Brand Management

Module-2
IMT Nagpur

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What separates a generic local soft drink
from Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

It’s the value that a brand adds to

comparable products.

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Marketing advantages of strong brands

• Improved perceptions of product performance

• Greater loyalty
• Less vulnerability to competitive marketing actions
• Larger margins
• More inelastic consumer response to price increases
• More elastic consumer response to price decreases
• Greater trade cooperation and support
• Increased marketing communication effectiveness
• Possible licensing opportunities
• Additional brand extension opportunities

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Customer Based Brand Equity

• Customer-Based Brand Equity, or CBBE, relates to how your

customers’ attitudes towards your brand influence your success
• If customers recognise, understand and connect with your brand,
and, they have positive experiences, then your performance goes up

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What is Customer Based Brand Equity (CBBE) ?

• Represents how much the success of your brand is directly

related to the attitudes of your customers towards it
• Customers play a vital role in the success of any brand or
organisation
• Their influence extends far beyond buying - it is as much about how
they perceive your brand.
• Brand-loyal consumers are more likely to act as advocates for
you- to friends & relatives
• This makes the value of your customer-based brand equity
essential to the strength of your company as a whole.
• On the other hand, an understanding of your customer brand
equity can provide insight if your brand is not connecting with
consumers in the way you anticipated.

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Components of Brand Equity

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The Brand Equity Model

6 components that contribute

to customer brand equity, and
thus how customers think and
feel about a brand overall:

•Salience
•Performance
•Imagery
•Judgements
•Feelings
•Resonance

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Saliency / Awareness Performance / Brand Features
• First step in building customer brand equity – • Functionality
if people don’t know about your brand, it will • Reliability
be hard for them to form an opinion about it.
• Style/Design
• This section carries the weight of the rest of
the pyramid. • Price
• It must be the right recognition – clear, • Durability
consistent, accurate • Customer Service
• Customer Satisfaction

Authenticity is critical to build trust & loyalty

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Imagery
• How your brand meets your
customers’ social and psychological
needs
• Brand imagery is what people think
when they see your brand. It is about
how happy they would be to be seen
associated with your products
because of its reputation.
Brand Quality
• Judgement is about the opinions that
people form about your brand. This
could be good or it could be
detrimental
• Quality – the brand’s actual/perceived
quality
• Credibility – the brand’s reputation
• Consideration – the brand’s relevancy
• Superiority – the brand’s status against
competitors
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Feelings Resonance
• How people feel about your brand • Stage where customers are more
• Warmth than just aware of your brand and
• Fun buying – they are advocates for
• Excitement your brand
• Security • Behavioural loyalty – habitual buyer
• Social approval • Attitudinal attachment – the love and
• Self-respect connection towards your brand
• Sense of community – bond
• Associating your brand with between users of your brand
positive feelings grows trust and • Active engagement – how engaged
helps form a strong, lasting people are with your brand even
relationship when not purchasing (e.g. social
media follows, online chats, etc.)

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Identifying & establishing Brand Positioning

• Basic Concepts
• Target Market
• Nature of Competition
• Points-of-Parity and Points-of-Difference

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Brand Positioning

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Brand Positioning
• Brand positioning has been defined by Kotler as
“the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the
mind of the target market”

• Describes how a brand is different from its competitors and where, or how, it sits in customers’
minds

• A brand positioning strategy involves creating brand associations in customers’ minds to make them
perceive the brand in a specific way.

• By shaping consumer preferences, brand positioning strategies are directly linked to consumer
loyalty, consumer-based brand equity, and the willingness to purchase the brand

• Brand positioning is the strategy used to set your business apart from the rest.

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Creating your positioning statement
• There are four questions to answer before creating your positioning
statement:
• Who is your target customer?
• What's your product or service category?
• What's the greatest benefit of your product or service?
• What's the proof of that benefit?

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Target Customer
• Market segmentation: Divides the market into distinct groups of homogeneous
consumers who have similar needs and consumer behavior
• Involves identifying segmentation bases and criteria:
• Criteria:
• Identifiability
• Size
• Accessibility
• Responsiveness
Consumer Segmentation Bases
Behavioral Psychographic
Usage rate Values, opinions, and attitudes
Usage occasion Activities and lifestyle
Brand loyalty Geographic
Benefits sought International
Regional
Demographic
Income
Age
Sex
Race
Family
Business-to-Business Segmentation Bases
Nature of Good
Kind
Where used
Type of buy
Buying Condition
Purchase location
Who buys
Type of buy
Demographic
Number of employees
Number of production workers
Annual sales volume
Number of establishments
Competition

• Identify your competitors. Who is your competitor ? New paradigms!

