BRAND MANAGEMENT

Module 1
WHAT IS A BRAND?
WHAT IS A BRAND?
Kellogs School of Management define brand as “a brand is a set
of associations linked to the name, mark, or symbol associated with
a product or service.”

Kapferer defines “Brands are intangible assets, assets that

produce added benefits for the business”.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NAME AND A BRAND
❖ A name doesn’t have associations: it is simply a name.
❖ A name becomes a brand when people link it to other things.
❖ A brand is much like a reputation. Just like reputations, brand
associations may not always be positive, it can be positive or
negative.
❖ Remember - Virtually everything can become a brand
BRAND ASSOCIATION
❖ Malaysia Airlines – negative after two crashes
❖ Facebook – negative about privacy issues
❖ Coke – Positive about refreshing, tasty, and happiness. Negative
about Health.
❖ Uber – Positive about ease, value, and practicality. Negative about
toxic corporate culture.
❖ McDonald – Positive about quick, tasty meal. Negative about
health.
BRAND PERSONALITY

*Jennifer Aaker (1997) ‘Dimensions of brand personality’

COLOURS – WHAT DO THEY SIGNIFY?
HOW DOES BRANDS ADD VALUE?
BRANDS SHAPE PERCEPTIONS
❖ Brands have a remarkable ability to impact the way consumers view
products.
❖ Consumers rarely see only a product or service; they see the product
together with the brand.
❖ As a result, how they perceive the product is shaped by the brand.
❖ How people perceive something matters far more than the absolute
truth. The question generally isn’t which product or service is best; the
question is which product or service people think is best.
BRANDS DIFFERENTIATE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
In a competitive market it is hard to succeed without differentiation.
When customers realize that the offerings are all similar, they tend to
focus on price.
Brands provide a clear basis for differentiation. With a distinctive and
valuable brand, people will pay more.
Brand differentiation isn’t just about perceptions—brands can change
how we think about products and services.
BRANDS DIFFERENTIATE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Several years ago a team of researchers used brain-scan technology
to evaluate how people reacted to unbranded and branded Coca-
Cola.
When unbranded, people evaluated the soda in a purely sensory
manner, reacting to the taste and flavor.
After learning that they were drinking Coke, people reacted in a very
different fashion, with the brain scans showing activation in very
different parts of the brain
BRANDS ATTRACT AND RETAIN EMPLOYEES
As the global economy improves, more and more firms are struggling
to attract and retain the best employees.
Branding plays a critical role in this process: people want to work for
firms with positive brands, and they will avoid companies with weak or
negative brands
A team led by Professor Nader Tavassoli at the London Business
School recently studied the impact of branding on staffing. The results
were fascinating— the stronger the brand, the less executives earned
BRANDS ATTRACT AND RETAIN EMPLOYEES
At companies with desirable brands, people accepted lower salaries.
The logical explanation is that people are eager to work at companies
with strong brands and are therefore more flexible when it comes to
salary negotiation
BRAND EQUITY
 WHAT IS BRAND EQUITY
❖ Definitions of brand equity vary considerably, and tend to reflect
disciplinary concerns.
❖ David Aaker provides a general definition of brand equity: “A set of
assets (or liabilities) linked to a brand’s name and symbol that adds (or
subtracts from) the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or
that firm’s customers.”
❖ Aaker’s definition aligns closely with a financial view of brand equity.
In this view, branded-assets can be the symbolic properties of the brand
as well as the size and loyalty of the brand’s customer base, and other
benefits.
WHAT IS BRAND EQUITY
Brands are reputational assets that can benefit or harm a firm’s offering
and valuation. Although we tend to only talk about increases or
decreases in brand equity, sometimes a brand can have negative equity.

