'Brand strength affects all aspects of marketing; it affects positioning and drives competitive advantage' Analyse and critically

examine this statement in the light of one or two brands of your choice (use theory as appropriate).

As per the theory of Adaptation by Charles Darwin, the strongest organism survives while the others who are less strong extinct. Those who can adapt accordingly to their environment can survive and further evolve to become strongest. The same thing goes with the brands. The strongest brand always rules over the other brands. Mediocre brands have to adapt to the environment that is the markets to survive else the brand dies. So the weaker brands have to evolve and make them better and stronger in order to compete with the strongest. As per Kotler, (2010), Brand is defined as a name, term, sign symbol or a combination of these, that identifies the maker or seller of the product or P.Tailor, (n.d.) [online] defines a brand as a Marketing tool that allows consumers to recognize the maker of a product. Brands are basically used add value to the product and the services offered. It is a way of enlarging their offerings with distinguishing features, values that are considered, recognized and meaningful to the customers. Brand is often denoted by a different name, symbol, word, phrases or any form of identification that makes product way different or distinguishable from its competitor, as said by Chernatony and DallOlmo Riley (1998). In todays world which is full of competition, no product can go without a brand. For example, some people may always go for Nike shoes over other brands even if other brands offer similar quality and better price range. This happens because a relationship is built up between the customer and the brand and because of the past experience with the brand which makes them loyal to the brand. Strong brands are most considered or preffered by the consumers. Customers love to be loyal to the specific brand just because the brand is trusted, reliable and offers good quality. Strong brands need not worry about the pricing, because the customer is going to buy the product just thinking it is reasonable and buying the product would give best experience as compared to others. Let us take an example of a small software company who makes brilliant application software but has no brand name for it. Thus very few people know about it and product is sold very less with normal pricing. Now if Microsoft plans to buy this product

and give its brand name to this small but effective product, people will definitely buy this product as they have loads of confidence in the brand name and thus some trust blindly that it has to be best as its Microsoft. Thus when the product did not have a brand name, people never accepted it. But as soon as it got Microsofts name people started using it on a larger scale. Thus a Strong brand name creates value for the product and makes a good impression or image in the customers minds. So the weaker brand which has less recognition in the markets has to work to make their product famous. Like the software company could have taken years to make their product famous but with Microsofts trade mark on it, it wouldnt have taken more than two-three weeks. Thus brand name matter a lot when it comes to selling. It is often difficult for the other mediocre or weaker brands to compete with top brands because: They have pressure to compete on the prices, courtesy the retailers have become stronger year by year that they tend to put pressure on prices making it more difficult for the new entrant product. The strong brands often enjoy the power of pricing their products where the other weaker products have to follow the price trends that are set by top brands. So the key to success is low cost is to cut down the overheads, allocate the required minimum number of staff and cut all unnecessary expenses. If a particular type of a product is in demand and profitable, there will be a huge amount of competitors that would launch similar or alternative kind of product in the markets. Hoosear and Jason, (n.d.). For example, consider a market where soft drinks are in demand. Now Coca-cola rules the market at one end and there are other smaller brands which share very less market and here comes the new entrant with a similar kind of a drink. Coca-cola wouldnt be much worried as they attract most customers but yes the weaker brands which were already in the race would be affected. Thus additional competitors or new entrants not only contribute to the price pressures and brand complexity, but also make it very difficult to gain and hold a position in over crowded market. Heres where super brands enjoy supremacy as they are less affected and weaker brands are shaken to the core and finally fall down. Aaker, (1996). If I wanted to buy a brand new laptop and I had very little or time for surveying the various brands in market, I would rather go for a Mac note book or HP brand just because its been used by my friends so word to mouth publicity is in picture, that strong brands benefit from and quality and reliability that it would work well for long. I would personally not prefer a new emerging brand which sells laptops just because I had never heard about it or cant rely on the quality and features it offers nor do I have time to understand the product to believe it and dont want to spend

so much money on a brand which I am unsure of and sophistication and style and looks matters a lot in todays world so I would go for a Mac notebook over others just because it is cool and cheesy. So over here we understand the mentality of the customer in selecting a brand on the basis of word to mouth publicity, style statement, easy to work with, better experience, trusted and would last for years. But yes it completely depends on the customers need and how much money does he have in his pocket. (Baines, Fill and Page, 2011) The catchy words chosen by the company are very important for branding. Whereas trademark is real identity, the term brand refers to the commercial identity. The clich the trademark is the heart of the brand aptly illustrates the relationship between these two concepts in Hoosear and Jason, (n.d.). Now would you ever buy a Apples I-phone without an apple logo on it ? the answer is NO. In the previous section we discussed the various ways in which the strength of the brand can have an impact on consumer behaviour and consumer decision-making processes. Now in this section we discuss the impact of strong brands on various marketing activities. As per (Borden, 1964) and (McCarthy, 1960), The marketing mix and 4P are : Product, pricing, branding, channels of distribution, advertising, promotion, packaging, servicing, display, physical handling, fact finding and analysis. For Product: It is an offering made to the customers to satisfy his needs. Product is made up of tangible and intangible benefits and features. Customer response could probably be different as per the perceptions of the benefits and attributes as well as overall preferences and attitude towards the services that the product has to offer. The response of customer can be dependent on satisfaction, brand loyalty, emotional commitment etc. (Hoeffler and Keller, 2003). Let us take an example of a Mall where there are two coffee shops, Costa Coffee and a local shop. The customers would probably go to Costa coffee because of the brand name, labelling, and it gives better experience in terms of taste and satisfaction of quality. In Price related marketing activity, the powerful brand is always the decider of the price and its competitors are often in the race to lower down the price and provide best quality as possible. There are various customers who are willing to pay premium prices. (Hoeffler and Keller, 2003). For the example for Rolex watches and its competitor that is Titan watches. Brand power also rules when it comes to increase and decrease in the price. Now if Rolex plans to reduce its prices equivalent to Titan, would you still buy Rolex? Thus the bottom line is completely dependent

