Impacts of Internet on Branding

   The emergence of Internet has become a big change in anyone’s and on any company’s life. Nowadays internet is used for any purpose; school, work, chat, cooking instructions, and anything one’s can think of. The availability of the internet has also a big impact of marketing and brand management. Travis Daryl in his article” Branding in The Digital Age” explains how the internet has changed the process of branding.

    Back in the days, keeping the good reputation of a company and a brand name was easy. Things were going just one way. Daryl explains how the companies or brands used to hide behind the public relations to keep a good reputation for their names. They showed only what they wanted the consumers to perceive. The author said that “in the twentieth century's mass communication was that just about every man, woman, and child in America could recite the mantras of the most popular brands as easily as their own names”.

Now came the internet, and “The Perils of Word of Mouse Brands are now an open book for all to look into”, Daryl Travis. Most people have computers or access to computers. The words of the manufacturers a not taken for granted now. Everybody can go online and leave a feedback for a product or give their impressions about a product. Consumers create discussion blogs and have more power with just a click.

As on everything, the internet has both positive and negative sides.

It helps the consumers and the manufacturers 

• Keep the brand honest.
• Create demand for a brand.
• Give more details and information about a product.
• consumer explore their options and directly talk back.
• The manufacturer know exactly what consumers need.
• Brand Loyalty (the option of “customizing your own” makes the consumer like your brand).

The down sides

• The reputation of brands is in the hands of the consumers who can write whatever they like true or not about a product.
• “customers will go looking for a brand based on what they want rather than the brand doing all the work of making a connection” Daryl Travis.
• Increase competition.

Citations

Travis, Daryl. "Branding in The Digital Age." Journal of Business Strategy. 22.3 (2001): 14-18. Print.

Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is broadly defined as the tendency of some consumers to continue buying the same brand of goods rather than competing brands. What make a consumer be loyal to a brand, what is the process to reach the brand loyalty by a consumer?

In their article A tri-dimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty, Worthington, Steve; Russell-bennett, Rebekah; and Härtel, Charmine explain that brand loyalty is based on three dimensions: cognitive responses (I think), emotive responses (I feel) and behavioral responses (I do).

• Cognitive loyalty is what makes a consumer to stay with a brand. Härtel defines cognitive loyalty as psychological preference for a brand consisting of positive beliefs and thoughts about purchasing a brand on the next purchase occasion.  Cognitive loyalty is based on prices and features of a product.
• Emotional loyalty relates to the feelings involved and evoked while purchasing a product and the emotional connection a consumer feels with a brand. Härtel defines emotional loyalty as an affective commitment to a brand consisting of positive feelings about and attachment to purchasing a brand on the next purchase occasion.
• Behavioral loyalty is the tendency to re-purchase the same brand; it is the consumer brand preference.

The authors said “brand loyalty is therefore the combination of a consumer's thoughts and feelings about a brand that are then expressed as an action”.

In their article, the authors talked about different types and level of loyals.

1. Stable loyals: these consumers really like your brand, they feel emotionally connected to the brand, had positive experiences with the products (price and features), and choose the brand over the others.
2. Passionate loyals: this type of consumers has a high level of emotional loyalty to the brand. “These products are likely to be purchased for enjoyment or entertainment, such as movies, sports, and image-related consumption, where the value derived is emotional in nature”.
3. Hot potentials: These consumers like your brand, have had good experiences with the products or services, but do not buy your brand either at all or regularly.
4. Vulnerable:  this category buys the brand but do not have any emotional connection to it and may choose another brand for better options.
5. Functional loyals: these consumers buy the products on the regular basis but do not have any emotional attachment to the brand.
6. Cold potentials: These consumers have a high opinion of your brand; however, they have no emotional attachment and do not purchase the brand.
7. Disloyals: These consumers have no predisposition towards your brand and do not buy it, but could be a potential target market.

Citations

Worthington, Steve, Rebekah Russell-bennett, and Charmine Härtel. "A tri-dimensional approach for auditing brand loyalty." Journal of Brand Management . 17.4 (2010): 243-253. Print.

Consumer Perceptions of Store Brands Versus National Brands

Store Brand is broadly defined as “a product manufactured specially for a retailer and bearing the retailer's name.” example: Minute Maid. In the other hand National Brand is “The brand name of a product that is distributed nationally under a brand name owned by the producer or distributor; brand name owned by a manufacturer or other producer.” Example: Fiesta, Kroger, and H.E.B. These two brands can be compered based on how consumers perceived them. In consumers mind, and for business, the brand is what differentiates products in the competitive environment.

