2) 9

Week 9 (Q1) 10

Week 9 (Q2) 10

Reference: 12

The brands are the set of associations that the consumer often use to mean it as name or logo of the business. In reality, the brand is more than the visual element, or the name used to represent the company. It is a mixture of emotional and psychological evaluations that the persons observe with the business or the product or the service it provides (Bain, 2010). The key factors acknowledged by the brand or the business to woo the consumers into buying their products as their decision-making process is based upon the brand’s trustworthiness, advocacy, availability and the reputation it has from the preceding products. By contributing heavily into these aspects, the brand plays an important role in the decisions taken by the consumer while selecting the product (Karr, 2019). You earn the reputation by trying to do hard things well.” Yes, brands play a major role in the decision-making process as for example while in the supermarket there are options for Coca-Cola with Woolworths and Coles cola, we know that it is cheaper, but we tend to opt for Coca-Cola because of the brand perseverance we have towards the company and the company’s prestige in the market.

Yes, I agree with the statement as in the current market scenario the customers do assume the brands as the same even if they are uniquely different and that is because of the increase in competition with the products and consumer is widely exposed to different product styles of the same product. In 1964 a blind taste study was conducted by Allison and Uhl on the make beer drinkers. They had sought to discern the taste differences among the major brands of beer. When the bottles were unlabeled the participants were not able to identify the product belonged to which brand. However, the labels on the bottles tend to influence the brands. In the report it was mentioned that it was not the physical difference between the brands that mattered rather it was the marketing efforts made by the company’s team that led to brand’s success (Lee et al., 2015). Overall, it is dependent on the company’s or the brand’s USP which defines the selling strategy for the product. For the consumers to differentiate between the brands, they should create their USP based on the product that is unique to them in that area (Porat, 2019).

The customer-based brand equity (CBBE) is based on 5 underlying dimensions of brand equity:

• Performance

• Value

• Social Image

• Trustworthiness

• Commitment

For the company to increase their success rate with increased sales and higher market standards these 5 models of CBBE needs to be used and followed. These 5 dimensions are connected to each other in some way. The commitment towards their consumers and by providing service increases the value and social image of the brand among the users and they tend to trust the brand. This should encourage the brand to perform and introduce new products in market (Lassar, Mittal and Sharma, 1995).

The CBBE was founded for the companies that was looking for ways to build a strong brand name for their companies. This model identifies four steps to build a strong brand. Each step in this process is entirely dependent upon the success of the previous step. The ambition is to establish identification of the brand among the customers and develop an association in their minds with a specific product class. To achieve this, brand salience must exist which would help represent the aspects of brand awareness and consumption situations through which the brand comes to mind (Kuhn, Alpert and Pope, n.d.).

With using the CBBE model to build brand equity the major constraint that the company faces are that there is a major requirement of heavy investment needed particularly in promotion. There are many different tools for promotion, but advertising is generally the most powerfully amongst the all in successfully developing the brand image. Effective advertising usually requires a credible media presence over the time period and it is considered to more expensive then other alternative such as Public Relations and Direct Marketing. The process works when these promotional offers are exposed to wider populations and these offers imprint the minds of the consumer to put in the effort to purchase the product or research about. These market offerings are mostly used with the help of CBBE theory as the advantages of the exceeds the constraints (Handlin, 2018).

The products that the consumer requires are mainly governed by their social and psychological needs. The products that the company is selling might not be satisfying the consumer’s needs and that might be the reason for the consumer not buying even though initially they are attracted towards it (Sighamony, 2017).

The brand trust is vital to any brand as the customers buying decision is based on emotions and not logic. The process of building trust doesn’t happen in vacuum, that the company has to be consistent in messaging also to understand the personas and has to deliver on the promises overtime. Doing this would help the brand to become the go-to provider in your niche (Smale, 2019). Being an iPhone user for the last 8 years I would think Apple as a brand who I trust as a brand whose products I purchase because of my perseverance towards the brand. There are 3 reasons to look for before trust a brand:

• The company has your best interest at heat.

