Company and Brand Flashcards
What is the definition of marketing?
Experts fundamentally define as the “process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return. For you to be a customer to a brand, you must feel that the product is bringing you value. In turn, you bring value to the company via revenue, positive word of mouth, and by improving brand engagement and loyalty.
How has marketing evolved over time?
-Early on marketers tended to be very product focused, assuming that as long as we build a good product that meets customers needs, the rest will take care of itself.
-Then marketers became more sales oriented as they decided to work on building their salesforce team, and selling the product.
-Then they became more consumer oriented. As part of consumer orientation, they decided they needed to understand the customer. They needed to understand the customer as well as which messages resonate with them, where they tend to shop at, what media they consume, and what they value.
-In the 1980s there was a lot of competition in many industries, so marketers decided they needed to think about how they are different from their competitors.
-In the 1990s as more data became available specifically relating to customer behaviour and it became more possible to communicate with customers online, customer relationship management became popular. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to the strategies, technologies, and practices that businesses use to manage and analyze customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. The goal of CRM is to improve customer relationships, increase customer retention, and drive sales growth.
-In the 2000s, the shift went towards value marketing where marketers sought to understand the value they are bringing to customers, with the hope that they will receive value in exchange.
What is the Marketing Strategy Planning Process?
1) Marketing Strategy: Situation Analysis (5 Cs)
2) Strategic Options and Objectives (STP)
3) Tactics and Implementation Plan (The Marketing Mix: 4 Ps)
4) Evaluation
Explain to me what comes in to Step 1 of the Marketing Strategy Planning Process. That is Marketing Strategy: Situation Analysis the 5 Cs?
1) Context: Anything happening outside the company that is important for your company’s operations. It could be something economic like a recession, or inflation. Could tarrifs be applied to our inputs, or the goods we sell.
2) Markets and Customers: Who are our customers.
3) Company: What do we stand for. Who are we.
4) Competitors
5) Collaborators: Who do we collaborate with. What are our key partnerships. E.g. As the TTC it’s important to collaborate with Go Train and Via Rail because these stations intersect.
Explain to me what is included in Step 2 of the Marketing Strategy Planning Process. That is Marketing Strategic Options and Objectives (STP)?
1) Segmentation: Maybe segmentation happens demographically(age, race, life stage etc). We could also segment them based on behaviour(e.g. some consumers use our products every day, while others are special occasion users).
2) Targeting: We identify which segments of our customers are most valuable to us.
3) Position: How do we position our brand and product to appeal to those customers that are really important to us.
Explain to me what is included in Step 3 of the Marketing Strategy Planning Process. That is Tactics and Implementation Plan (The Marketing Mix: 4 Ps)
1) Product: What type of product lines should we develop.
2) Price: How should we price it. It’s based off if our consumers are price sensitive or willing to pay a premium(elasticity of demand).
3) Promotion: How should we promote it? Are these people consuming a lot of social media. Or do they go to a lot of in person events? Are they watching TV?
4) Place(Distribution): Where and how do we sell it. Is it through our own store or website? Or do we put it in another store or website(e.g. Dell selling computers in Best Buy).
Explain to me what is included in Step 4 of the Marketing Strategy Planning Process. That is Evaluation.
It’s the final stap of the Marketing Strategy Planning Process
1) Metrics
2) Forecasts
3) Budgets
We will discuss it later in the course
What are the 5 steps of corporate strategic planning?
1) Define company mission. Ideally it should be meaningful, specific, and motivating. “With every cup, with every conversation, with every community –
we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection..” That’s Starbucks. They fulfill on this goal by creating connection with customers by asking for their name, and by creating the type of spaces that people like to sit in for a long time.
2) Situational, SWOT, and strategic analysis. To effectively plan for the future, companies must analyze their current environment and competitive positioning. This includes conducting a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and assessing macro-environmental trends such as economic conditions, technological advancements, and cultural shifts.
3) Objectives and goals translate the mission into actionable outcomes. Set goals and create meaningful KPI’s to track progress, and building cross-functionality.
4) Design business portfolio. What products do we hold?
5) Form marketing and other functional strategies (e.g. 4 Ps, sales strategy, digital transformation strategy, corporate social responsibility strategy).
What is the difference between product and brand?
Product: attributes, features, design etc.
Brand: “Products are created in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.”
What is brand knowledge? What is brand promise?
Brand knowledge: The associations a consumer has with a brand (experiences, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs)
Brand promise: What the brand promises to be and do for consumers.
What makes a brand strong?
-It delivers on its promise of specific benefits, quality, and value. It’s worth noting that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the best product, and it should just meet your expectations.
-Consistently defined and expressed.
-Inspires employees and customers
-Strong brands creates value for the firm, giving it recurring revenue and stronger product life.
-It creates value for the customer, giving them assurance that the product is good. Would you miss a brand if it left the market, and feel that sense of loss?