Academics and practitioners tend to focus on four main audiences:

customers, financial markets, employees, and channels.
CUSTOMER-BASED BRAND EQUITY (CBBE)
❖ Customer-based brand equity (CBBE): “The differential effect of
brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of that brand”
(Keller 1993, p. 2).
❖ All those consumers camping outside of Apple stores for the latest
iPhone provide an example of CBBE - users’ love of the brand means
they trade up to the new product, often selling their perfectly good
existing phone on a secondary exchange.
FINANCIAL-BASED BRAND EQUITY
❖ Financial-based brand equity: The differential effect of the brand
on the firm’s balance sheet.
❖ When stock-market analysts write reports on which stocks to buy,
sell, or hold, their decisions are partially based on beliefs about the
strength of the brand.
❖ A Blue Chip stock, for example, is one that has delivered strong
returns over many years, partly as a result of a strong relationship with
its customers and an ability to outperform others.
EMPLOYEE-BASED BRAND EQUITY
❖ Employee-based brand equity: The differential effect of the brand
on potential and current employees.
❖ Do employees consider their personal brand to be worth more due to
an association with your company, or worth less?
❖ If the firm’s brand adds to their perceived personal brand, they may
trade off income as a result, whereas if it’s the opposite, they may
require a higher salary as compensation (assuming they work for you at
all).
CHANNEL EQUITY
❖ Channel equity: the differential effect of the brand to channel
partners such as distributors and retailers.
❖ Brands such as Coke are essential for retailers, while others, such as
Apple, bring people into stores.
❖ A brand’s equity among channel partners is important, especially
when it “pulls” people into a store (which then creates demand back
down the supply chain) or drives them to a website.
❖ Some brands out of arrogance can abuse this and find themselves
being subject to extreme discounting.
DEFINITIONS OF BRAND EQUITY
❖ As can be seen from these definitions, all refer to the differential
effect of the brand.
❖ Keller’s customer-based definition focuses on whether what consumers
know about the brand affects their response to brand-driven marketing
activities such as our preparedness to pay a higher price, choose one
product over another, adopt new products or brand extensions, and
engage with advertising, social media, theme-branded stores and so on.
KELLER’S APPROACH
Keller’s approach is based on three principles:
1. Brand equity arises from consumer responses to marketing for the
brand.
2. Brand knowledge, or what consumers learn, feel, and experience over
time, has an impact on brand equity (the more we know and like about the
brand, the stronger the equity).
3. The differential effect is reflected in consumer perceptions, preferences,
and behavior vis-à-vis all the marketing activities associated with the
brand.
 BRAND EQUITY
❖ The financial approach attempts to examine the effect of brand on
important indicators such as share price, return on investment, financial
multiples, firm valuation, and so on.
❖ Employee brand equity examines the power of the brand on current
employees’ satisfaction, retention, self-identity, willingness to trade off
financial reward, and recommend others. Looks at power of a brand in
attracting potential employees. Does a strong brand lower expectations
of salary?
❖ These are important questions and, in general, research is
demonstrating significant impacts on brands across all three domains.
BRAND EQUITY
❖ Although brand equity and brand value are often used
interchangeably, it is also important at this stage to identify the
differences between the two.
❖ Financial brand equity or value is largely concerned with an estimate
of the brand’s worth to the firm.
❖ Customer brand equity examines the strength of the relationship
between the consumer and the brand.
BRAND EQUITY
❖ A small, niche brand for example may have a high degree of
customer brand equity, but the small size of that target market may
mean its financial brand equity or value is low.
❖ Likewise, brands such as Exxon-Mobil often have very high financial
brand equity, but given their near commodity status and the influence of
geographic location and need (running out of gas) on choice of petrol
station, the customer relationship with this brand is relatively weak (i.e.,
customer brand equity is low).
FINANCIAL POWER OF BRANDS
❖ Interest in the financial benefits of brands and brand-related
activities (such as advertising) has a long history.
❖ The view that one’s name or the name of a brand was valuable and
therefore needed protection drove governments to develop trademark
law (in the fight against counterfeits)
❖ Advertising agencies such as JWT spent considerable resources on
understanding brand loyalty, the impact of brand loyalty on sales, and
the power of the brand name on advertising effectiveness.
FINANCIAL POWER OF BRANDS
❖ The value of brand loyalty remains subject of much debate to this
day, with some suggesting there is too much emphasis on existing
customers at the expense of growing sales (Singh and Uncles 2016).
❖
STRONG BRANDS DELIVER
❖ Higher margins: As the Interbrand study suggests, strong brands can
deliver 27–33 percent premiums over weaker brands or commodities.
This may seem obvious in the context of brands such as Apple, Boeing,
Microsoft, and Gucci, but it is just as true for well positioned discounter
brand such as Ryanair, who also outperform weaker brands.
❖ Profits: Those skeptical of brand equity often argue that brands such
as Apple have relatively low market shares when compared to
Samsung or laptop manufacturers such as Dell and Toshiba.
STRONG BRANDS DELIVER
❖ A buffer against downturns and poor performance: brands with
stronger customer relationships enjoy stronger returns during good times
and bad (which means they’re often likely to attract low-risk,
conservative investment funds).
❖ Better returns than weaker brands in both business-to-consumer and
business-to-business markets (although this is partially moderated by the
strength of commodity cycles in some industries such as mining).
❖ A significant amount of a firm’s intangible value: this is growing all
the time. Intangibles represented 50 percent of firms’ balance sheets in
2007, whereas today they account for almost 80 percent.
BRAND ELEMENTS
WHAT ARE BRAND ELEMENTS
❖ Brand elements are the unique aspects of your brand, like
▪ name,
▪ logo,
▪ characters,
▪ packaging,
▪ color schemes,
▪ jingles etc,
that create a cohesive, recognizable image for your business and extend
into everything you create.
❖ Brand elements also help you stand out from your competitors.
BRAND RESONANCE
BRAND RESONANCE
The Brand Resonance refers to the relationship that a consumer has with
the product and how well he can relate to it.

