This sample will let you know about:
- What is Brand equity ?
- Discuss about the Strategies of Brand hierarchy management
- Discuss about the brand management collaboratively and in partnership both in domestic and global level.
INTRODUCTION
Brand management is continuous procedure which comprises consistency maintenance around the brand addition to delivering values that are hold by entity for the purpose of forging positive associations among with audiences of company. It is a marketing function within which various techniques are applied for enhancing perceived values of commodities over time. With the help of it, managers builds devoted customers and takes organisational discipline, self reflection together with focus for creating a brand which is most preferred by customers over rivals (Abrahams, 2016). The present assessment is prepared by considering two entities that are Optimum Impression Ltd and Arcadia Group. As per scenario, first task is related to Optimum Impression Ltd that has its registered head-office in West Yorkshire, UK. The remaining tasks are concerned with Arcadia Group that is retailing business having headquarters in city of London, UK. The report includes information about building as well as managing brand over time. Further, it covers brand portfolio along with hierarchy management, brand extension and leverage, measuring and managing value of brand.
TASK 1
Brand is define as a name, symbol, term or other feature which helps audiences to identify products of one seller as different from that of other sellers (Annie Jin, 2012). It is said to the identifying symbol, sentence, slogan, mark or logo which is used by businesses for differentiating own products from the rival companies. Brand equity is defined as additional value that is received by a commodity through high brand awareness level along with well known brand reputation. The awareness, loyalty and perception of market audiences towards the company is brand equity. Successful brand building procedure plays essential role in establishing strong connection with customers and creating loyalty to make company prosperous. In case when a business has desire to build wealthy brand then it is mandatory to abide some necessary steps for purpose to build a strong brand. For instance, in existing scenario, Optimum Impression Ltd has huge desire to build wealthy brand and for this they follows the necessary steps to build successful brand that includes various stages. In first stage, the respective entity should indulge towards determining target audience by identifying suitable market and their needs. The next phase is defining brand mission wherein business managers create mission statement and then embrace it to wide channels (Beverland, 2018). Along with this, the next work is to research competition in which potential competitors workings are identified and then decisions are taken to make products that will differentiate from others.
The next stages calls for creating value proposition that will assist in identifying uniqueness, benefits, values that are related with the offerings and helps in setting business apart from market. Further, managers works to determine brand guidelines that will describe tonality and specific regulations about the ways to make brand successful. With this, Optimum Impression Ltd will maintain consistency across all the channels addition to make it more recognizable. Lastly, managers are required to market the brand through preparing definite promotional strategy for the purpose of brand marketing (Chernev, 2018). With application of branding in all communication, websites to collateral promotions, packaging to stationary, the brand is to be displaces at various possible places. Marketing departing of Optimum Impression Ltd plays various crucial roles for create brand equity. For example, implementing suitable strategy to promote the brand is important role of marketing department in creating brand equity. Along with this, such department assess entire market places to determine customers choices and manufacturing the same that are considered unique. In addition, they also plays role to determine demand gap as well as help business to manufacture are offer those products that have potentials to fulfil the gap and with this, brand equity is created by firms.
Main body
Optimum Impression Ltd is a leading advertising organisation that offers effective solutions to other businesses or customers in form of services including paid promotions and mo on. Brand management involves facets such as visual presentation, customer satisfaction, competition, packaging and many more. It is considered as critical business practice which is performed by organisations who wants to stay relevant for long time in today's powerful customers mind (Chinomona, 2016). In modern era, it is highly important for companies to indulge towards effective, suitable and appropriate strategies that results in strengthening brand equity of it in the market. Brand addition to brand management are considered as important marketing tool as it helps in gaining recognition of the brand, increases business values, generates new customers and improves pride along with satisfaction among employees. More over, branding is a marketing tool that is important because it is crucial in marketing process of particular commodity (Dinnie, 2015). In today's scenario, all products that exists in market have several rivals that gives fierce competition to the company (Branding importance as marketing tool, 2020). So, branding plays important role in attaining a competitive edge, dominating rivals and establishing a leading position through marketing commodities. Branding has emerged in business practice through research and study. Target market identification is core of branding and to gain success in business practice, it is important to identify target market business have to evolve the branding concept and use it as important practice. The other ways in which branding has evolved with business practice includes logo lifecycle, change planning, changes in strategy and so on.