In their studies, De Wulf, Kristof; Gaby Odekerken-SchröderView Profile; Goedertier, Frank; Gino Van Ossel affirm that consumers have stronger preferences for national brand than store brand. The consumers tend to see the national brand as superior (which leads them to sell their product at higher prices). We can all notice when we go to grocery stores that the store brand products are at lower prices, poorly packed and are almost never advertising. Unlike, national brands gamble on image, advertisement, and promises for quality to reach brand equity to enjoy premium prices.

In their studies, these authors took minute maid orange juice and a store brand orange juice for a bling test taste. The result shows that the national brand and the store brand orange juice; which have the same ingredients are both appreciated by the customers. This study leads to the conclusion that consumers choices are led by the image that the brand reflects.  It also shows that once the customers (low price sensitive customers) have brand loyalty for the store brand, they tend to by the store brand in every store they go to.

After comparing these two brands, we can list some other brands types:

Private brands:  brand name placed on products marketed by wholesalers and retailers such as Kleenex.

Captive brands:  national brands that are sold exclusively by retail chain such as Kmart.

Family brand:  brand name that identifies several related products such as Heinz.

Individual brand:  unique brand name that identifies a specific offering within a firm’s product line and that is not grouped under a family brand such as Irish Spring.

Work Cited

De Wulf, Kristof, Gaby Odekerken-Schröder, Frank Goedertier, and Gino Van Ossel. "Consumer perceptions of store brands versus national brands."The Journal of Consumer Marketing. 22.4/5 (2005): 223-232. Print.

Genders and Perception of Brands

The previous post emphasizes on the fact that branding is not only about the name, the image or logo that represent the brand, but it is more about the emotional level of a product.

Lau Kong Cheen and Phau Ian in their article on the Journal of Marketing agree that women are more sensitive than men; therefore would be more sensitive interacting with specific brands. Researches based on experiences have shown that the biological and psychological make-up of each gender explain the difference on how men and women process information; therefore emotionally interact with brands.

Bridget Brennan, a woman figure in marketing in her book Why She Buys shows that 80% of products in the United States are bought by women or under the demand or advice of women.

Thomas Jordan in his book Regender the Gender talks about the sexual differences in the process of purchase decision and the act of purchase. When a man walks down the aisle of a store, the time between the purchase decision and the act of purchase is relatively short. In a similar situation, a woman will go through every aisle, looking for information, advice, and guidance, be attentive to details, and be sensitive to the conditions in which it will be accepted. Men make a purchase with their eyes(they usually select what look good enough for them thus pay less attention of the brand they select); women make a purchase with their ears (they usually seek advice and information about a product before they select it).  

There are also some other reasons why men pay less attention than women while purchasing products

While shopping for a brand, women are looking for:

• Authenticity: Beyond the immediate appearance, marketers must realize that women select a brand based on its background and history.
• Quality: Not only the quantity or size. For women, "bigger" and "more" is not necessarily better.
• Connection: Women need to connect emotionally. They also have a need for belonging and recognition.
• Quality of life: Women have material and spiritual needs based on different needs that clearly fit into the dynamics of social life. So unlike to popular belief, they are not really consuming impulsive with their 45 handbags and 78 pairs of shoes .The purchase of these products participate in their social goal achievement at the time T.
• The others: Women buy certain type of luxurious brands to show to others their success or achievement or to focus the eyes of people on them.

Men in the other hand use

• Temporality: Men tend to focus more quickly than women when they are looking for something. Men do not “waste” their time in stores, they buy what they need.
• Causation: Men are practical and tend to focus their consciousness. Therefore, they spend less money on branded items.

Work Cited

Cheen , Lau Kong, and Phau Ian . "Impact of gender on perceptual fit evaluation for prestige brands."Journal Of Brand Management . 17.5 (2010): 354-367. Print.

http://www.marketing-professionnel.fr

http://www.julienbagein.com

POWER OF BRANDING

Why do we need branding? Brand is a critical element of any business; it is a way to inform you potential target market about what you sell (either products or services); and this is the purpose of every business. On Fatabbit Creative website, the experts mentioned that a brand is not only a name or a picture or logo associated with a product; it represents the emotional level of a product; what people think, feel while interacting with a specific product.

