Value of branding for both the buyer and the seller
“Brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers” (American Marketing Association, 2011) the same definition is also valid for describing trade-mark as stated by same author: trade-mark is legal term of brand. Usually, every company must register and provide a unique trade-mark, after registration, all trade-mark components became protected and no-one can use them for any purposes, then, the company uses its trade-mark elements for marketing purposes, printing trade-mark elements on tangible products, however, products still require another definition for telling customers what the value of that product is, thus, branding is creating brand for products/service, for example: iPod is the name of a product, its set during branding process of that product, fir lower case ‘I’ letter and second upper case ‘P’ is differentiation and custom design, there is also a definitions of that product that customers depends on it when deciding to buy that product, for favorable brands by customers, brands providing value to the firm (Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller, p.238, 2008)
Developing a brand for the product and/or service
Before creating effective brand, creating good quality of product/service is very important because “product quality plays a significant role in influencing consumers to be brand loyal customers” WONG FOONG YEE AND YAHYAH SIDEK (2008, P.234) so that the goals for that brand must increase customers’ loyalty and sales performance.
Kotler and Kevin Keller (p.246, 2008) provided six criteria for choosing brand elements: memorable, meaningful, likable, transferable, adaptable, and protectable.
Promoting brand loyalty
Brand loyalty is customer’s behavior that returns to same brand to purchase same or other products/services so that, with more brand loyal customers, a company spending less effort in marketing because customers return according to their trust for that brand. Usually, loyalty created within customers after they satisfied with delivered products/services, but this behavior is not easy to be created because of more similar products in major types in current industry. WONG FOONG YEE AND YAHYAH SIDEK (2008, p.233-234) stated that: brand name, product quality, price, store environment, promotion and service quality are positively related to brand loyalty so that they can affect customers to be brand loyal.
Usually, before customers became loyal, the firm must motivate customers to chose its products, this process require a good advertisement program to create theoretical brand image within customers, after this, if the product satisfied customer in terms of quality, the customer might became loyal for that brand, as mentioned above about significant role of quality, the quality of advertisement and used media are also important, for instance, Website is one of the most common used media for advertisement, as stated by LOWRY et al. (2008, p.221) ‘Web site quality has an important effect on brand image” from this perspective, good quality of media and advertisement are important for promoting brand loyalty.
No-brand-name PC
There are some facts behind no-brand-name PC:
- Cheap price
- Customizable according to customer’s preferences
- Quick Support including (Upgrading and repair) from retailer
But brand-named PCs like (HP, DELL, etc) are expensive comparing with no-brand-name, also, these PC some times, can’t be customized according to customer’s demand.
Experienced users knew that brand-named PC’s are created with higher quality that all parts of the PC are compatible so that the PC will run longer and better, from my experience, I found that using popular brand-name PCs are much better than no-brand-name PC for long-term use, because they require less repair and maintenance.
In conclusion, every product and service require branding before entering to the market, because without brand the value of product/service can’t be created within customers, and later, when the product/service became available, brand brings more long term benefit to the firm like customer loyalty, and then, “The knowledge of consumer segments that favor a particular brand supports the selection of appropriate target markets” Ulrich R. Orth et al. (2004, p.9) that helps the firm to extend and widen their marketing strategy.
References:
- Ulrich R. Orth, Mina McDaniel, Tom Shellhammer, Kannapon Lopetcharat, (2004) “Promoting brand benefits: the role of consumer psychographics and lifestyle”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 21 Iss: 2, pp.97 – 108, Emerald [Online]. DOI: 10.1108/07363760410525669 (Accessed: 10 November 2011).
- WONG FOONG YEE AND YAHYAH SIDEK (2008) ‘Influence of Brand Loyalty on Consumer Sportswear’, Journal of Economics and Management Vol. 2, Iss: 2, pp. 221 – 236 [Online] Available From: http://www.econ.upm.edu.my/ijem/vol2no2/bab02.pdf (Accessed: 10 November 2011).
- LOWRY, P, VANCE, A, MOODY, G, BECKMAN, B, & READ, A (2008), ‘Explaining and Predicting the Impact of Branding Alliances and Web Site Quality on Initial Consumer Trust of E-Commerce Web Sites’, Journal Of Management Information Systems, 24, 4, pp. 199-224, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 24 November 2011.
- Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller (2008) ‘Marketing Management’, 13th Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN-10: 0136009980
- American Marketing Association (2011) Dictionary [Online]. Available From: http://www.marketingpower.com/_layouts/Dictionary.aspx?dLetter=B (Accessed: 26 November 2011)