Can you draw out the brand resonance pyramid? Check photos for this one.
What are the benefits of strong brand equity?
-The key thing to consider is: what is the added value or premium the brand holds for customers.
-Positively correlated with willingness to pay, satisfaction, and loyalty.
-How much extra would you be willing to pay just because a shirt has a Nike logo.
-Strong brands have higher market share, higher prices, and higher margin, and are less vulnerable to competitive marketing actions
-E.g. let’s say Pepsi goes on sale for a period of time. If Coco-Cola has strong brand equity they won’t be affected by that.
-Associated with greater trade cooperation and support. e.g. Your product is at eye level in the grocery store.
-Can generate licensing and extension opportunities
How can one brands strong branding benefit it’s partnered company?
Let’s say we are Apple.
Walmart benefits from our branding because the Apple branding is differentiated from other tech brands, and this helps simplify product handling by helping organize inventory and accounting records?
Our branding can be protected through registered trademarks, and packaging can be protected through copyrights and proprietary designs.
What is customer based brand equity?
Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) refers to the value a brand holds in the minds of consumers based on their perceptions, experiences, and associations with the brand
When does an organization have positive customer-based brand equity, and when does the organization have negative customer-based brand equity?
-Fundamentally, brand equity is all about “what would they say about you as a brand when you’re not in the room.” Would you be happy.
-Positive customer-based brand equity exists when consumers react more favorably to a product and the way it is marketed when the brand is identified than when it is not identified.
-A brand has negative customer-based brand equity if consumers react less favorably to marketing activity for the brand under the same circumstances.
What are the four key reasons a customer would value a brand for?
-Assurance in the form of reduced risk, where they know the product will be good. Peace of mind is priceless.
1) Functional Benefits. E.g. Bucklys, Bounty Quicker picker upper. Don’t exist in this space because there isn’t customer loaylty.
2) Emotional benefits. E.g. Coco Cola is associated with relief and extra energy in the video we played in class. Huggies is associated with the comfort of a hug.
3) Self-Expressive Benefits. You have Adidas “impossible is nothing” or Nike “Just Do It.” How can that brand help people show who they are, or… what they aspire to.
4) Social Good Benefits. People don’t like Nestle because of what they’re doing with water. Patagonia known for supporting the environment. Toms is known for giving away shoes. Tim Hortons brings hockey players to Nigeria.
What are brand elements?
Trademarkable devices that identify and differentiate the brand.
e.g. Nike has the “swoosh” logo, the “Just Do It” slogan, and the “Nike” name from the Greek winged godess of victory.
What are the six criteria for choosing brand elements? Hint: What are the three brand building elements? What are the three defensive elements?
Brand building
1) Memorable – is the element easily recalled and recognized at purchase and consumption)
2) Meaningful – is the element credible and suggestive. Does it suggest something about a product ingredient or brand user
3) Likeable – Is the element appealing or playful
Defensive
4) Transferable – Can the element introduce new products in the same or different categories. Does it add to brand equity across geographic boundaries and market segments? eg. Amazon
5) Adaptable – Can the element be adapted and updated. e.g. Google logo. Lots of temporary variations for different holidays. It’s adaptable because it’s core identity the name and typeface remains consistant, ensuring recognition.
6) Protectable - Should be copyrightable.
What is brand contact?
Any information-bearing experience, whether positive or negative, a customer or prospect has with the brand, its product category, or market/industry.
For brand equity to guide strategy and decisions what two things do marketers need to understand. How does this link to brand audits and brank tracking
1) Brand audits helps to understand the multiple sources brand equity stems from, including brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, and brand loyalty.
Marketers need to analyze how these elements influence consumer behavior, such as purchase intent, willingness to pay a premium, and brand advocacy.
2) Brand tracking is critical. Brand equity is not static; it evolves based on market conditions, consumer preferences, competitive actions, and marketing efforts. Tracking brand equity over time helps marketers adjust their strategies to maintain or strengthen their brand’s position. Brand tracking involves continuously measuring key brand performance indicators like brand awareness, customer sentiment, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and market share.
1) What is brand audit?
2) What are the goals of a brand audit?
A brand audit is like a health check-up for a brand. It’s a systematic process that helps marketers understand how well the brand is performing, what makes it strong, and how it can be improved.
Goals of a brand audit: understand why consumers choose the brand, identify the brand’s strengths, as well as how the brand is performing in terms of awareness, reputation, customer loyalty, and financial performance.
What is Interbrand’s Five-Step Model for Estimating Brand Value. Explain it in detail.
1) Market Segmentation: Divide the brand’s customers into groups.
2) Financial Analysis: Analyze key financial factors. Deducat operating costs to calculate earnings before interest and tax. Further deduct taxes and capital cost to derive economic earnings.