• You need to see who you are up against
• Helps you decide what you can do better in your Automobile cos <> Tech cos
strategy to gain an edge Railways <> Airlines
• Indirect competitors Movies <> Sports
Traditional Coaching classes <> Edutech cos
• Analyze how your competition is positioning Traditional Banks <> Fintech cos
their brand.
• Your research should include:
• What products or services your competitors offer
• What their strengths and weaknesses are
• What marketing strategies they're using
successfully
• What their position is in the current market

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 Points of Parity and Points of Difference
• To arrive at the proper positioning:
• Requires establishing the correct points-of-
difference and points-of-parity associations:

• Points-of-difference (PODs):
• Formally defined as attributes or benefits
that consumers strongly associate with a
brand

• Points-of-parity associations:
• Not necessarily unique to the brand but
may be shared with other brands
Examples of Negatively Correlated Attributes
and Benefits
Low price versus high quality
Taste versus low calories
Nutritious versus good tasting
Efficacious versus mild
Powerful versus safe
Strong versus refined
Ubiquitous versus exclusive
Varied versus simple
Positioning Guidelines
• Defining and Communicating the Competitive Frame of Reference
• Choosing Points-of-Difference
• Establishing Points-of-Parity and Points-of-Difference
• Straddle Positions
• Updating Position Overtime
• Developing a Good Positioning
Defining and Communicating the Competitive Frame of
Reference
• Communicating category benefits:
• Marketers use product benefits to announce
category membership
• Exemplars:
• Well-known, noteworthy brands in a category
can also be used as exemplars to specify a
brand’s category membership
• Product descriptor:
• Product descriptor that follows a brand name
is often a very compact means of conveying
category origin
Choosing Points-of-Difference
• A brand must offer a compelling and credible reason for choosing it over the other
options:
• What attribute or benefit can serve as point-of-difference?
• Desirability criteria
• Differentiation criteria
Establishing Points-of-Parity and Points-of-Difference
• The key to branding success is to establish both points-of-parity and points-of-
difference
• At times, an inverse relationship between POP and POD may exist in the minds of
consumers:
• Approaches to address the problem of negatively correlated POPs and PODs
include:
• Separating the attributes
• Leveraging equity of another entity
• Redefining the relationship
 Straddle Positions
• Type of positioning where a
company is able to straddle two
frames of reference:
• With one set of points-of-
difference and points-of-parity
• The points-of-difference in one
category:
• Become points-of-parity in
the other
• And vice-versa for points-
of-parity
Updating Positions over Time
• Generally, positioning should be fundamentally changed very infrequently:
• And only when circumstances significantly reduce the effectiveness of existing
POPs and PODs
• Yet, positioning will evolve to better reflect market opportunities or challenges
• POD or POP may be refined, added, or dropped as situations dictate
Updating Positions over Time
• Laddering:
• Deepening the meaning of a brand to
permit further expansion
• Often useful to explore underlying
consumer motivations
• Reacting:
• Responding to competitive actions that
threaten an existing positioning
• Competitive actions are often directed at
eliminating points-of-difference to make
them points-of-parity:
• Or to strengthen or establish new
points-of-difference
Developing a Good Positioning
• A good positioning:
• Has a foot in the present and a foot in the future:
• Needs to be somewhat aspirational so that the brand has
room to grow and improve
• Is careful to identify all relevant points-of-parity:
• Don’t overlook or ignore crucial areas where the brand is
potentially disadvantaged
• Should reflect a consumer point of view in terms of the benefits
that consumers derive from the brand
• Recognizes that a duality exists in the positioning of a brand:
• Rational and emotional components
Defining a Brand Mantra
• Brands may span multiple product categories and may have multiple distinct—yet
related—positionings

• As brands evolve and expand across categories:

• Marketers will want to craft a brand mantra that reflects the essential heart and soul
of the brand

• Short, three-to five-word phrase:

• Captures the irrefutable essence or spirit of the brand positioning

• Provides guidance about:

• What products to introduce under the brand
• What ad campaigns to run
• Where and how the brand should be sold
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