Marcom's Challenges: Enhancing Brand Equity, Influencing Behavior, and Being Accountable

The Concept of Brand Equity: Brand: represents a "name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition". A brand is everything that one compnay's particular offering stands for in comparison to other brands in a category of competitive products. Brand represents a set of values that its marketers, senior compnay officials, and other employees consistently embrace and communicate for extended period. A Firm-Based Perspective on Brand Equity The firm-based viewpoint of brand equity focuses on outcomes extending from efforts to enhance a brand's value to its various stakeholders. As the value of a brand increases, positive outcomes result. - achieving a higher market share -increasing brand loyalty - being able to change premium prices - earning a revenue premiuim Revenue Premium: the revenue differential between a branded item and a corresponding private labeled item. A Customer-Based Perspective on Brand Equity Brand equity from the customer's perspective consists of two forms of brand-related knowledge: brand awareness and brand image. Brand Awareness Brand awareness is an issue of whether a brand name comes to mind when consumers think about a particular product category and the ease with which the name is evoked. Brand awareness is the basic dimension of brand equity. Brand recognition reflects a relatively superficial level of awareness, whereas brand recall indicates a deeper from of awarenes. Although building brand awareness is a necessary step toward brand equity enhancement, it is insufficient. Brand Image The second dimension of consumer-based brand knowlmedge is a brand's image. Brand image can be thought of in terms of the types of associations that come to the customer's mind when contemplating a particular brand. An association is simply the particular thoughts and feelings that a consumer has about a brand, much in the same fashion that we have thoughts and feelings about other people. 1. Sincerity: Includes brand that are down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful. 2. Excitement: Brands scoring high on the excitement dimension are percieved as daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date. 3.Competence: Brands scoring high on this personality dimension are considered reliable, intelligent, and successful. 4. Sophistication: Brands that are considered upper class and charming score high on the sophistication dimension. 5. Ruggedness: Rugged brands are thought of as tough and outdoorsy. How Can Brand Equity Be Enhanced? In general, efforts to enhance a brand's equity are accomplished through the initial choice of positive brand identity but mostly through marketing and marcom programs. A favorable brand image does not happen automatically. Sustained marketing communications are generally required to create favorable, strong, and unique associations. Ingredient branding is a special type of alliance between branding partners. What Benefits Results from Engancing Brand Equity? One major by-product of efforts to increase a brand's equity is that consumer brand loyalty might also increase. Research has shown that when firms communicate unique and positive messages via advertising, personal selling, promotions, events, and other means, they are able to differintiate their brands effectively from competetive offerings and insulate themselves from future price competition. Characteristics of World-Class Brands 1. Brand excels at delivering the benefits customers truly desire. 2. The brand stays relevant 3. The pricing system is based on consumers' perceptions of value 4. Th brand is properly positioned. 5. The brand is consistent 6. The brand portfolio and hierarchy make sense 7. The brand makes uses of and coordinates a full repertoire of marketing activities to build equity. 8. The brand's managers understand what the brand means to consumers. 9. The brand is given proper support, and the support is sustained over the long run. 10. The company monitors sources of brand equity. Affects Behavior and Achieving Marcom Accountability Marcom's eventual challenge is to influence behavior, whatever the nature of that bevior might be. The effect of marcom, or of ots specific elements such as advertising, can thus be gauged in terms of whether it generates a reasonable revenue returns on the marcom investment. Difficulty of Measuring Marcom Effectiveness Though most marketing executives agree that measuring marketing performance is critically important, at the present time relatively few organizations are doing a sophisticated job. Choosing a Metric An initial problem is one determining which specific measures should be used to judge marcom effectiveness. The difficulty of determining how best to measure marketing's return on investment is illustrayed by a recent study conducted of its membership by the(ANA). Gaining Agreement As generally is the case when intelligent people representing different organizational interests are asked to settle in on a particular solution to a problem. Collecting Accurate Data Whatever the measure chosen, any effort to meaningfully assess marcom performance necessitates having data that are reliable abd valid. Calibrating Specific Effects Our hypothetical automobile company will employ several marcom tools to "move" automobiles to consumers. Assessing Effects with Marketing-Mix Modeling To understand and appreciate the nature and role of marketing-mix modeling le's return to the exmaple of the automobile. In order to emplot marketing-mix modeling, a relatively long series of longitudinal data- say, for a two -year period- is required. Marketing-mix modeling is widely used by consumer package good companies.