B RAND E QUITY M ANAGEMENT

The personality idea responds to the tendency in contemporary society to value personal relationships. It also refers to the idea that relationships are important in social life. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it tries to lift products to higher levels of need satisfaction, like belongingness and love and esteem. Brand personalities are created in different ways and with different tools. However, the creation always involves active communications on the side of the firm: the personality has to be disseminated to be alive. Brand equity research is an attempt to put a value on the strength of a brand in the market, in the same way that the shares/stocks put a value on the strength of the corporation in the eyes of the investors.

1 Rajagopal (2004), Marketing-Strategy, Implementation and Control, Rawat Publications, New Delhi, 21-28

2 Tauber, Edward M (1998), Brand Leverage: Strategy for Growth in a Cost-control World, Journal of Advertising Research, August-September,

Indeed, brand equity research has shown that the two are related - the growth in brand equity correlates with the growth in stock values, and also sales, profits, price premiums and employee satisfaction. The brand equity research has two elements:

• Brand profiling - where your brand and its competitors are profiled against a set of indicators and attributes. The indicators are usually fixed within the model, but attributes may be specific to the brand or its category

• Conversion model - where the model assesses the degree of strength or vulnerability you have in your customer base in relation to competition. Credit card companies use this to identify which competitive customers they should approach, as they are open to alternative offers, and which they should not waste their time on because they are loyal to their existing suppliers.

Strong brand equity allows the companies to retain customers better, service their needs more effectively, and increase profits. Brand equity can be increased by successfully implementing and managing an ongoing relationship marketing effort by offering value to the customer, and listening to their needs. Disregarding the edge that the brand-customer relationship offers in the market place and not utilizing the benefits and goodwill that the relationship creates will surely lead to failure in the long run. The central brand idea may be static among the entire customer and prospect bases, but the total sum of the brand idea or perception is rooted in the customer’s experiences with the brand itself, and all its messages, interactions, and so on. Besides, promoting brands in the markets, companies should bring the brand alive for employees through internal branding campaigns, creating an emotional connection to the company that transcends any one experience. The brand equity may be understood as the highest value paid for the brand names during buy-outs and mergers.

Swatch, the brand of youthful watches, is a marketing legend. Back in the early 1980s, SMH, a marketing coalition of classic Swiss watch makers (including Omega, Longines and Rado), was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by the onslaught of Japanese watch brands such as Seiko. Digital watches were in, and Swiss watches were seen as something for grandparents. Something radical had to be done. The high-end obsession, for one, had to go and the digital tide had to be reversed by bringing classic round dials back into fashion. The answer was Swatch, a low-priced brand of snazzy- designed watches (transparent cases, mirror dials...) that shocked conservatives, became a youth fashion statement and rejuvenated the Swiss watch industry (SMH has been renamed Swatch Group). The wave of product innovations did not stop there, and Swatch designs proliferated so rapidly that observers were left breathless. Even today, it is hard to imagine that the makers of Omega and Swatch are the same. The rate of internal innovation was high too. A Swatch that took 151 components now takes just 51. Costs are down and economies of scale have come in. In that lies marketing lesson that luxury product marketers are learning across the world: high-quality and reasonable pricing is a potent combination, particularly for high-end manufacturers seeking volumes. Despite the global success of that strategy, Swatch is treading cautiously in India.

India, with its varying cultural nuances, is a unique market, it acknowledges. As in the case of Omega, Swatch is toying with the idea of using Indian themes to communicate with its target audience. The company has identified three core segments as potential customers. The brand is targeted to trend-conscious youth and product-conscious women segment, working men, who prefer casual clothing at times, and people who want a watch to match the style of their Allen Solly or Color Plus get-up.

Building brand equity needs to be considered when there are measurable differences among the competing brands. There are many factors which influence branding decision and targeting customers in selected market segments. The stages of the brand life cycle, extent of preference diversities, competitive advantages and market attractiveness are the major factors that influence branding decisions in a firm. Besides, the industry structure, capabilities and resources of marketing organization and consumer behavior analysis are also used as tools for decision making to determine the target markets. The process of building brand equity should possess the following attributes:

Table 6.1 Constituents of Brand Equity Process

Constituents Attributes of Market Segmentation Premium

Brands

Market must be large enough to warrant the penetration of brand. It is not advisable to position the premium or flagship brands in a niche or a market that is already very small

Brand

Differentiation

Differences among the brand line of a given product category should be identifiable and measurable in the market as well by the customers

Brand

Responsiveness

Once the brand is positioned, effective communication should address the ways brand offers customer value and contribute to the growth of a firm.

Brand Accessibility

Each brand must be reachable through one or more media and able to disseminate the message effectively to the target customers. If the brand offers value to a specific segment of customers, the firm should determine effective media and communication vehicle.

Multiple-brand Benefits

Brand targets must not only differ on demographic and psychographic characteristics, they must also differ on the benefits derived from the brand community. Even commodities like sugar and rice brands can be positioned on the basis of derived benefits of customers in a given market.

Profitability The expected profits from brand extensions may be planned effectively reaching buyer segments.

There are two basic ways to develop the brand differentiation, which may include some criteria of user perspectives as described below:

1) Heavy versus moderate and light users 2) Men versus women.

3) Younger versus older users

4) Existing verses potential consumers 5) North versus south regions.

6) New or old market clusters.

7) Brand loyal buyers versus non- brand buyers.

