Brand Strategy

A brand is a name, image, symbol, and design that give an identity to a product or a company. An effective brand can be established through a plan or strategy. A brand strategy is a planning process that defines company’s position in the market. It includes many activities done by business such as defining the brand idea, brand design, and brand personality (Graham, 2007). Brand strategy can be defined as the process of creating brand identity in the industry. This post could be used by students for help with their assignments related to brand strategy.

Brand equity, brand loyalty, brand awareness are the basic component of brand strategy. Brand equity is significantly related with the brand strategy as it is a process of evaluating market situation for brand. That helps the marketer to create brand identity effectively by analyzing all the aspects of an environment. This involves brand perception, financial performance, satisfaction and overall value etc. (Knapp, 2000). Brand equity also compares the other brands that are available in the same market that helps to implement the brand strategy effectively.

A marketer uses several branding strategies to increase the brand awareness and identity for its product and services. The major branding strategies are as below:

Family Branding: Through this strategy company introduce new product in existing brand. A business go for family branding, when it feels that its brand has a good position in market and customer’s are going to give good response to new product (Kotler, Pfoertsch & Michi, 2006). For example: Sony introduced its product in electronics like radios, televisions, stereos etc. after the success of Walkman (Lamb, 2009).

Product Branding: This strategy is used, where business gives a new brand name to each of its product. It has an advantage that a company is not losing its total control over the brand in case of the failure of any product (Kotler, Pfoertsch & Michi, 2006). For example Procter & Gamble segmented laundry detergent with the name of Bold, Oxydol, Tide, Cheer, Gain, Era and Solo, etc. (Lamb, 2009).

Company Branding: This strategy is used by the businesses as a whole. It denotes that a business use a single brand in all the product lines and industries (Kahn, 2011). For example, Virgin Group has a large and wider product portfolio in different markets such as Finance, Airline, Music, Mobiles etc. (Virgin, 2011).

Manufacturers Branding: This strategy used by the manufacturers rather than distributors to brand the product in a large region. It is introduced by large firms that have good financial position and can take risk of failure in one region. Ford and McDonald’s are the brands that used this strategy for their products and services in the different regions (Kahn, 2011).

The above discussed are some of the important branding strategies that are used by the marketers to create brand identity for their products and services.

References
Davis, J. A. (2009). Competitive Success, How Branding Adds Value. USA: John Wiley and Sons.
Graham, T. (2007). CIMA Exam Practice Kit Management Accounting Business Strategy (3rd ed.). Holland: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Kahn, K.B. (2011). Product Planning Essentials (2nd ed.). USA: M.E. Sharpe.
Knapp, D.E. (2000). The Brandmindset. New York : McGraw-Hill Professional.
Kotler, P., Pfoertsch, W., & Michi, I. (2006). B2B brand management. Germany: Springer.
Lamb, C.W. (2009). MKTG. China: Cengage Learning.
Virgin. (2011). About it. Retrieved July 26, 2011, from http://www.virgin.com/