What is Individual Branding?
Individual branding is a marketing strategy companies can use to associate each individual product with its own brand. This strategy helps in protecting a company’s other products if one of them fails or does not gain a great significance in the market.
What is a Brand?
A brand, in general, is the name and image or aesthetic associated with a company, product, or service that takes on its own identity. It is a promise that implies that the products or services offered being offered will deliver the quality, experience, and value that customers have come to expect from the brand.
A brand consists of all the features that distinguish the product or services of one company from another in terms of packaging, design, style, symbols, color, etc. All these elements work together and form stimuli for the customer to buy the product or services provided by that brand.
A brand consists of tangible elements, such as the logo, product design and quality, as well as intangible elements, such as customer experience, goodwill, positioning, etc. A brand differentiates its product or service from its substitutes and enables the brand to charge higher premiums.
What does Branding Mean?
Branding is the marketing practice of actively shaping your brand. Branding is done to take the business to the next level. It helps in making products and services stand out and gain a competitive advantage. In simple terms, any action taken by the company to shape the brand is called branding.
Why is Branding Important?
Branding is important to make the product stand out in the market. It helps in gaining goodwill for the brand. Through branding, one can create positive associations with the brand in the minds of the target audience and thereby capture a good amount of customers, resulting in increased sales and profits.
What is the Difference Between Individual Branding and Umbrella Branding?
The term individual branding is often confused with umbrella branding. The difference between the two is that individual branding is a marketing strategy wherein a parent brand (a brand that holds the highest position in the internal company hierarchy) gives a product a new identity, a unique name, and independence to exist solely. It helps in building a unique image of that brand, which can help give it a competitive advantage.
| Individual Branding | Umbrella Branding |
| Refers to the process of creating brand value for a single product or service. | Refers to a group of products that are given the same brand name. |
| It is more expensive. | It is less expensive. |
| Advantages of individual include increased reliability and value of the individual brand and ease in promoting a single product or service. | Advantages of umbrella branding include increased efficiency of the brand, greater flexibility as the brand can develop a variety of products under the same brand name, and ease of entering the market by incurring lesser expenses. |
| Example: Brand ambassadors. | Example: Nivea. |
Context and Applications
This topic is significant in the professional exams for both undergraduate and graduate courses, especially for:
- Bachelors of Commerce
- Masters of Commerce
- MBA
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