One of spectacular example of recent case that has successfully implemented successful strategy to strengthen brand equity and many more aspects is Coca Cola. The company is implementing various designs for boosting its brand equity (Coca-Cola using design to boost brand equity, 2020). The company is putting designs at centre of various efforts that helps in strengthening brand equity along with meeting customers requirements around the globe. Moreover, for brand extension, it is using strategy of offering similar commodities in distinct form of its original parent product. In this strategy, Coca- Cola used to create stylish aluminium bottle for coke in other country that is America that has helped in extension of brand in other nations and strengthening its customer base. The context to strategy for reinforcing of brand, the example company is using brand awareness along with brand image strategies. Through brand awareness strategy, managers of Cola Cola are maintaining consistent voice as well as image of the brand that boost its reinforcements. At same time, unique, strong and effective image of the brand is created by marketers of the firm that reinforces the image in customers mind for long term. Brand reviatising is one of attempt that is made by company top bring product back within the market as well as securing equity sources. For brand revitalising, the company uses various strategies that includes renaming brand in which brand name is changes and some new attractive name is set. The next is reaching out to community wherein the brand reaches to new customers for reviving lagging sales. From both, Coca-Cola is used reaching out of community strategy in order to revitalising the brand. For overcoming from brand crisis, administrators follows management theories in which they plan, understand, organise, inform, monitor and coordinate effectively with entire team that helps in solving crises easily. Moreover, the other strategy that is used by Coca Cola is communication strategy in which the managers communicates with suppliers and others on regular basis so that they overcome from any perceived crisis promptly. Few of suggestion to extend along with reinforce the brand are understanding market needs so that suitable modifications are done to reinforce the product or brand name. Along with this, company is also recommended to emphasis more on product or service quality in order to gain better outcomes.
The key components which helps in building successful brand strategy as well as managing brand equity are brand loyalty, perceived brand quality, brand perception and values of brand (Elliott and et. al., 2015). In brand loyalty, the more customers are loyal towards the brand the more it will help in designing successful strategy and maintaining equity of among customers. The next component is brand awareness in which Optimum Impression Ltd spreads awareness among customers regarding who it is and what are its workings. The company time to time spread information within market that helps customers to recall it and this helps in managing brand equity. The next component is perceived brand quality, it is strongly linked with reason to purchase products or services of entity. The duration when quality is attributed with services offered by the respective firm, its other commodities or services that are associated with brand are perceived with similar quality and this assist in creating successful brand image addition to brand equity management.
With application of Keller's brand equity model, Optimum Impression Ltd manages the brand successfully over time. In the model, working of marketing and management team in various levels including brand identification, brand meaning, brand response and brand resonance are performed effectively that assist managers to manage it successfully. However, it is also evaluated that various times application of the model so not suit with situations that results in issues to manage the brand successfully over duration (Gundala and Khawaja, 2014).
Optimum Impression Ltd is well popular brand in advertising sector of UK that is following various strategies to promote the brand equity. In recent timings, the organisation has managed the brand over time through key components for building brand strategy in successful manner and managing the equity too. Moreover, the entity needs to revitalise or reinforce brand because to overcome from challenges such as competition and so on. The advertising agency has successfully managed the situation of competition through offering unique services to its customers and making huge customer base (Rosenbaum-Elliott, Percy and Pervan, 2015).
From the above discussion it is concluded that marketing plays huge important role to manage as well as improve brand image of Optimum Impression Ltd within UK and surrounding market. Branding also plays significant role when implemented as market tool in proper manner as it assists in attracting huge customer base along with distinguishing organisational services or commodities from rival ones (Ruzzier and De Chernatony, 2013). Moreover, it enables firms to send addition to receive valuable information which provides ample opportunities to selected firm for strengthening brand equity. Furthermore, it benefits in increasing loyal customer base towards brand as well as giving them satisfaction through offering huge quality products or services.
Branding is said to an unique action to mark with iron that differentiates the commodities offered from other companies. It provides huge benefits to company such as Optimum Impression Ltd, Arcadia Group and many more in various forms. It helps forms to stand in saturated market, provides credibility, leading customer loyalty, gaining consistency, attracting ideal clients, sustaining for long duration, introducing products easily, establishing clear strategy, enhancing brand equity and purchase ease (Solomon and et. al., 2014). However, its limitations includes leading to monopoly, creating confusion, commanding premium and an expensive approach. Need Assignment Samples.Talk to our Experts!
TASK 2
P3) Different strategies of portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand equity management.
Portfolio management:
It is defined as a tool of making decisions towards the investment mix, policy, assets allocation, balancing risk, matching investment to objectives against the performance of businesses. Within the context of Arcadia Group, company is well known to have appropriate strategies of portfolio management that facilitates competitive position in the market.
