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Term Paper on Brand Management
Term Paper Contents:
- Term Paper on the Introduction to Brand Management
- Term Paper on the Process of Branding
- Term Paper on Brand Identity
- Term Paper on Brand Equity
- Term Paper on Brand Loyalty
- Term Paper on Brand Repositioning
- Term Paper on the Challenges of Product Branding
Term Paper # 1. Introduction to Brand Management:
Branding is a process of giving a unique name, image, and identity to a product for differentiating it from others and creating emotional association with customers.
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), “Brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.”
The legalized protection of a brand can be done by having the trademark. A brand becomes the trademark when it is legally registered with the authorized agency. An organization provides the same quality of products and services over a period of time to fulfill the brand promise. In present scenario, it has become important for an organization to have competitive edge in the market. An organization assures its sustenance in the market by implementing an effective brand strategy.
Brand management is an art or technique to create and sustain a brand in the market. From an organization’s perspective, brand management refers to the continuity of delivering the same quality of products to customers. It is an implementation of marketing strategies in a product line to enhance its perceived value. The enhanced perceived value of the product line or brand increases the brand equity and brand franchise.
An organization treats its brand as a promise of delivering the same level of quality of the product in the future. A brand enables an organization to command premium price for a product. Brand management also enhances brand identity, brand loyalty, and brand equity and improves the profitability of a brand.
Brand management involves three processes – creating, making, and keeping the promise.
These processes are as follows:
i. Creating the Promise:
It defines the brand and makes it memorable and desirable for customers
ii. Making the Promise:
It assures the delivery of set standard of quality of a product
iii. Keeping the Promise:
It refers to sustain the promise of delivering a quality product.
The functions of a brand from the perspective of customers are as follows:
a. Helps to identify and communicate the quality of a product and conveys the expectations of customers.
b. Minimizes the risk associated in buying a product and builds trust-based relationship between an organization and its customers.
c. Serves the purpose of customers by distinguishing their social class.
The functions of a brand from the perspective of an organization are as follows:
a. Makes customers loyal and brand-oriented
b. Lessens the dependency on short-term promotional activities
c. Helps to easily get a license for the international expansion of an organization
d. Helps to face the competition and makes an organization safe from new entrants.
Term Paper # 2. Process of Branding:
Building a brand is a multifaceted exercise of an organization. A brand is a core value, culture, and personality of an organization. Brand building facilitates both customers and organizations in many ways. A successful brand can be created by paying more attention to customers.
Now, let us discuss these process of branding in the following sections:
1. Market Research:
Market research involves making the foundation of building brands with the tool of research. In market research, an organization collects, records, and analyzes information about its customers and the market.
An organization uses the following tools of market research:
i. Quantitative Research:
It refers to the measurement of market size and the quantification of data collected in the research process. This process helps to find out the data of market share, market size, market growth rate, and market penetration. It is used to understand the attitude and behavior of customers. In this process, a small group of customers is taken as a sample from a large group to understand the whole market.
ii. Competitive Analysis:
It deals in determining the strengths and weaknesses of competitors in the same market. It provides an edge over the competitors with a distinct advantage of creating barriers for new entrants.
iii. Qualitative Research:
It plays an important role in gauging the attitude, behavior, lifestyle, value, culture, and concerns of customers. It refers to a collection of unstructured data, such as feedback, in-depth interviews, public meetings, focus groups, videos, e-mails, and photos to analyze the attitude and behavior of customers.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis:
Identifies the internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) factors of an organization to achieve its objectives.
The description of SWOT analysis is as follows:
i. Strengths:
It refers to the attributes that help an organization to achieve its objectives. For example, research and development can be strength of an organization as it helps in introducing technologically advanced products.
ii. Weaknesses:
It refers to the attributes that are unfavorable for achieving the objectives of the organization. For example, the lack of coordination among the departments can be a weakness of an organization.
iii. Opportunities:
It refers to the external environment that is conducive to achieve the objectives of an organization. For example, high market demand of a product and lack of competitors in the market are the opportunities for an organization.
iv. Threats:
It refers to the external environment that hinders the goals accomplishment. For example, changing lifestyle of customers can be a threat for an organization.
