Building Strong Brands

A brand is a portfolio of qualities associated with a name, which in turn invokes certain images to individuals and hold values beyond the benefits of a product (Iacobucci, 2018). Brand association occurs when customers make a cognitive or emotional association with a particular brand. For instance, when a customer sees a certain color, symbol, logo, or name they automatically can make a connection to a particular brand. Brands start with a name that conveys information, suggest their benefits, or can even be named after their founders (Iacobucci, 2018). In the marketing perspective marketers can control the brand which they are marketing by using catching logos, colors, slogans, or even the products shape and appearance. In marketing a marketer can control the message they are trying to convey but cannot really have control over an individual’s association with that particular brand. Once a customer has an association with a particular brand they may favor the brand based on a past experience or even that individual’s sense of style or they may dislike a brand because of an association they

According to Holt (2004), a brand can be defined as a term, name or a design that distinguishes product or service of one manufacturer from others. Brands are normally utilized in advertising, business and marketing. In accounting terms, brand is an intangible asset which is present within every organization. It is most valuable asset that is outlined in the balance sheet of a company. Brands owners need to effectively manage their brands in order to enhance shareholder value. Brand valuation is an important technique that associates money with a brand. Effective branding often results into high sales volumes of a particular product. A customer who prefers a brand is more likely to choose other products which are offered by the same brand. Brand can be stated as a personality that facilitates identification of a company, product or service. It even encompasses relation with other constituents like customers, partners, investors, staff, etc. Individuals distinguish psychological aspect of a brand from experimental

The brand must be distinct and stand out in ways that relevance to consumers’ needs so as to be chosen by the consumers among thousands of brands in the market. However, before consumers respond to the brand’s communication efforts, the brand must be understood and understood correctly. That familiarity leads to a strong, positive consumer-brand connection.

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a 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”. However, as Keller highlights, a brand is also “something that has actually created a certain amount of awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on in the marketplace”. Therefore, a brand is an identity created to differentiate itself from the competitors and to be remembered in consumer’s mind.

Since an increasing number of people focus on brand names instead of product, brands become important elements for customers to choose products (Carroll, 2008). When customers trust the brand, the benefits for the manufactures are generated. In the first place, brands can be used by products as the tool to identify and differentiate themselves from various products. Secondly, brands are helpful for companies to build a competitive advantage (Bick, 2009). Therefore, organisations take more attention to branding.

Keller (p 54) notes two elements to Brand Awareness: 1.) Recognition; and 2.) Recall. He postulates that if buy decisions are made at the point of purchase,

In today’s dynamic and ever changing market. The marketers are finding very difficult to differentiate their products from the competitors. The tastes of the consumers are changing frequently. Therefore, the companies have to always take this into consideration about brands the products in order to create image in the customer mind. So the company has to fulfill the needs and wants of the customers. Brand is the personalities of the product and brand positioning is a key to the success of marketing in any company.

Brand loyalty, long a central construct in marketing, is a measure of the attachment that a customer has to a brand. It reflects how likely a customer will be to switch to another brand, especially when that brand makes a change, either in price or in product features. As brand loyalty increases, the vulnerability of the customer base to competitive action is reduced. It is one indicator of brand equity which is demonstrably linked to future profits, since brand loyalty directly translates into future sales.

Forging good brand relationships can be done via behavioral loyalty by the understanding the patterns of repeated purchases, quantity and types of products consumed(Keller, 2001).

BRAND IMAGE AS A SUM AFFILIATIONS OF BRAND IN CUSTOMERS ' MEMORY, LOYALTY, AND PURCHASING DECISIONS (HE AND LAI, 2014)

Creating and managing a brand is a fascinating process. A brand is not really a ‘thing’ in the conventional sense. This is an abstract concept that really is a collection of principles, values, images and products; but together this branding manages to completely define your business and the way you’re seen by the general public and your potential audience.

In a society where corporations are constantly competing for business, branding has become the ultimate way for companies to win over customers. Defining exactly what a brand is, however, is a challenging task. ‘Brand’ has become something of a buzzword over the past decade, though this is not without reason, given the functional purpose of branding in building a competitive business. Branding is much more than a buzzword - it is, in a sense, a company’s promise to its consumers. When a product, service, or company is well branded, consumers know exactly what they’re going to get when they invest. In another sense, branding is the outward projection of what a business hopes to associate with its name. A brand includes not

The consumers in 21st century are very much brand conscious in whatever or wherever they purchase the products or services. The word brand comes out of the value of the products is higher among the existing products or the services (O’Reilly, 2011). The branding has unique feature which differentiate it from the other products and buyer of which also separates from the

“A successful brand is an identifiable product, service, person or place, augmented in such a way that the buyer or user perceives relevant, unique added values which match their needs more closely. Furthermore, its success results from being able to sustain those added values in the face of competition.” (DeChernatony, L. McDonald, M. 1998)

In recent times, branding has played a pivotal role in some brands’ success. This has been made possible through the ability of some marketers to capture the essence and minds of people (consumers), and put the trends and characteristics into the personality of a brand. Customers have always found ways to identify themselves with certain products, and on several occasions, branding campaigns