Roles of Brands in

Marketing
Unit -1
 What is a Brand?
• Distinguish goods of one producer from another

• Derived from the Norse Word “brandr” which means to

burn.
 Definition
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 a group of sellers and to differentiate
them from those of competition’

- American Marketing Association

 What a brand is….
Something that creates
• Awareness,
• Reputation,
• Prominence in the market place.
 Brand Elements
The different components of a brand that identify and
differentiate are called as Brand elements.
• Name
• Logo
• Symbol
• Package design
• Other characteristics
 Brand Name strategies
• Company name- Samsung, Micromax
• Individual brand names- Tide, surf, Lux
• Retailers brands – John Miller, Code
• People’s name- Tommy Hilfiger, Ritu Kumar
• Animals and Flowers- Dove, Mustang
• Others- Apple, Dell
 Brands Vs Products
Anything that we offer to a market for
• Attention
• Acquisition
• Use
• Consumption that satisfy a need or want – Product
 Levels of a product
• Core benefit
• Generic Product
• Expected product
• Augmented product
• Potential product
 Types of Products

1. Consumer Products:
- Bought by final consumers for personal consumption
- Categorized as…
a. Convenience products ;
- Bought frequently, immediately with minimum comparison and
buying effort.
- Are low priced
- Available in many locations
e.g. Soap, candy, newspapers, fast food
Convenience products
Consumer products
b. Shopping Product;
- Characteristically compared on the basis of
suitability, quality, price and style while selection
and purchase.

- Distributed through fewer outlets

e.g. Furniture, clothing, used cars, major appliances,
hotel and airline services.
Shopping products
c. Specialty Product;
- Has unique characteristics or brand identification for which a
significant group of buyer is willing to make a special purchase
effort
- People travel even long distances to buy them (Lamborghini)
- No comparison is involved in buying.
e.g. Specific brands, types of cars, high priced photographic
equipments, designer clothes, services of medical/ legal
specialists
d. Unsought Product;
- Consumer either does not know about/ knows about but
does not normally think of buying it.
- Require a lot of advertising, personal selling and
marketing efforts.
e.g. Life insurance, pre planned funeral services and
blood donations.
2. Industrial Products:
- Distinguished from consumer products on the basis of
usage
e.g. A lawn mower.
1.Materials & parts
i. Raw materials & parts:
- Farm products, (wheat, cotton, livestock, fruits,
vegetables)
- Natural products (fish, lumber, crude oils, iron ore)
ii. Manufactured materials & parts:
- component materials (iron yarn, cement, wires)
- Component parts ( small motors, tires, castings)
b. Capital items
- Aid in buyer’s production or operations
i. Installations:
- Major purchases (factories, offices)
- fixed equipment ( generators, elevators,
computer systems)
ii. Accessory equipments:
- Portable factory equipments and tools (hand
tools, lift trucks)
- Office equipments ( computers, fax machines, desks)
c. Supplies and Services:
- Are convenience products
i. Supplies
- Operating supplies (Lubricants, coal,
paper, pencil)
- Repair and maintenance (paint, nails,
brooms)
ii. Services
- Maintenance and repair services (window clearing,
computer repair)
- Business advisory services ( legal, management,
consulting, advertising)
 DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCT LINES

• Product line Series of related products offered by one company.

DESIRE TO GROW

• Growth potential limited if company focuses on a single product.

ENHANCING COMPANY’S POSITION IN THE MARKET

• Entire lines of products make company more important to consumers and

marketing intermediaries.
OPTIMAL USE OF COMPANY RESOURCES

• Spreading operations costs over a series of product lines reduces the

average production and marketing costs of each product.
 THE PRODUCT MIX
• Assortment of product lines and individual product offerings that the company sells.
• Product mix width—Number of product lines a firm offers.
• Product mix length—Number of different products a firm sells.
• Product mix depth—Variations in each product that the firm markets in its mix.
PRODUCT MIX DECISIONS

• Firms evaluate the effectiveness of the width, length, and depth to make decisions about
adding or eliminating products from their offerings.
• Line extension—adding individual offerings that appeal to different market segments while
remaining closely related to the existing product line.
 THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
• Product life cycle Progression of a product through introduction,
growth, maturity, and decline stages.
STAGES IN THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

Introduction
Growth
Maturity
Decline
 EXTENDING THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
• Product life cycles can be extended indefinitely as a result of
marketers’ decisions.
INCREASING FREQUENCY OF USE

• Convincing current customers to buy a product more frequently

boosts total sales even if no new buyers enter the market.
INCREASING THE NUMBER OF USERS

• Attracting new customers who have not previously used the

product.
FINDING NEW USES

• New applications extend a product’s life cycle.