2. Positioning Statement:
Positioning statement refers to a written statement that expresses how an organization wants to be perceived by its target audience. The result of market research provides an input to create a positioning statement. The positioning statement affirms the reason for the existence of the brand. It facilitates an organization with the blueprint of marketing and development of a brand.
An ideal positioning statement of an organization should consider the target customers and competitors. It leads to the creation of a tagline that consists of seven words or less. The tagline appears along with the logo image of an organization.
3. Creative Brief:
Creative brief refers to a document that gives creative and conceptual direction to a project, for example, visual design and advertisement. It works as the basis for the actual image of a brand. It also summarizes the positioning statement, research findings, and guidelines related to the logo. Creative brief is submitted to the design team.
4. Graphic Design:
Graphic design refers to the visual communication by an organization through combining text and picture. After the completion of creative brief, the document is passed to design organizations and creative agencies. As per the parameters guided by the creative brief, an organization assesses the proposals of graphic design agencies and selects the best proposal. The graphic design team matches the design of the logo and tagline through print and electronic applications.
5. Launching, Implementation, and Measurement:
Launching, implementation, and measurement refer to launch a brand, implement marketing strategies to promote the brand, and measure the success of the brand in the market. A successful launch leads to the mass production of the brand.
Brand implementation implies the physical representation of the brand and consistent application of brand identity. Brand measurement refers to determine the impact of a brand on the customers. The performance of the brand should be measured at regular intervals of time to take corrective measures.
Term Paper # 3. Brand Identity:
Any visible element, such as color, logo, name, or symbol that identifies and differentiates the brand from other existing brands is called brand identity. According to, David A. Aaker, “Brand identity should help establish a relationship between the brand and the customer by generating a value proposition involving functional, emotional, or self-expressive benefits.” Brand identity develops the emotional aspects of customers with the brand.
It also depicts the image of the brand. Image is based on the reception concept of customers; whereas, identity is based on emission concept. The reception concept means how the customers perceive a brand. On the other hand, the emission concept means how an organization wants its brand to be perceived by customers. Brand identity helps an organization to become unique.
Following are the functions of brand identity:
i. Strengthens the impact of messages conveyed by an organization to its customers.
ii. Paves the way for new customer relationships.
iii. Plays an important role in the success of a brand.
Now, let us discuss the process of creating brand identity briefly:
a. Review, Research, and Analysis:
It involves kick-off meetings to review information and current positioning of a brand and analyze brand partners and competitors.
b. Define Brand Strategy:
It defines the position of a brand and helps in preparing creative brief for logo development.
c. Brand Identity Development:
It helps to search logotype, logo mark, and a way to present logo.
d. Refinement and Contextual Applications:
It includes the refining of the present logo and the creation of logo extension and architecture.
e. Identity System and Guidelines:
It involves the exploration and refinement of logo extension and the preparation of a logo guideline document.
f. Logo Implementation:
It develops launch strategies and executes tactics to create a brand.
Term Paper # 4. Brand Equity:
Brand equity is brand power resulting from the goodwill that a brand has earned over a period of time. It helps an organization to achieve higher sales volume and more profit. Brand equity is created through marketing campaigns. For example, organizations, such as Nike and Coca-Cola use marketing campaigns to become famous worldwide and create brand equity.
An organization can utilize its brand equity to launch new products. For example, Parle-G, a leading biscuit manufacturing company, launched wheat flour (atta) under the name of Parle-G and utilized the brand equity of Parle-G biscuits. Brand equity is a power of an organization to charge premium from customers. It helps to differentiate between the perceived value and intrinsic value of a product.
There are different models, brand asset valuation and BRANDZ that offer various perspectives of brand equity.
Brand Asset Valuator:
Brand asset valuator provides a comparative analysis of brand equity across the different product categories. This model was developed by an advertising agency, Young and Rubicam (Y&R). This is also called the Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, and Knowledge (DREK) model.
The explanation of the DREK model is as follows:
i. Differentiation:
It makes the product of an organization different from its competitors.
ii. Relevance:
It identifies the usefulness of the brand on the basis of its actual and perceived importance. It helps to evaluate the-appropriation of the brand in the market.
iii. Esteem:
It refers to the perceived quality and the changing popularity of the brand.
Knowledge refers to the awareness of customers about the brand and its identity.