3) Market research: How much of the economic earnings are driven by the brand. The percentage of these earnings are brand earnings.
4) Brand Strength Assessment: Evaluate the brand’s strength and its likelihood of achieving the forecasted Brand Earnings.
Assign a Brand Discount Rate by adding a risk premium (specific to the brand) to the risk-free rate (such as the yield on government bonds).
Apply this Brand Discount Rate to the forecasted Brand Earnings to determine their net present value (NPV).
5) Brand Value Calculation: The net present value of the forecasted brand earnings, discounted by the Brand Discount rate.
1) How do we manage brand equity when the brand is doing well?
2) How do we manage brand equity when there are market challenges?
1) Brand Reinforcement
-Occurs when the brand is doing well
-Clearly convey key product offerings and the need it fulfills
-Highlight superiority of products
-Continually offer new and relevant offerings, which may require tactical adjustments when needed.
-If changes are required, carefully preserve and defend the existing strengths of the brand to maintain trust and loyalty.
2) Brand Revitalization
-Relevant when a brand faces challenges due to market changes.
-Choose whether to keep the current brand positioning or adopt a new one.
-Retain the loyalty of existing customers, while evolving enough to attract new ones.
-Strategies range from minor adjustments(back to basics) to complete transformation (reinvention), with many hybrid approaches in between.
1) What is a brand portfolio?
2) Why may a company have multiple brands in the brand portfolio?
3) What may go wrong because they have multiple brands?
-A brand portfolio is the set of all brands and brand lines a particular firm offers for sale in a particular category or market segment.
-A company maximize market coverage so no potential customers are being ignored, but minimize brand overlap so brands are not competing for customer approval.
-Reasons for mutiple brands: market coverage across different distribution channels, segments, and/or geographic boundaries; increase shelf space and retailer dependence; variety seeking; economies of scale (e.g., advertising, sales, production, distribution).
-Cautions for multiple brands: cannabilization(new products displace old products), choice overload(e.g. way too many Heinz ketchup options leading to no purchase at all), and confusion among consumers or salespeople.
What are the four types types of brands that may exist within a brand portfolio?
1) Flankers: Secondary products designed to compete with rival brands while protecting the market position of their more premium flagship brands.
2) Cash Cows: Brands that manage to maintain their profitability with little to no marketing support. Can be kept around even despite dwindling sales.
3) Low-end entry level: Low priced options to draw customers to the brand created with the hope that customers trade up to a higher-priced brand.
4) High end prestige: Adds credibility to the whole portfolio.
What are brand extensions?
Brand extensions are new products introduced under their strongest brand names.
What is the difference between brand image vs brand identity?
-Brand image is from consumer’s perspective. This can be driven by the brand identity. What they aspire for the brand to be. Ultimately brand exists in the mind of the consumer.
-Brand identity exists from the company’s perspective. The brand identity is what the brand aspires to be.
-Although the brand is influenced by the company via the brand identity, ultimately the brand exists in the mind of the customer via the brand image.
What is good brand image, and what is bad brand image?
-Good brand image is consistent, distinct, and true.
-On the flip side, it’s bad if the brand is inconsistent. That occurs when the advertsiing and products are inconsistent, and can be seen differently by different people. And if you don’t know what the brand stands for that’s an issue as well.
-There are two ways a bad brand image can happen
1) Fragmentation. Associations are unclear or inconsistent across segments.
2) Hi-jack. A non-target segment visibly adopts the brand. A “Hi-jack” involves another entity affecting your brand poorly. Maybe your brand is used by someone who is poorly received in the media. e.g. Diddy
Whats the difference between brand iamge and brand identity?
-Brand image is about what outsiders think of a brand. It comes from asking customers the top 5 words they associate with the brand.
-Brand identity is what insiders/employees think of a brand. It comes from asking employees the top 5 words associated with the brand.
Explain the concept of mental map of associations?
-It’s a way to visualize your associations with a brand. Things that are closer are the closer associations. Things that are farther are farther associations.
What is a brand personality?
Describing a brand as if it were a person.
What are the three key drivers to building brand equity?
1) Choosing Brand elements.
-The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand (brand names, URLs, logos, symbols, characters, spokespeople, slogans, jingles, packages, and signage).
-Brand elements ties into this.
-So does the six criteria for choosing brand elements.
-Nike has great brand elements including it’s distinguished “swoosh” logo, the “Just do it” slogan. Another good slogan is State Farm’s “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There.”
2) Designing Holistic Marketing Activities.
-The product and service and all accompanying marketing activities and supporting programs.
-Integrated marketing is crucial for this.
-In addition, every brand contact influences this. That brand contact includes the many touch points a customer has with the company including: word of mouth, interactions with company personel, using the company website, and payment processing.
3) Leveraging Secondary Associations.
-Other associations indirectly transferred to the brand by linking it to some other entity (a person, place, or thing).