The resonance is the intensity of customer’s psychological connection with

the brand and the randomness to recall the brand in different
consumption situations.
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

The brand Salience means,

how well the customer
knows the product and how
often it is evoked under the
purchase situations?
BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

Brand Performance
means, how well the
functional needs of
customers are met.
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

The Brand Imagery means,

what product image the
customer create in their
minds
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

Brand Judgement means,

What customer decides
with respect to the product
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

The Brand feelings means,

what customers feel, for the
product or how the
customer is emotionally
attached to the product
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID

The Brand Resonance

means, what psychological
bond, the customer has
created with the brand
 BRAND RESONANCE PYRAMID
The resonance is the intensity
of customer’s psychological
connection with the brand and
the randomness to recall the
brand in different consumption
situations.
BRAND POSITIONING
BRAND POSITIONING
❖ Brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the mind
of your customers. More than a tagline or a fancy logo, brand positioning
is the strategy used to set your business apart from the rest.
❖ Effective brand positioning happens when a brand is perceived as
favorable, valuable, and credible to the consumer.
❖ This is important because being "different" from the competition isn’t
enough to win in the market. "You only get the opportunity to position
your brand when you’re doing something remarkable. Anything else and
it’s just comparison."
BRAND POSITIONING
A brand’s positioning strategy can be summarized in a formal
positioning statement that includes four elements:
i. a target,
ii. a frame of reference,
iii. a point of difference, and a
iv. sreason to believe.
This statement is an internal document that is used to align all consumer-
facing decisions related to the brand (i.e., decisions about elements of
brand design, touchpoints, advertising, etc.).
CLASS ACTIVITY
Deliberate about the Brand elements, Resonance and Brand Positioning for these
brands
1. McDonalds (Food)
2. IPL (Sports)
3. Louis Vuitton (Fashion)
4. Byju (Edtech)
5. Cred (Fintech)