on customers on what price they opt, but often strong brands have a plus point as they are Price-leaders and can command greater price differences. In Marketing activities where communication forms like advertising, promotion, PR, personal selling etc. are involved; it is completely dependent on customer behaviour or how he reacts to such marketing activities. For example, customers probably give a negative reaction if an advertisement of an unknown brand is repeated again and again and on the other hand if a well known brand advertises repeatedly, they feel its a recall of the brand. Customers often dislike comparative advertisements, where a competing brand tries to withstand customers favoured brand. Some brands dont need to promote themselves as its Brand speaks itself. For example Starbucks- where I believe they dont do much promotional activities or advertisements, still it is the bestselling brand as compared to other coffee brands. (Hoeffler and Keller, 2003). In Distribution or Channel related marketing activities, the behaviour of the customer will vary in terms of interest to hunt for a brand within a store. For example if I plan to buy juice and my most favoured brand is Tropicana, then I would directly hunt for Tropicana juices while I ignore other brands. As per (Montgomery, 1975), the products that belonged to the top selling brands in the industry had higher probability of being accepted by the customer. If a store wants to gain value and profit in market, it will always try to feature or promote well known brands or the brands that are in good books of customers. For example, if Tesco plans to include new brand in its portfolio and it has two options i.e. Armani Jeans and local jeans, it would always go for Armani. (Lal and Narasimhan, 1996) Brand positioning is an analytical process that a company initiates to determine- based on their existing reputation, competencies, customers and competitors- how they should situate themselves for optimal differentiation and market effectiveness. As said by (Baird, 2009) As it is said that, Out of sight, is Out of mind. Thus brands that are well positioned will definitely capture customer attraction and will also keep the brand active in their minds. Example of American Express and Visa: In 1970-1980, American Express was well known in credit card market where it provided significant membership plans. Now Visa in response brought Gold and platinum cards with very aggressive marketing campaign to compete with American Express cards. Where Visa card became a premium choice for family, shopping etc this example shows how Visa understood the positioning strategy.

What makes a company strong is not the product or the service, its the position it owns in the mind. (Trout and Rivkin, 2000). The Volkswagen (VW) group is an excellent example of strategic positioning. This means that the brand exists in various segments of the car market. VW group is able to make a place in each segment by making innovative brands having a unique identity and thus targeting each segment giving a clear picture to the customer about their brands and still they have the advantage of economies of sale by sharing cost of production over several brands. VW has a wide range of cars, with low range cars competing with Skoda to high range upper class luxury cars competing with Audi and Bentley. This smart positioning game adapted by VW has gained it major share in car market sector, thus making it one of Europes biggest car manufacturers. As mentioned in (Melewar and Sambrook, 2004). Trout and Rivkin (2000) underline the importance of differentiation not only for selling products but also for survival: In todays ultra competitive world, the average supermarket has 40 000 brand items on its shelves or even more than compared to 1000 in a mini departmental store. Let us consider that there are only mini stores in your locality and suddenly Tesco plan to open up its branch in your area, how badly would the mini stores suffer due to Tesco. People, rightly or wrongly, these days want things cheap and want the convenience of buying everything in one place. So all their needs are fulfilled at reasonable cost plus extra benefits on pricing , various offers, mega sales, seasonal offers, and full online digital support which the mini stores dont provide and plus point is quality products, reliable and better experience and customer satisfaction. So by opening up a branch in such area, Tesco grabbed the entire market share and kept very little margins for local mini stores to make profits from. Thus branding helped Tesco to fence off the customers from the competition and protect its market share while building mindshare.

References and Bibliography:

Borden, N. H. (1964), The concept of Marketing Mix, Journal of Advertising research, 4, 2-7. Chernatony, L. de and DallOlmo Riley. F (1998). Defining a brand: beyond literature with experts interpretations, journals of Marketing Management, 34, , 39-56. David A. Aaker, (1996), BUILDING STRONG BRANDS, THE FREE PRESS, N.Y., p.26-36 Hoeffler, S, & Keller, K 2003, 'The marketing advantages of strong brands', Journal Of Brand Management, 10, 6, p. 421, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, [Accessed on 10th November 2011]

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