• They are capable on delivering their promises.

• They are honest and authentic.

As Apple being the most valued company and a big market share holder in smart phone market the company has been innovating their products over the past years and keeping the interest of their patrons and keeping the promise intact for protecting their privacy and information safe. For some cases they are open for the mistakes they make and the bug that arises and they apologize the consumers for the inconvenience officially (Goodman, 2019).

In these over the last five years we have been truly around purposeful brands era, but we may think of out of these brands which brands actually have higher brand purpose that gets activated in an original way across all internal and external touchpoints. These kinds of brands are rare to find in times of these branding era and most them are found in social impact space. In reality most of the consumers doesn’t really care about the brands and we are overestimating our roles in their lives. We are now seeing many esoteric and vacuous brand purpose statements; whose purpose is mainly to make feel the marketers feel like they are doing something meaningful. The consumers want to believe in things. The population are a herd species and are generally horde towards the immerging ideas and movements and the brand’s where there is a shared belief system. It’s quite important to say that brand conviction alone will not be able to solve the brand’s position for success. It is one-part of the puzzle that has to be aligned with brand’s behavior and experience (PANKRAZ, 2018).

The sense of purpose and direction for your personal brand are established through values. they act as guard points that assist you in evaluating the choice you make. Personal branding is the process of developing a “mark” that is build around your personal name and career. We use this mark to express and communicate our skills and personality. The goal is that because of this branding the personal will be able to develop their own reputation and will help grow your network in a unique way that will interests others. All the personal values that we think own are the values that we perceive and use for personal branding. In today’s world it is important for the marketer or the sales person to own a trait or a skill to sell or market the product. Personal branding in marketing cannot be considered as a fad in these times as personal branding generates interest amongst the consumer and it helps the brand to acknowledge the power it has with the skilled workforce it has in its team. Personal branding works on the top most strategy planner to help them achieve the goal they have targeted (Lage, 2016).

There are certain aspects that are required to be fulfilled before choosing a celebrity to co-brand the product. Generally, a celebrity endorser’s characteristics are acknowledged by the degree of congruence between the brand and the celebrity. The company’s decision also relies upon the pragmatic criteria and many other key indicators. There are many successful and unsuccessful celebrity cobranding in the past years.

1. Successful cobranding: Alexander Wang X H&M

One being the professional designer and luxury and H&M being the brand of selling tees under 10$. What is more interesting about this collaboration is that both the brands welcomed this strategy that’s beyond marketing and branding, these brands focused less on their image and created an image towards the future and success that they would achieve through this ever-changing world. Only way for the millennials to survive is to promote themselves in unexpected places hoping the enter a different market (Martino, n.d.).

1. Unsuccessful cobranding: Sony’s offensive ‘white is coming’ campaign

Sony in Netherlands had a poster given out replacing the black gaming box with white. This created racial discrimination towards the black people raising concerns towards company’s ability to increase their market share with this new product. Here, the company has interpreted the emotional sentiments of the people using the product which led to failure of the entire campaign.

Luxury brands are considered as one the purest forms of branding, since the brand and image are often the key competitive advantages that is able to generate enormous value and wealth for the business. According to Keller, marketers of luxury brands are facing the same obstacles as those are faced by the non-luxurious brands that is guide the brand in a constantly changing and sometimes fast-paced environment. For a luxury brand it is feasible to skip certain laws of marketing which can cannot be missed by a traditional and premium brand (Larsson, 2019). These luxury brands are considered to be an interesting marketing phenomenon as these brands can be purchased by everyone, but they earn a unique mention of couple of brands which are classified as luxury brands such as Gucci, Armani, Dom Perigone, Patek Phillipe etc. These brands consists of several important facets that helps maintain certain level of luxury such as logos, complexity, rarity, sustainability, being superlative and never comparative, tradition and the most important is the exclusivity and heritage (Kapferer & Bastien, 2012).

