Establishing a Brand Positioning

Once they have fashioned the brand positioning strategy, marketers should communicate it to everyone in the organization so it guides their words and actions. One helpful schematic with which to do so is a brand­positioning bull’s-eye. “Marketing Memo: Constructing a Brand Positioning Bull’s-eye” outlines one way marketers can formally express brand positioning without skipping

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Alternative Approaches to Positioning

The competitive brand positioning model we’ve reviewed in this chapter is a structured way to approach po­sitioning based on in-depth consumer, company, and competitive analysis. Some marketers have proposed other, less-structured approaches in recent years that offer provocative ideas on how to position a brand. We highlight a few of those here. 1. BRAND

MARKETING EXCELLENCE NESPRESSO

Nespresso was created in 1986 as a subsidiary of the Swiss group Nestle. It was initially supplier to the coffee machine market but it was only after its repositioning to the high-end segment of the consumer market that Nespresso became a global success. Today the Nespresso turnover totals close to $3 billion. As of

MARKETING EXCELLENCE PHILIPS

Royal Philips Electronics, established in 1891, is one of the world’s largest electronics companies and one of the most respected brands. Anton and Gerard Philips started that are known to focus on authenticity and quality. For example, this high-range machinery equips at least 25 percent of the French restaurants. The chefs, as customer influencers,

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How Does Branding Work?

Perhaps the most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create, maintain, enhance, and pro­tect brands, whether established brands such as Mercedes, Sony, and Nike or new ones like Pure Leaf Teas, Taste Nirvana Coconut Waters, and Alexia All Natural Foods. Some of the hottest brands in recent years have emerged online.

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Defining Brand Equity

Brand equity is the added value endowed to products and services with consumers. It may be reflected in the way consumers think, feel, and act with respect to the brand, as well as in the prices, market share, and profitability it commands. Marketers and researchers use various perspectives to study brand equity.24 Customer-based approaches

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Building Brand Equity

Marketers build brand equity by creating the right brand knowledge structures with the right consumers. The success of this process depends on all brand-related contacts—whether marketer-initiated or not.35 From a mar­keting management perspective, however, there are three main sets of brand equity drivers; The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up

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Measuring Brand Equity

How do we measure brand equity? An indirect approach assesses potential sources of brand equity by identify­ing and tracking consumer brand knowledge structures.59 A direct approach assesses the actual impact of brand knowledge on consumer response to different aspects of the marketing. “Marketing Insight: The Brand Value Chain” shows how to link the two

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Managing Brand Equity

Because consumer responses to marketing activity depend on what they know and remember about a brand, as the brand value chain suggests, short-term marketing actions, by changing brand knowledge, necessarily increase or decrease the long-term success of future marketing actions. 1. BRAND REINFORCEMENT As a company’s major enduring asset, a brand needs to be

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Devising a Branding Strategy

A firm’s branding strategy—often called its brand architecture—reflects the number and nature of both com­mon and distinctive brand elements. Deciding how to brand new products is especially critical. A firm has three main choices: It can develop new brand elements for the new product. It can apply some of its existing brand elements. It

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Customer Equity

Achieving brand equity should be a top priority for any organization. “Marketing Memo: Twenty-First-Century Branding” offers some wise advice on continued brand success. Finally, we can relate brand equity to one other important marketing concept: customer equity. The aim of customer relationship management (CRM) is to produce high customer equity.106 Although we can calculate

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MARKETING EXCELLENCE McDonald’s

McDonald’s is the world’s leading hamburger fast-food chain with more than 34,000 restaurants in 119 coun­tries. More than 80 percent of McDonald’s restaurants are owned and operated by franchisees, which decreases the risk associated with expansion and ensures long-term tenants for the company. McDonald’s serves 70 million people each day and promises an easy

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MARKETING EXCELLENCE Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble (P&G) began in 1837 when brothers- in-law William Procter and James Gamble formed a small candle and soap company. Over the next 150 years, P&G innovated and launched scores of revolutionary products with superior quality and value, including Ivory soap in 1882, Tide laundry detergent in 1946, Crest toothpaste with fluoride

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Growth strategies of the firm

An important function of marketing is to drive growth in sales and revenue for a company. Marketing is especially adept at doing so for a new product with many competitive advantages and much potential. Good marketing can help to induce trial and promote word of mouth and diffusion. Marketing in more mature markets can

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Competitive Strategies for Market Leaders

Suppose a market is occupied by the firms shown in Figure 12.1. Forty percent is in the hands of a market leader, another 30 percent belongs to a market chal­lenger, and 20 percent is claimed by a market follower willing to maintain its share and not rock the boat. Market nichers, serving small segments

Market-Follower Strategies

Theodore Levitt argues that a strategy of product imitation might be as profitable as a strategy of product innovation.44 In “innovative imitation” as he calls it, the innovator bears the expense of developing the new prod­uct, getting it into distribution, and informing and educating the market. The reward for all this work and risk

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Market-Challenger Strategies

Many market challengers have gained ground or even overtaken the leader. Toyota today produces more cars than General Motors, Lowe’s is putting pressure on Home Depot, and AMD has found some success chipping away at Intel’s market share. Challengers set high aspirations, while market leaders can fall prey to running business as usual. Challengers

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Market-Nicher Strategies

An alternative to being a follower in a large market is to be a leader in a small market, or niche, as we introduced in Chapter 8. Smaller firms normally avoid competing with larger firms by targeting small markets of little or no interest to the larger firms. Over time, those markets can sometimes

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Marketing in a Slow-Growth Economy

Given economic cycles, there will always be tough times, such as the recession of 2008-2009 and the slow recov­ery that has followed. Despite reduced funding for marketing programs and intense pressure to justify them as cost effective, some marketers have survived—or even thrived—in tough economic times. Here are five guide­lines for improving the odds

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Product Life-Cycle Marketing Strategies

A company’s positioning and differentiation strategy must change as its product, market, and competitors change over the product life cycle (PLC). To say a product has a life cycle is to assert four things: Products have a limited life. Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the

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