Kirti Dutta

Brand Management-Principles and Practices

Chapter 1 Introduction to branding

Teaching notes

Branding is a key issue and a challenge that can define the life of a product and hence of the organization in the marketplace. For the consumers, a brand is a product but for the organization, it is a mammoth task to convert a product into a brand. A brand is a product and much more as has been discussed. To be successful in a highly competitive market, a brand must provide some differential advantage. The benefits of a successful brand are legal protection, differential advantage, and price premiums, and customer loyalty. Benefits to the customer are proxy for quality, help in decision making, and reduction in purchase risk. There are three types of brands: functional brands, image brands, and experience brands. All things said and done it is not an easy task to create a successful brand as consumers are now better informed and have a wealth of information made easily available to them; the number of private labels are growing; the brands have to compete with the local, national and global brands; the media is getting fragmented and the employee turnover further adds to the challenges. These challenges can be overcome by building brand equity and brand loyalty and the key issue then is how to build and measure brand equity. An understanding of the consumers purchase decision making process and the appropriate positioning and development of the marketing mix, branding strategies and management of the brands over time are the key issues that need to be considered. All these aspects show that there are a number of challenges to be overcome for building a successful brand and the task though laborious is not impossible.

Copyright Oxford University Press, 2012