Paradoxical Nature Of The Marketer Consumer Relationship

Pepsi or Coke? Apple or Android? Starbucks or Tim Hortons? These are seemingly insignificant choices between products; however, taken together they structure the lives of individuals. To reduce brands to anything less would be to negate the significance they hold in the fabric of individual’s lives. What is important, then, is to uncover the ways in which certain brands weave their way into this fabric through their advertising practices and promotional culture. This paper begins with a brief historical outline of consumer culture and it’s ties to neoliberalism, and then moves to an in depth exploration of the way in which companies work to create and maintain a positive brand image among consumers. Through a focus on branding, versus product-specific advertising, companies work to create attachments and emotional bonds, effectively creating a loyal and invested customer base. Corporations draw upon established systems of meaning, selling consumer’s values and beliefs back to them in the form of a brand. This process is not unidirectional, operating simultaneously through individual consent and participation. In our modern, neoliberal market place, notions of individuality have positioned “the choosing self at the center of consumer culture”, and individuals seek self-fulfillment and satisfaction from “active lifestyle choices” (Arvidsson, 2001, p. 48). The self has come to be defined by the brands one identifies with.

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

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.

It has been acknowledge (Romaniuk & Sharp 2004) that Brand salience can be defined as the propensity of the brand to be thought of by buyers when they are in a buying situations. A brand awareness strategy depends on how well known the brand is, Brand Salience is forming image to refresh their memory about the brands that can linked to consumer mind as well as the quantity and quality of the cue to brand links (Olson & Peter 2005), it is very important that consumer can connect to their mind as many cues as possible . The level of consumers’ brand awareness necessary to induce purchase varies depending on how and where they make their purchase decision for that product category or form. The brand attitude is focus on evaluating the brand, according to Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) “attitudes are relevant to purchase behavior are formed as a result of direct experience with the product, word-of-mouth information acquired from others, or exposure to mass-media advertising, the internet, and various forms of direct marketing”

The purchase decision, according to M. Delong (2004), can be stimulated by the knowledge about brand and customers tend to rely on the brand image they know already. Thus, marketers have an initial goal to construct the brand image that would entice consumers to purchase that particular brand. The brand image is constructed through advertising, word-of-mouth, reference groups, celebrities, and media (R. Mihalcea and I. Catoiu, 2008). Creating a specific meaning of the brand through media, celebrities

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.

1. A brand only becomes a brand through its consumers. Like children, without constant care and attention, consumers will reach out to someone or something that can take care of their needs. Companies cannot learn, adapt or improve upon themselves and their brand, without listening to what their audience is saying and responding accordingly. Understanding that customers are an invaluable resource, means that social media listening allows a brand to continue what they are doing right and do it better or know what is not working and improve upon it. Even major corporations have a need for virtual ears, Dell was forced into social media listening by their consumers, while Maker’s Mark’s attention to their customers prevented the company from making a huge production mistake.

The intangible value of a product is largely subjective, therefore is linked to private consumers’ perception. Bearing that in mind, the marketers focus their effort on creating a desired image in the shoppers’ minds, surrounding the conventional products with extra benefits in the form of intangibles such as extended consumer service, recognizable design and social features (Thrassou & Vrontis, 2009). A combination of such features form different brands. So, brands represent the intangible “value-added” to the product. According to an empirical research, conducted amongst 472 Australian students the prior knowledge of preferred brands (brand awareness) is an important part of consumers’ decision making process when purchasing a product. Specifically, 85.5% of subjects chose the familiar brand over others available. Additionally, the study has shown that the choice is made substantially faster (9.8 seconds against 15.1 given the experiment conditions) (Macdonald & Sharp, 2000). Clearly, a product’s brand name, being a classical value of an intangible nature appeared to have played a heavy role in a perceived value of the sample group. Though brands facilitated the process of choice, the final purchase decision belonged to the end-buyers.

Consumerism and the effects of branding affect people’s lives. Branding allows consumers to easily identify which products are made by which companies. Yet, the brands create more of an influence on consumer’s lifestyles and in the end decide what kind of consumer that person is. Branding creates a blurred divide in our society. Consumers who are ore likely to purchase the branded products that are associated with better quality and higher prices are put into their own category bucket versus the consumers who choose the cheaper priced products that are made with less quality. When it comes to deciding who you are based off of the products and brands that you associate yourself with, it creates a capital divide in our society. Consumers than associate brands with personal feelings based upon whether or not they associate themselves with those brands. Lives of consumers are heavily influenced. Their lives are worse off when they feel the need to ‘keep up’ with brands in order to feel as if they are portraying themselves in the best light. In a way, this is similar to how all of branding began with livestock. Consumers want to physically brand themselves with specific brands by wearing logos and identifying with a brand. They might not be burning the brands directly onto their skin but they are burning the brands onto their clothes and burning holes in their wallets to keep up with society standards about brands.

Today, brands are a huge asset to the organisations, whereas, for a consumer they are a mania. Brand conscious consumers are a gold mine for

In the modern era of marketing, brand management has proved its importance by being a widely discussed topic. While brand value was primarily connected with customers only, its importance into non-customer areas has been acknowledged. Brand equity and brand value are argued on their relation with relevant stakeholders. In this assignment I am reflecting on the importance of managing these stakeholder relationships.

Recent research has established that customers can form emotional attachments to brands (Park et al, 2010), with fundamental properties and behavioural effects that are similar to their attachments to other people (Fournier, 1998). Albralt and Kleyn, (2011) confirms that the development of a strong brand identity leads to strong emotional attachment, whilst Thomson et al. (2005, p.78) suggests that a consumer’s emotional attachment is underpinned by “brand love, brand affection and brand connection”. These findings suggest that consumers with strong emotional attachment are likely to show positive signs of repeat purchase as they become committed to a brand and hold long-time loyalty

Research shows that the brand experience is the dominant variable in the psychology of consumer perception. Consumers want to believe that the brand is much more than a logo or symbol their cognitive faculties allow the brand personality to become an extension of the way they view themselves and want the world to view them. For example, Starbucks is much more than a brand of coffee: it is an experience of belonging to

Susan Fournier's argued that consumers relate to their brands in different ways and understanding this relationship helps to inform marketing practice with a significant relationship perspective. She argued that there has been a relationship paradigm shift whereby marketing is now focused on relationships which are mutually reciprocating and long-term between customers and firms. Relationship-rich concepts such as loyalty, interdependency, satisfaction, trust and commitment have taken the center stage. The projects, tasks, themes, cohorts and current concerns in people's lives are currently shaped by the brands that they associate with. Susan states that many people are not simply buying brands rather they form connections with the brands that they use and these brand relationships create some meaning which adds value to their lives. These meanings may be functional and utilitarian while others are psychosocial and emotional. Fournier also pointed out that brand relationships are subject to change as a result of personal, managerial and environmental factors and thus there is a cycle of initiation, growth, maintenance and deterioration which the relationship goes through. Fournier's statement also meant that marketers need to learn how to initiate the brand relationship cycle and keep it looping in the growth and maintenance stages ADDIN EN.CITE Fournier1998249(Fournier, 1998)24924917Susan

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