Strategies of portfolio management:
- Active management: This type of strategy must be adopted by the businesses which provides detail assessment regarding the company's portfolio that are required for gaining competitive advantages in the market. This could be used by Arcadia Group for the quantitative analysis in order to measure the success of company's brand portfolio strategy.
- Passive management: This kind of strategy is used by the company in order to meet the requirements of market instead of competing (Paul, 2019). This could be performed by Arcadia group in order to increase their portfolio management and able to invest in index funds along with the associated risk.
Brand hierarchy management:
It is termed as a combination of various branding strategy which shows numerous existing brands of Arcadia Group. It relays on reality related to the product which can be branded in varied ways and depends on the several strategy that is formed for the branding of new offerings of company.
Strategies of Brand hierarchy management:
- Branded house: It is related to the organisation in which firm acts as a brand and sub brands in the organisation because they are not disassociated with the original brand. This will help Arcadia in becoming quite strong and organisation familiarity also helps companies to be recognised as well.
- House of brands: It is related to that in which sub brands are varied from businesses and they focused on promoting their sub brands instead of marketing main business. With respect of Arcadia Group, this type of strategy would lead to the complex hierarchies in the company that might result in the inconsistency in long term.
Brand equity management:
It is essential for the Arcadia group to manage the image and value of their brand for long period of time in order to control the brand equity. It involves the strengths and values of Arcadia Group that shows the impact of their brand management and marketing on their potential customers. In order to control brand equity it is required to manage all factors by using brand equity model that leads the success of company with high customer satisfaction.
M3) Critically analyse portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand equity management by using theories, models and frameworks.
Through the application of appropriate strategies, models and theories company is able to accomplish their tasks through which the management of company perform their operations within the time. Brand management is essential for the businesses in order to develop favourable perception towards the products and services which governs the image as well as goodwill of company (Moretta Tartaglione and et. Al 2019). This will give long term success and growth to the company Arcadia Group and maintain their positive identity in the marketplace.
TASK 3
P4 Evaluating brand management collaboratively and in partnership both in domestic and global level
Brand leveraging is a concept where organisation make use of existing brand name to enter a new but related product category by making effective communication with consumers and rendering them valuable information. In case of Arcadia group, Dorothy Perkins is the brand on which Brand leveraging concept or strategy can be applied. While applying this strategy number of benefits are additional and enjoyed by the firm. The brand is instantly recognised in the market, consumers are more interested in the products offered and more opportunities travel towards the brand. There are few techniques which can be used by Dorothy Perkins which are as follows in a table format.
Basis |
Brand Extension |
Line Extension |
Meaning |
Brand extension is basically expansion of brand into new marketplace in new geographical region. For instance, a soft drink manufacturer introduces a new product line of bottled water. |
Line extension refers to the expansion of same or existing product line. For example, a soft drink manufacturer is developing an additional flavour to its soft drink line. |
Benefits |
Brand extension allows organisation to enter new marketplace and increase their profits and diversify their inventory. |
This form of business strategy allows company to conduct promotional activities in low cost as the new line is part of an established name and its goodwill add up to promotions of new line. |
Risks |
The risk associated here is of failure, the product which is introduced can be a huge success or a failure. If it is a failure then company's image is tarnished which is the biggest risk associated with brand extension strategy. |
Line extension can cause competition in organisation which can develop negative environment in organisations structure and more conflicts arises amongst different divisions of company. |
Arcadia groups is a huge organisation which owns multiple brands, who are themselves very famous and dealing in several regions. Dorothy Perkins is the most effective brand which can be leveraged by the group. Dorothy Perkins should adopt Line extension as it has several segments and serving in number of geographical locations. Therefore it would be helpful for them to increase their profits as customer base is increased and marketplace is enhanced. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of Dorothy Perkins are elaborated below:
Strengths |
Weaknesses |
The biggest strength of Dorothy Perkins is it is one of the biggest retailer on high street. It has almost 600 stores UK and more than 100 international outlets. |
Less usage of technology has impacted upon overall brand leveraging on Dorothy Perkins. It is needed to stronger the weak points, in order to serve the best to customers. |
The customer base of company is huge as it servers in international waters, the company is easily accessible. Dorothy Perkins ship their products |
Another weakness that came in front of brand leveraging is underperformance that Dorothy Perkins is offering to customers based on their utility and requirements as well. |
With the help of Brand leveraging there are a number of modifications could be made within designs of new clothes along with the services, which could lead organisation to enhance the overall utility of old products and services offered by Dorothy Perkins to their potential customers. |
Change within the pricing is also said to be a crucial and impactful weakness that is directly linking with leveraging. This could be understood with a good example of brand and if it is carrying high prices, this would result in retaliation from the customers which won't be effective for the firm's image. |
Collaboration and Partnership Agreements
In present time, it is said that there are number of agreements that an organisation could make with other business companies like collaboration and partnerships. Basically, these are said to be some of the crucial actions taken by business firms when it comes to attain desired goals. This are made by consenting organizations which specifically relies on participation by at least two parties who agree to share resources, such as finances, knowledge, and people. In present context, if it is talked about Dorothy Perkins, then this organisation has developed a partnership with Burton, in order to cover potential market of men wear of London. Get Best Management Assignment Help from our management experts!