CHANGING PACKAGE SIZES, LABELS, OR PRODUCT QUALITY

• Example: Food marketers produce packages designed to

appeal to one-person households.
• Example: Kraft’s 100-calorie Snack Packs, which package
snacks in 100 calorie amounts.
 PRODUCT DELETION DECISIONS
• Marketers prune product lines and eliminate marginal products to
preserve limited resources.
• Firms may carry poor performing items to carry a complete
product line.
• Shortages or raw materials can prompt a firm to discontinue
production.
• Firm may drop products that don’t fit into the direction in which
it plans to grow.
 Products VS Brands
The new competition is not between what companies
produce in a factory, but on what they add to their factory
output in the form of packaging-services- advertising-
customer advice- financing- delivery arrangements-
warehousing and others which people value

A brand is more than a product as it can have the

dimensions that differentiate it in some way from other
products designed to satisfy the same need.
 Differentiating points
The major point differentiating a brands is the
• Sum total of the consumers perceptions and feelings
about the product’s attributes
• How they perform
• Brand name and what is stands for
• The company associated with the brand
 Competitive advantage
• Products- Performance – continuous innovation-
investment in R&D- Technology adoption

• Brands – understanding consumer motivations- -desires-

intangible image associations
 Importance of a Brand
• Consumers
• Manufacturers
 Consumers
• Identification of he source of a product
• Assignment of responsibility of product maker
• Risk reducer
• Search cost reducer
• Promise, bond or pact with the maker of the product
• Symbolic device
• Signal of quality
 Manufacturers
• Means of identification to simplify handling or tracing
• Means of legally protecting unique features
• Signal of quality level to satisfied customers
• Means of endowing products with unique associations
• Source of competitive advantage
• Source of financial returns
 Products and their associated attributes

• Search goods

• Experience goods

• Credence goods
 Risk Reduction by brands

• Functional risk

• Physical risk

• Financial risk

• Social risk

• Psychological risk

• Time risk
 Can everything be branded?
• The key to branding is that consumers perceive
differences among brands in a particular category
• Commodities when they become brands they are also
differentiated.
Products
• Physical goods
• Business to business products
• High tech products
Services
Retailers and Distributors
Online products and services
People and organizations
Sports arts and entertainment
Geographic locations
Ideas and causes
 Branding challenges and Opportunities
• Savvy consumers
• Brand proliferation
• Media fragmentation
• Increasing competition
• Increased costs
• Greater accountability
 Savvy Consumers
• Increasing experience in judging products and services
• Traditional communications don’t work
• Weary- seen it all attitude
 Brand proliferation
• Brand extensions
• Line extensions
 Media fragmentation
• Cost
• Clutter
• Fragmentation
• Technology
 Increased competition
• Globalization
• Low-priced competitors
• Brand extensions
• Deregulation
 Increased costs
• New product launches are increasingly becoming costly
• Total failure cost
 Greater Accountability
• Ambitious short term profit margins
• Rapid job turn over
Types of Brands
 On the basis of Ownership
Manufacturer’s brand
If the manufacturing firm itself gives brand name to its
products, it is called manufacturer's brand. Ownership of
such brand lies with manufacturer.
Middleman's brand
Some producers sell their products to middlemen,
wholesalers and retailers without branding. Wholesalers or
retailers sell such products giving seal of own brand name.
This is called middleman's brand.
Types of brand on the basis of market area
• Local brand
If supply of product is limited to local level, and the brand is
only in local area, such brand is called local brand. This
type of brand is used for the products sold or supplied to
limited area. Such type of brand is also called regional
brand.
• National brand
The products which are sold or supplied to all over the
nation with only one named seal, this is called national
brand.
 Types of brand on the basis of number of
products
• Family brand
If a producer/manufacturing company gives same brand name
to its different products, this is called family brands. If a
company produces different products of different nature, types
and classes, it gives same brand name to the products of same
class.
Individual brand
The brand name used for only one product is called individual
brand. Even if the products are of same class, but different
brand names are used for different products, such brands are
called individual brand.
 Other types
• Personal brand – Otherwise known as individual brand. The brand
a person builds around themselves, normally to enhance their
career opportunities. Often associated with how people portray and
market themselves via media. The jury’s out on whether this should
be called a form of brand because whilst it may be a way to add
value, it often lacks a business model to commercialize the strategy.
• Product brand – Elevating the perceptions of commodities/goods
so that they are associated with ideas and emotions that exceed
functional capability. Consumer packaged goods brands (CPG),
otherwise known as fast moving consumer goods brands (FMCG),
are a specific application.
 Other types
• Corporate brand – Otherwise known as the organizational brand. David Aaker puts it
very well: “The corporate brand defines the firm that will deliver and stand behind
the offering that the customer will buy and use.” The reassurance that provides for
customers comes from the fact that “a corporate brand will potentially have a rich
heritage, assets and capabilities, people, values and priorities, a local or global frame
of reference, citizenship programs, and a performance record”.