Constructing the Brand extension is considered as interesting brand strategy alternative as it would help the brand to attract new segments of patrons that may not have considered to purchase because of many reasons. With the introduction of brand extensions, they are seen as the perfect way for the company to boost revenue. The is one major downfall for the parent company even though it may well be a boost towards the new market sector, this would affect the luxury ones but at the same time it weakens the stature of the luxury brand on the basis of exclusivity which leads to the downfall of its existing clientele and in-turn dilute the luxury brand. Once this happened the road to regain the status is long and difficult in the eyes of customers. For example, we take jimmy choo, the luxury company which designs the shoes for the models that walked the red carpet has gained the status of luxury brand which diluted because of its associations with local brands such as hunters and H&M. these caught the attention of the clientele the company has and, in the process, lost the luxury status (Stankeviciute and Hoffman, 2009).

Allison, Ralph I. and Kenneth P. Uhl (1964), “Influences of Beer Brand Identification on Taste Perception”, Journal of Marketing Research, 1 (3), 36–9.

Bain, A. (2010). THE BASICS OF BRANDING. [Blog] Available at:

https://smallbusinessbc.ca/article/what-does-brand-mean/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Goodman, N. (2019). 3 Ways to Build Consumer Trust. [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224622 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Handlin, A. (2018). [online] Pocketsense.com. Available at:

https://pocketsense.com/advantages-disadvantages-building-brand-equity-3015.html [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Karr, D. (2019). The Impact of Brand on a Consumer Purchase Decision » Martech Zone. [online] Martech Zone. Available at: https://martech.zone/brand-impact-consumer-purchase-decision/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Kapferer, J. N., & Bastien, V. (2012). The luxury strategy: Break the rules of marketing to build luxury brands. Kogan Page Publishers.

Kuhn, K., Alpert, F. and Pope, N. (n.d.). AN APPLICATION OF KELLER’S BRAND EQUITY MODEL IN A B2B CONTEXT. Australia.

Lage, L. (2016). What is the Value of Your Personal Brand?. [online] Blog.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com. Available at:

https://blog.thecenterforsalesstrategy.com/what-is-the-value-of-your-personal-brand [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Larsson, L. (2019). The history facet of luxury brands. Does it matter how the history of luxury brands are created?, 1.

Lassar, W., Mittal, B. and Sharma, A. (1995). Measuring customer‐based brand equity. 4th ed. MCB UP Ltd, pp.11-19.

Lee, A., Yang, J., Lambert, C. and Mizerski, R. (2015). THE STRATEGY OF GLOBAL BRANDING AND BRAND EQUITY. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

Martino, J. (n.d.). The best co-branding partnerships (and why they worked!) – APR Creative. [online] Aprcreative.com.au. Available at: http://aprcreative.com.au/strategy-planning/the-best-co-branding-partnerships-and-why-they-worked/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

PANKRAZ, D. (2018). Obsess over your brand conviction, not brand purpose. [online] Mumbrella. Available at: https://mumbrella.com.au/obsess-over-your-brand-conviction-not-brand-purpose-517471 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Porat, S. (2019). How To Differentiate Your Brand, Even When It’s Not That Unique. [online] Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3038845/how-to-differentiate-your-brand-even-when-its-not-that-unique [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Sighamony, R. (2017). Entrepreneurs: 5 Reasons Why Your Products are Not Selling - Hongkiat. [online] Hongkiat. Available at: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/entrepreneurs-5-reasons-why-your-products-are-not-selling/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Smale, T. (2019). 5 Strategies for How to Make Customers Trust Your Brand. [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/289167 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2019].

Stankeviciute, R. and Hoffman, J. (2009). Journal of Global Fashion Marketing. The Impact of Brand Extension on the Parent Luxury Fashion Brand: The Cases of Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choo, 1(2), pp.119-128.

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