TASK 4
Brand Value
It refers to the properly estimating the financial value of the brand. It is an intangible asset that differentiate company's book value and market value of a business. It is an essential tool for developing and forecasting the brand of the company. It generally depends on the inherent features of the product that make the brand. There are various ways to manage and measure the brand value of Arcadia group.
- Cost- based Brand Valuation- It is the method which is used to measure the value of brand in terms of monetary value that have been used to build a brand image since starting. By using this method Arcadia group will easily measure the value of brand of its products (Ko, Costello and Taylor, 2019). This approach is only used for existing products not for the new offerings. While using this technique company can easily identified the direct and indirect cost that was incurred in brand value of the goods of the firm.
To manage brand value of Arcadia group, manager can effectively promote or advertise its products. For this it will use artificial intelligence to market its brand value in the market.
Brand Awareness
It defines the level of consumer consciousness of a company. The degree to which consumers are familiar with the image and qualities of a specific brand of goods and services. The techniques that is used by Arcadia Group to measure and manage the brand awareness are as follows.
- Use social listening- It is the most effective technique to measure a brand awareness when people are talking about the company and product offerings through social media and other websites. In Arcadia group, manager created a website to listen the consumers thoughts and issues that are naturally expressed through social media. This can also be done by like, comment and follows on social media sites of the firm. Here the company continuously update on the site and examine what the customer likes and dislikes. This will help in creating the brand awareness of the products.
To manage the brand awareness Arcadia group continuously design new products with better quality. This will attract more customers towards its product offering. Because of high pricing middle class people can't afford it is the major drawback of it.
Market share
It refers to the total purchase of the customer of goods and services out of which in what percentage goes to a company is called market share. This method give the basic idea of the size of the organisation in terms of its rivals and its market. Profit and loss in the market share have a great impact on the company's stock performance. The technique that is used by the Arcadia group to measure and manage the market share .
- Key performance indicator- It is the best method of measuring the market share. It refers to a quantifiable method to evaluate the success of an employees , company etc. in order to meet the opportunities for performance (Nguyen, Melewar and Hemsley-Brown, 2019). In context of Arcadia group, manager continuously checking the opportunities that are present in the market to capture the large market share.
To manage the market share company set and guide suitable steps regarding maximising the market share, but when manager cannot follows the proper set of rules and guidelines than it will affect the market share negatively.
Customer attitude
It defines an individual beliefs in terms of feeling, attitude and actions toward the business and its product offerings. For example- if a person have a very positive view of a particular brand like Dorothy Perkins cloths then they feel good and intend to buy that products. Techniques that are used to measure and manage the customer attitude are:
- Customer survey- Best way to measure customer behaviour and attitude is using survey. This is used to evaluate the level of satisfaction of the buyer toward the goods and services. Arcadia Group can check the satisfaction level of their customers by using this method and if they are not satisfied with the offering than they tell at the time of company survey and according to their suggestions company can design their products and services.
To manage this customer attitude Arcadia group can use questionnaire method and can put questions that are very helpful in providing the right information and for knowing the customer behaviour. Want to get Assignment help? Talk Our Expert Now!
Purchase intent
It refers to the willingness to buy or not to buy the particular product or services is called purchase intent. Technique that are used to measure and manage the purchase intent are :
- Funnel model - this model is focus on the purchasing attitude of the buyers. That is basically describe the customer journey from awareness to purchase of the product and service. This is the simplest way by which Arcadia Group can identify the attitudes and actions towards the purchase of products and services.
To manage this there are various method in funnel model that the company applied to know the customer behaviour on purchase intent that are awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation and purchase.
CONCLUSION
From the above assessment, it is concluded that brand management is business practice that which includes activities to determine core values of specific brand as well as reflecting core values between targetted audiences. Portfolio tools benefits firms to develop suitable plan that is effective in nature. Organisational managers also adopts suitable strategies to manage portfolio, brand equity along with brand hierarchy on order to ensure strengthening of brand in the targetted market sector. There are various ways in which brands are managed in collective as well as partnership manner at different levels.
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