• Investor brand – Normally applied to publicly listed brands and to the investor
relations function. Positions the listed entity as an investment and as a performance
stock, blending financials and strategy with aspects such as value proposition,
purpose and, increasingly, wider reputation via CSR. As Mike Tisdall will tell you,
done well, a strong investor brand delivers share price resilience and an informed
 Other types
• Generic brand – The brand you become when you lose
distinctiveness. Takes three forms. The first is specific to
healthcare and alludes to those brands that have fallen out of
patent protection and now face competition from a raft of same-
ingredient imitators known as generics. The second form of
generic brand is the brand where the name has become
ubiquitous and in so doing has passed into common language as
a verb – Google, Xerox, Sellotape. The third form is the
unbranded, unlabelled product that has a functional description for
a name but no brand value at all. This last form is the ultimate in
commoditization.
 Other types
• Luxury brand – Prestige brands that deliver social status and
endorsement to the consumer. Luxury brands must negotiate the
fine line between exclusivity and reality. They do this through
quality, association and story. These brands have perfected the
delivery of image and aspiration to their markets, yet they remain
vulnerable to shifts in perception and consumer confidence and
they are under increasing pressure from “affordable luxury”
brands. Coach for example struggled with revenues in 2014
because of declining sales growth in China and Japan, two of the
world’s key luxury markets.
 Other types
• Cult brand – The brands that revolve around communities of
fierce advocates. Like the challenger brands, these brands often
pick fights with “enemies” that can range from other companies to
ideas, but pure-play cult brands take their cues from their own
passions and obsessions rather than the market or their rivals.
They tend to have followers rather than customers, set the rules
and ask people to comply and, if they market at all, do so in ways
where people come to them rather than the other way around.
• Clean slate brand – The pop-ups of brand. Fast moving,
unproven, even unknown brands that don’t rely on the heritage
and history that are so much a part of mainstream brand strategy.
These brands feed consumers’ wish for the new and the timely.
 Other types
Employer brand – The ability of a company to attract high quality
staff in much-touted competitive markets. Often tied to an Employee
Value Proposition. Focuses on the recruiting process though it is
sometimes expanded to include the development of a healthy and
productive culture. Sadly, given the process obsession of too many
HR staff and the lack of interest from a lot of marketing people to
venture into people-issues, this tends to be a brand in name rather
than a brand by nature. Great potential – but, given the very low
satisfaction rates across corporate cultures globally, a lot more work
is needed to realize the full potential of this idea.
 Brand Equity
Principles of branding and brand equity
– Differences in outcomes arise from the
“added value” endowed to a product.
– The added value can be created for a
brand in many different ways.
– Brand equity provides a common
denominator for interpreting marketing
strategies and assessing the value of a
brand.
– There are many different ways in which the
value of a brand can be exploited to benefit
the firm.
Strategic Brand Management Process

Identifying and Developing Brand Plans

Designing and Implementing Brand Marketing

Programs

Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance

Growing and Sustaining Brand Equity

Identifying and Developing Brand Plans

Brand Positioning Model

Brand Resonance Model

Brand Value Chain

Designing and Implementing Brand Marketing
Program

Choosing Brand Elements

Integrating the Brand into Marketing Activities and the

Supporting Marketing Program

Leveraging Secondary Associations

Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance

To manage brands profitably, managers

must implement a brand equity
measurement system.
Brand equity measurement system
involves:
– Brand audits
– Brand tracking studies
– Brand equity management system
 Growing and Sustaining Brand Equity

Defining Brand Architecture

Managing Brand Equity Over Time

Managing Brand Equity Over Geographic

Boundaries, Cultures, and Market Segments
Figure 1.12: Strategic Brand
Management Process
History of branding
 History of branding
• Branding started in Sweden in the middle age (476-1492)
when the ruling economy was the agrarian and
commodities were extracted from the natural world: animal,
mineral, vegetables, etc.
• A brand was the action of burning a symbol into the flesh of
a Norse in order to signify ownership of the animal.
Entomology tells us that the word “brand” is a degenerate
of the old Norse word “brandr”.
 History of branding
• Emergence of National Manufacturer brands – 1860 to 1914

• Dominance of Mass Marketed Brands- 1915 to 1929

• Challenges to Manufacturer brands – 1930 to 1945

• Establishment of Brand Management standards – 1946 to

1985
 Strategic Brand Management
• design and
Strategic brand management involves
implementation of marketing programs and
activities
• to build,
• measure,
• manage BE
• Strategic brand management process involves four main steps:
1) Identify and establish brand positioning and values
2) Plan and implement brand marketing programs
3) Measure and interpret brand performance
4) Grow and sustain BE 62
 Strategic Brand Management Process
STEPS KEY CONCEPTS
Mental maps
Identify and Establish Competitive frame of reference
Brand Positioning and Values Points-of-parity and points-of-difference
Core brand values
Brand mantra

Plan and Implement Mixing and matching of brand elements

Brand Marketing Programs Integrating brand marketing activities
Leveraging of secondary associations

Brand Value Chain

Measure and Interpret Brand audits
Brand Performance Brand tracking
Brand equity management system

Brand-product matrix
Grow and Sustain Brand portfolios and hierarchies
Brand Equity Brand expansion strategies
Brand reinforcement and revitalization
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 New Branding Challenges

• Brands are important as ever

– Consumer need for simplification
– Consumer need for risk reduction
• Brand management is as difficult as ever
– Savvy consumers
– Increased competition
– Decreased effectiveness of traditional marketing tools and
emergence of new marketing tools
– Complex brand and product portfolios

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 The Customer/Brand Challenge

• In this difficult environment, marketers must

have a keen understanding of:
– customers
– brands
– the relationship between the two

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Thank you