While talking about the power of a brand, we need to see the impact of this power on the buyers and on the sellers.A study on designcouncil.org listed these following advantages as the power a brand has on buyers:

• Helps buyers identify the product and decide whether they like it or dislike it.
• Evaluate the quality of the products. The past experiences a consumer had had with a product make the consumer decide on his/ her own perception of the product quality (not everyone has the same perception of a product quality)
• Once the consumer has defined the product as a quality product, it helps the consumer reduce the needed time for a purchase; the consumer has a certain trust in the brand so decide that he/her does not need to go through reading the nutrition facts for example.
• Buyers respond to branding by making repeat purchases because they identified the products.

On the other hand, it helps the sellers:

• Differentiate products from the competition. The main purpose of a brand is “stand out the crowd”. A brand brings a highlight to products or services. It clearly specifies how the product is different from others and gives promises to the clientele.
• Add value to the products. Customers rather pay a little bit more money for a product they already know or they are familiar with than for an unbranded product.
• Reduce and facilitate promotional efforts. A successful brand tends to have less promotion and spend less money in publicity. Let’s take the example of Mercedes Benz; everybody is already aware of the reliable features of the cars they make “quality speaks for itself”.

Work cited

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/Documents/Documents/Publications/Power_of_branding.pdf

http://fatrabbitcreative.com/expert_advice/why_you_need_a_brand_not_just_a_logo

STEWART, HENRY STEWART. "The Marketing Advantages of Strong Brands." BRAND MANAGEMENT. 10. (2003): 421-445. Print.

Consumer's personality and brand choice

Orth Ulrich in his article consumer personality and other factors in situational brand choice variation in the journal of brand management emphasize on what benefits a consumer is looking for in order to make a choice about a product or a brand. Consumer-perceived or desired brand benefits have been classified into six dimensions: quality/performance, price/value for money, social, emotional, environmental and health benefits. These benefits are le main cause of a brand selection. A brand selection is usually influence by two factors: informational influence; given by the marketing agent, and interpersonal influence; our personality.

The benefits that a consumer is looking for in the product fall into the definition of “personality”. The psychologists define personality as the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.in other words, a consumer selects a brand or product based on the relationship the attributes of the brand or product  have with his/her personality. A person is generally looking for a product that reflects oneself.  This phenomenon is also observed at the stage of adolescence. The teenagers try to step out from the crowd and being unique by dressing up a certain way and using certain types of products.

Jennifer Baumgartner in her book You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal about You, tells how a product, a brand or you way of dressing reflects your personality. In the book Consumer Behavior, the author said that the marketers use the concept of personality in brand communication by presenting some symbolic personality meaning to hit their desired target market. They also select carefully the person promoting the brand. This person has to reflect the personality related to that specific brand. Let’s take few examples. Victoria’s Secret by its colors, its fashion models and the stores design reflects sexuality. When women want to enhance their self-esteem, feel, and look sexy, Victoria’s Secret stores are one of the places they want to go shopping.

Also when you walk into a mall, there are different types of stores; GAP for kids, bakers for fancy shoes, Louboutin for Luxurious shoes. These different types of stores represent different personalities. For example, forever 21 customers are mostly young girls. Agaci’s clothing style is mostly designed for night clubs. Gucci, Hermes, Coco Channel, Cartier, and other luxurious brand are designed for people of high social class level. 

the ladies at the front can be seen as marketing agents or sales representatives. This type of service is generally available in elegant and prestigious stores. It tells a lot about the target market and the customers of this type of store and brand.

Work cited

Avery , Jill, Sharon Beatty, Morris Holbrook, and Robert Kozinets. Consumer Behavior Human Pursuit of Happiness in the Worl of Goods. 2. Open Mentis, 2010. 136. Print.

googleimage

Orth, Ulrich. "Consumer personality and other factors in situational brand choice variation." Journal of Brand Management. 13.2 (Nov2005): 115-133. Print.

KELLER'S BRAND EQUITY MODEL

Brands represent enormously valuable pieces of legal property, capable of influencing consumer behavior, being bought and sold, and providing the security of sustained future revenues to their owner. The value directly or indirectly accrued by these various benefits is often called brand equity (Kapferer, 2005; Keller, 2003).

The figure below illustraes the four steps that you need to follow to  build strong brand equity.

Brand Equity Pyramid

From Kevin Lane Keller's Brand Resonance Model
from Strategic Brand Management (1998 & 2002, Prentice Hall)

Step 1: Salience: Brand Identity “Who are you?”

The brand has to be known. The consumers have to be aware of the existence and the availability of the product of service. Assure that the target market can recall and recognize the brand or product.

Step 2: Performance and Imagery “What are you?”

