MKTG311

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE: Brands and Brand Management

o Brand: a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them

- Resides in consumer’s minds

- Provides a label and meaning to a product/service

- Optimal in consumer choice situations

- Is made up of different components (brand elements) that allow for identification and differentiation

o Product: A good offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption

- Five levels of meaning for a product:

1. Core benefit level: fundamental need or want satisfies by consuming the product/service

2. Generic product level: a basic version of the product only containing attributes or characteristics

absolutely necessary for functioning (no distinguishing features)

3. Expected product level: a set of attributes or characteristics normally expected and agreed to when

purchasing

4. Augmented product level: includes additional product attributes, benefits or related services that

distinguish from competitors

5. Potential product level: the augmentations and transformations a product might undergo in the future

Researchers have classified products and their associated attributes or benefits into three major

categories:

1) Search goods: consumers can evaluate product attributes (size, colour, style, design, weight etc) by visual

inspection

2) Experience goods: consumer cannot assess product attributes (durability, service quality, safety etc) by

inspection; actual product trial and experience is necessary

3) Credence goods: consumer may rarely learn product attributes

Consumers may perceive many different types of risks in buying and consuming a product:

a. Functional risk: product does not perform up to expectations

b. Physical risk: product poses a threat to physical well-being or health of the user of others

c. Financial risk: product is not worth the price paid

d. Social risk: product results in embarrassment from others

e. Psychological risk: products affect the mental well-being of the user

f. Time risk: failure of the products results in a loss of time invested

o Brand equity: no common viewpoint on how to conceptualise and measure brand equity

- Stresses the importance of the brand’s role in marketing strategies

- Provides a common denominator to interpret marketing strategies and assess a brand’s value

Keller’s customer based brand equity (CBBE) model:

1) Differential effect: customer’s +/- reaction to an element of the 4 P’s

2) Customer brand knowledge: brand image and brand awareness associative network memory model

3) Customer responses to a brand’s marketing: favourable, strong and unique brand associations in memory

STRATEGIC BRAND MANAGEMENT PROCESS

o Strategic brand management: the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to

build, measure and manage brand equity

- process involves four main steps:

1. Identifying and developing brand plans

Brand planning uses the following three interlocking models:

a) Brand positioning model: describes how to guide integrated marketing to maximise competitive

advantages

b) Brand resonance model: described how to create intense, activity loyalty relationships with customer

c) Brand value chain: a means to trace the value creation process for brands better understanding of the

financial impact of brand marketing expenditures and investments

2. Designing and implementing brand marketing programs

This knowledge building process will depend on three factors:

a) The initial choices of the brand elements and how they are mixed and matched

b) The marketing activities and supporting marketing programs and the way the brand is integrated with

them

c) Secondary associations indirectly transferred or leveraged by the brand as a result of linking it to some

other entity

3. Measuring and interpreting brand performance

o Brand equity measurement system: a set of research procedures designed to provide timely, accurate

and actionable information for marketers best possible tactical decisions (short term) and the best

strategic decisions (long term)

o Brand audit: a comprehensive evaluation of a brand to assess its health, its sources and potential sources

of equity and ways to improve and leverage that equity

4. Growing and sustaining brand equity