Primary brand research is used to collect classification and descriptor variables for members of the target market. Brand differentiators may not be defined until a firm secures the customer patronage and competitive advantage for doing so. Strategically the brands are managed separately and independently. On some occasions, the brands are introduced in the

market on temporary basis. This strategy requires decision making to allocate appropriately the resources to the identified brands. Brand personality is the core-measuring tool of the brand management exercise. The brand management strategy consists of five major constituents as exhibited in figure 6.2. Effective customer service is the province of a few luxury companies which attempt to build their brand value in premium segment like airline companies. However, companies which position themselves for the mass market provide outstanding customer-company interactions by delivering effective services to reflect the brand's core values³. Brand leveraging may be defined as an exercise using an existing brand name to enter a new product category. Brand leveraging is potentially very attractive. It makes use of the existing consumer awareness, good will and loyalty. Such exercise of brand positioning is cost effective and reflects greater emphasis on brand. The Procter and Gamble adopted a brand leveraging strategy in the introduction of its sanitary hygiene product Always.

The P&G adopted similar strategy for introducing the liquid detergent Tide as a new category of product. In order to implement an effective brand strategy it is necessary to identify an appropriate category of branding.

Figure 6.2. Strategic Brand Management Constituents.

The brand leveraging strategy by a company may be adapted through extending the product line category. The new product line can be formed by stretching it to cater the mass or class market consumers. Sometimes the companies prefer to form a new product line instead of stretching the existing product line vertically or horizontally. The co-banding or brand hiring strategies also provide the brand leverage which may give opportunities for more franchising and better sales promotion of the products and services. Whenever a new product line of the company is developed, it should be decided whether a new brand name or use an existing names. The example may be cited of Coca-Cola Company when it first developed the diet cola drink; it chose to use a new name tag instead of capitalizing on its existing consumer brand to promote franchise by using the Diet Coke. However, later in competition to Diet Pepsi the Coca-Cola Company countered its rival by using Diet Coke which is one of the best seller products now in the market. On the other extreme, the company could have introduced a new brand in a new category, and presented it in the market as a solely new product.

3 Bendapudi Neeli and Bendapudi Venkat (2005), Creating the living brand, Harvard Business Review, 83 (5), 124-132

Long before children enter school, most have already been socialized into play, social values, behaviors, attitudes and linguistic repertoires shaped by the videogames, Television (TV) programs and spin-off toys which constitute childhood experience. Childhood culture is an imaginary universe which connects TV programs to movies, videogames, toys, T-shirts, shoes, games, crayons, coloring books, bed linens and towels, pencil cases, lunch boxes, and even wallpaper. Beyond the merchandise transformations of movie or TV program characters, media icons extend to fast food chain or cereal box-top contests and special give-away deals, shopping mall entertainments featuring the recent cartoons Lion King, Ice Age or Spirit from Walt Disney productions and contests such a prize trip to Disney Land to meet the characters create a business platform for the target group though cultural penetrations. TV shapes the child's early age into narrative and consumption styles by being located in the centre of family life (however families may be constituted), and by cross referencing to other narrative forms such as movies, stories, comic books, videogames, music videos (often movie soundtracks), of which toys and teens' popular culture are an integral extension. In that regard TV serves as a kind of clearing house for both the verbal communication and artifacts of consumption. For children, the jump from narrative to commodities from Transformer cartoons to Transformer toys; from Disney cartoons to McDonald's give-aways of characters forms the background cultural tapestry that childhood is experiencing in western countries inculcating the consumption behavior. Besides, parents also show interest in taking their children to a fast-food corner and purchase the latest collectibles, and buy the TV advertised cereal or peanut butter that children insist on to avoid embarrassing conflicts in the supermarket. These everyday consumer and social practices constitute social and material relations between parents and children⁴.

The brand equity may be understood as the highest value paid for the brand names during buy-outs and mergers. This concept may be defined as the incremental value of a business above the value of its physical assets due to the market positioning achieved by its bran and the extension potential of the brand⁵. Brand equity consists of the strength of the brand along with the brand presentation strategy and its association with the user groups. The brand equity is largely reflected in the market behaviour comprising market share, price, perceived quality, distribution efficiency, and consumer loyalty and promotion strategy. In the market, a strong brand will be considered to have high brand equity. The brand equity will be higher if the brand loyalty, awareness, perceived quality; strong channel relationships and association of trademarks and patents are higher. High brand equity provides many competitive advantages to the company. The company may have low price and high consumer loyalty and also more trade leverage. It would be difficult to measure the brand equity of various brands in the market as the parameter are very subjective and the whole exercise may turn out to be arbitrary⁶. The brand equity has four major variable viz. awareness, acceptability, preference and brand loyalty and the integration of all these variables make the brand equity of the company high. The brand equity further leads to brand personality of the company. The company may decide the brand personality strategy after analyzing the strength and weakness of the existing brands in the market. The research on assessing the brand personality may be

4 Sonia Livingstone and Ellen Helsper : Advertising Foods to Children: Understanding Promotion In The Context Of Children’s Daily Lives, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, May ,2004

5 Tauber, Edward M: Brand Leverage: Strategy for Growth in a Cost-control World, Journal of Advertising Research, August-September, 1998.

6 Aaker, David A : Managing Brand Equity, The Free Press, New York , 1991, pp 20-46

conducted by using the brand rating method to get quantitative measures. The methods of photo sorting (trademark) phrase writing and simulation games may be used for assessing the brand personality. The sample consumers for this purpose should be self-directed, principled, externally directed, status oriented action-oriented consumers and non-driven consumers. The effective strategy for implementing the brand personality measures would be to go for aggressive advertising using the consumer reviews and comparative product advantages.

However, consistency in the message should be taken care of properly.