The BRANDZ Model:
The BRANDZ model measures the strength of the brand and shows the various steps of brand building.
At the top of the pyramid, the customers build a strong bond with the brand and do frequent and bulk purchasing of the brand. The different levels of pyramid have a different set of customers. Therefore, an organization should change its brand strategy to move customers towards the upper level of the pyramid.
Let us describe the BRANDZ model in brief:
i. Bonding:
It signifies the preference of customers for selecting a particular brand that cannot be replaced by any other brand.
ii. Advantage:
It refers to the difference in advantages that a customer gets from a particular brand as compared to other similar brands in the market.
iii. Performance:
It implies whether the particular brand delivers the quality as per the expectations of customers.
iv. Relevance:
It decides the use of brand by customers. The brand should satisfy the needs of customers.
v. Presence:
Refers to a stage where customers are uncertain about their brand knowledge.
The explanation of three steps of managing brand equity is as follows:
i. Introduction:
It involves the launching of a quality product in the market. The positive evaluation of the product by the customers is important for building the brand.
ii. Elaboration:
It makes the brand memorable and induces customers for repeat purchases. In this step, the brand attitude should be positively evaluated by the customers to fortify the brand.
iii. Fortification:
It refers to the consistent performance of the brand. Fortification builds good relationship with the customers and helps in brand extension.
Term Paper # 5. Brand Loyalty:
Brand loyalty refers to the extent to which a customer is trustful to a particular brand. It can be measured by the repeat purchase of the brand by a customer. This is the customer’s commitment to stay with the brand.
Different types of customers exist at different levels of brand loyalty pyramid.
This is explained in the following points:
a. Switchers:
They change the brand to get the similar products and services at lower prices.
b. Shifters:
They change the brand for some specific requirement.
c. Satisfied Buyers:
They repurchase the brand to satisfy their particular needs. They are profit-giving customers for the organization.
d. Loyal Customers:
They commit to buy a particular brand for a longer period of time. They form a group of premium customers.
Term Paper # 6. Brand Repositioning:
A brand is repositioned when its current positioning statement fails to provide desirable results. Generally, an organization repositions the brand due to competitive pressure, emergence of new distribution channels, and changing requirements of customers. An organization spends a large amount of money in repositioning its brand. A successful brand repositioning can only be done after getting the views from the customers.
For example, initially, Dettol soap was positioned as a beauty soap that did not match with the core value of the product. Later, the Dettol soap was repositioned as a germ-killing soap and became successful in the market. An organization should focus on the achievable brand repositioning. There are three steps that help to ensure the success of the brand.
These steps are as follows:
i. Ensure relevance of customers’ reference – Combines the customers’ reference with the repositioning strategy of an organization
ii. Secure customers’ permission for repositioning – Helps to extend the current positioning of the brand to its desired repositioning
iii. Deliver brand’s new positioning – Develops brand positioning programs to ensure continuity in delivering quality of the brand.
Term Paper # 7. Challenges of Product Branding:
In earlier days, the organizations used to sell their products without branding. In current scenario, they face tough competition due to the increasing number of new entrants in the market. Therefore, the organizations focus on branding to differentiate their products from others.
An organization faces various challenges in branding its product.
These challenges are as follows:
i. Branding of Product:
It refers to the first decision of an organization whether it should brand its product or not. Some organizations do not prefer to brand the product due to financial constraints, lack of management team, and fear of getting competition from an established brand. On the other hand, some organizations consider that branding is beneficial for them.
ii. Type of Branding:
It refers to the selection of the type of branding of the product out of manufacturer’s branding, distributor’s branding or licensed branding. Selecting the type of branding can be very expensive for an organization as it requires extensive research work and experts’ opinions.
iii. Selection of Name:
It refers to a challenge faced by an organization in selecting the name of the brand. There are two types of brand names- blanket family and individual. For example, SONY and TATA use family blanket names as their products are known by these names only, whereas Proctor & Gamble and Hindustan Unilever use individual brand names as their products are known by different names.
In addition to aforementioned challenges, there are some other challenges of product branding. These challenges are growing competition in the market, global market, and branding of almost all the product and services. It becomes very difficult for the organizations to differentiate the brand from other existing brands.