Performance is measures by the reliability and durability of the product, the service effectiveness and efficiency, and by the price. Performance is what makes the consumers select a particular brand over others.

Imagery meets consumers’ needs on social and psychological level by the consumers’ experience or by word to mouth.

Step 3: brand response “What about you?

Consumers respond to a brand by judgments of the actual or perceived quality, satisfaction, credibility, consideration, and superiority.

Customers also respond to your brand according to how it makes them feel. Your brand can evoke feelings directly, but they also respond emotionally to how a brand makes them feel about themselves. According to the model, there are six positive brand feelings: warmth, fun, excitement, security, social approval, and self-respect.

Step 4: Resonance or Equity “What about you and me?”

You have achieved brand resonance when your customers feel a deep, psychological bond with your brand. There are four components of brand resonance.

• Behavioral loyalty: This includes regular, repeat purchases.
• Attitudinal attachment: a customer’s sense that they would miss a brand if it disappeared. The consumers love the brand and see it as a special purchase.
• A sense of community, in which a customer’s attachment extends to the company itself, or to other people associated with the brand.
• Active engagement: This is the strongest example of brand loyalty. Customers are actively engaged with your brand, even when they are not purchasing it or consuming it. This could include joining a club related to the brand; participating in online chats, marketing rallies, or events; following your brand on social media; or taking part in other, outside activities.

Professor Kevin Keller, of Dartmouth College, lists the following seven benefits of brand equity:

1. Be perceived differently and produce different interpretations of product performance.
2. Enjoy greater loyalty and be less vulnerable to competitive marketing actions.
3. Command larger margins and have more inelastic responses to price increases and elastic responses to price decreases.
4. Receive greater trade cooperation and support.
5. Increase marketing communication effectiveness.
6. Yield licensing opportunities.
7. Support brand extension.

Citations:

http://www.marketingresearch.org/brand-equity-models

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/keller-brand-equity-model.htm

keller, kevin. Brand Equity Model. 1998. Image. google.comWeb. 22 Oct 2013.

Keller, Kevin. "Brand Resonance as a Strategic Measurement Tool." Journal of Marketing. (2010): n. page. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. <http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Documents/Whitepapers/Brand Resonance as a Strategic Measurement Tool.pdf>.

Multidimensionality of Branding

Branding is broadly defined as a marketing process of giving a name, a symbol, a personality or design to a product that will identify and differentiate that specific product among others. It is the process of creating distinctive and durable perception in the mind of the consumers.

  Kevin Lan Keller defines brand knowledge as a function of awareness, which relates to consumers’ ability to recognize or recall the brand and image which consists of consumers’ perception of association for the brand.

  David Glen Mick in his essay about Brand Synthesis explains that it requires a process that goes through eight dimensions to acquire brand knowledge by the marketers to make it available to the consumers; awareness, attributes, benefits, images, thoughts, feelings, attitudes and experiences.

1. Awareness: it is an important step in promoting a brand and making it known and accepted by the consumers (investopia). It is the probability that consumers recognize the existence and availability of a company’s products and services. It is also the process of memorization of a brand characteristics and the familiarity a consumer has with a specific brand
2. Attributes: it describes the characteristics of a brand; symbols, pictures, colors, a slogan or personality traits. Example: the crocodile for the brand LACOSTE. 
3. Benefits: personal value and meaning that consumers attach to the brand’s product attributes (functional, symbolic, or experiential consequences from the brand’s purchase or consumption). Make products and services in order for the consumers to make the most benefits out of them so that they can easily remember the brand. 
4. Images: the visual information that gives the brand.
5. Thoughts: personal cognitive responses to brand related information.
6. Feelings: a personal affective responses to any brand related information.
7. Attitudes: Judgments and overall evaluations to any brand related information.
8. Experiences: purchase and consumption behavior or any brand related episodes.

  Over years marketers have placed their priorities on branding. It offers the opportunity to the consumers researchers to provide a better service to the consumers. Marketers have put an important emphasize on making brands part of the consumers purchasing behavior. For the consumers to make a brand part of their habits, they have to acquire the brand knowledge, learn to be familiar with the brand of their choice and feel a sense of loyalty to what they will call “the favorite” . Responding positively to the eight different dimensions of the brand knowledge is a proof that consumers are finally familiar with a particular brand.

Citation:

Investopia.com

Kelle, Kevin Lane. "Brand Synthesis: The Multidimensionality of Brand Knowledge." Ed. David Glen Mick. Journal of Consumer Research 29 (2003). The University of Chicago Press. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/346254>.