Crafting the Brand Positioning and Creating Brand Equity

To develop an effective positioning, a company must study competitors as well as actual and potential customers. Marketers need to identify competitors’ strategies, objectives, strengths, and weaknesses. Developing a positioning requires identifying a frame of reference by locating the target market and the nature of the competition and the optimal points of parity and points of difference brand associations.

A company’s closest competitors are those seeking to satisfy the same customers and needs and making similar offers. A company should also pay attention to latent competitors, who may offer new or different ways to satisfy the same needs. Industry and market base analyses both help uncover competitors.

Points-of-difference are those associations unique to the brand that are also strongly held and favorably evaluated by consumers. These differences may be based directly on the product or service itself or on other considerations related to employees, channels, image, or services. Points of difference must be desirable (from a consumer standpoint), deliverable (from a company standpoint), and differentiated (from a competitor standpoint).

Points of parity are those associations not necessarily unique to the brand but perhaps shared with other brands. They help to negate any potential weaknesses for the brand. Category point-of-parity are associations consumers view as being necessary to a legitimate and credible product offering within a certain category. Correlational points of parity are associations designed to overcome perceived weaknesses or vulnerabilities of the brand. Competitive point of parity are associations designed to negate competitors’ points of difference.

Emotional branding is becoming an important way to connect with customers and create differentiation from competitors. Emotional differences are often most powerful when they are connected to underlying functional differences.

Several different alternative approaches exist to position a product or service. These less structured, more qualitative approaches are based on concepts such as brand narratives, storytelling, and cultural branding.

Although small businesses should adhere to many of the branding and positioning principles larger companies use, they must place extra emphasis on their brand elements and secondary associations, be more focused, and create buzz for their brand.

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or some combination of these elements, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors. The different components of a brand name, logos, symbols, package designs, and so on are called brand elements.

Brands are valuable intangible assets that offer a number of benefits to customers and firms and need to be managed carefully. The key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in a product category.

Brand equity should be defined in terms of marketing effects uniquely attributable to a brand. That is, different outcomes result when a product or service is marketed under its brand than when it is not.

Building brand equity depends on three main factors:

(1) The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand

(2) the way the brand is integrated into the supporting marketing program and

(3) the associations indirectly transferred to the brand by links to some other entity (the company, country of origin, channel of distribution, or another brand).

Brand audits measure “where the brand has been,” and tracking studies measure “where the brand is now” and whether marketing programs are having the intended effects. A branding strategy identifies which brand elements a firm chooses to apply across the various products it sells. In a brand extension, a firm uses an established brand name to introduce a new product. Potential extensions must be judged by how effectively they leverage existing brand equity to a new product, as well as how effectively they contribute to the equity of the parent brand in turn.

Brands may expand coverage, provide protection, extend an image, or full fill a variety of other roles for the firm. Each brand name product must have a well define positioning to maximize coverage, minimize overlap, and thus optimize the portfolio.

Customer equity is a concept that is complementary to brand equity and reflects the sum of lifetime values of all customers for a brand.

Related posts:

User Interface of online shop using Figma. “UI Online Shop Interface” is published by Fajri alkindi.

The CAT 3408 engine is suitable for a wide range of applications and industries. In the construction industry, this engine is commonly used to power heavy equipment such as bulldozers, excavators…

Summer is a wonderful time to explore new hobbies, and there are endless options to choose from. Whether you’re looking to learn a new skill or simply want to relax and have fun, there are plenty of…