-These “secondary” brand associations can link to sources such as the company itself, countries or other geographical regions, and channels of distribution as well as to other brands, characters (through licensing), spokespeople (through endorsements), sporting or cultural events (through sponsorship), or other third-party sources (through awards or reviews).
-Can be risky because if the leveraged secondary institution undergoes reputational damage, your brand will face the same thing.
-e.g. 42BELOW vodka company links to the percentage of alcohol content the drink has as well as a latitude that runs through New Zealand.
What is the brand relationship spectrum, starting with more separated in mind, and ending in less separated in mind?
1) House of Brands(Sub-brand). The brand wants to hide the link. E.g. Unilever.
2) Endorsed Brands(Sub-brand, but relationship known). These brands have their own unique identity but are supported by a stronger, more established master brand. They want you to be familiar with the brand, but they don’t try to draw on the brand too much. Like Marriott’s multiple product offerings.
3) Sub-Brands(Master and sub-brand). They want you to pay attention to the brand, but at the same time they want to have different brands to target different market segments. E.g. different Nike lines that are distinctly different from one another.
4) Branded House(Master brand). The brand really wants you to know the link. E.g. all of Google’s products carry the “Google” name.
What are the seven advantages of House of Brands?
1) Precise positioning. Allows each brand within the portfolio to target a specific market segment with tailored messaging, pricing, and product features.
2) Avoids incompatible associations. MinuteMaid is owned by Coca Cola, but since Coco Cola is associated with sugary drinks, having Coco-Cola juice is seen as being a bit weird. It allows you to seperate the brands in the mind of the consumer.
3) Provides flexibility. Brands can offer more different types of products, and aren’t limited by consumers perception.
4) Preserves corporate image. If bad news occurs for one brand, it will not affect the other brand.
5) Allows for competing brands. This ensures that the brand can maximize shelf space within stores. For instance L’Oreal owns competing haircare brands like Garnier and Kerastase. While Garnier targets budget-conscious consumers, Kérastase caters to the luxury segment.
6) Avoids channel conflicts. Different brands can be tailored for distinct distribution channels or geographic markets, reducing overlap and competition within the company’s portfolio. This ensures smoother relationships with distributors and retailers. For example, a company might market one brand exclusively in grocery stores and another through e-commerce platforms or specialty retailers.
7) Signals novelty. When a company introduces a new product under a distinct brand, it signals innovation and fresh value to consumers, ensuring that the new product is perceived independently of any pre-existing brand baggage.
What are the three benefits of endorsed brands?
1) Benefit from parent’s influence. For instance, Courtyard by Marriott benefits from Marriott’s strong reputation in the hospitality industry, which lends credibility and trust to Courtyard without overshadowing its individual positioning.
2) Flexibility and Scale combined. For instance, Nestle’s KitKat benefits from Nestle’s global distribution network and resources, yet Kitkat can market itself with it’s own personality with campaigns such as “Have a Break, Have a KitKat.”
3) Facilitates Product Launch. For instance, Sony’s reputation was critical for the launch of the Playstation.
What are the three advantages of sub-brands?
1) Energize the Parent Brand. For instance, Apple’s sub-branding of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac lines brings continous energy and relevance to them.
2) Modify/Add Associations. For instance, Toyota’s sub-brand, Lexus, added luxury and premium associations to Toyota’s reputation, helping the company capture a more upscale market.
3) Extend into New Segments. For instance, Diet-Coke helps Coco Cola to target the health conscious segment of the market
What are the seven advantages of a branded house?
1) Familiarity.
2) Credibility.
3) Visibility, and lots of talk of new releases.. E.g Apple’s marketing campaigns for the iPhone and iPad reinforce Apple brand.
4) Potential for cross-selling. Shared equity fosters trust. E.g. Amazon uses it’s brand to cross-sell Prime memberships, Alexa devices, and Kindle e-readers to its vast customer base.
5) Economies of brand. Not needing to build out seperate brands means spending less on marketing, and involves a more efficient use of resources. E.g. Nike as opposed to smaller clothing brands.
6) Clarity and focus.
7) Employer brand.
When do strategic partnerships work?
When both brands are compatible with one another, or linked in some way; however, neither brand wants to take on the risk and startup costs of entering the other brands market.
What are the three main advantages of brand extensions?
1) Predisposed beliefs about brand names reduce risk for new product lines.
2) Anticipated demand for these products makes it easy to convince retailers to stock these products.
3) A well-executed extension can emphasize the brand’s key attributes in the consumer’s mind.
What are the two types of brand extensions?
1) Line extensions.
-Those are different versions of the same product. e.g. different types of Heinz ketchup.
2) Category extensions.
-Those are different types of products altogether. E.g. how arm and hammer has toothpaste, baking soda, and fabricare.
What are the five types of brand personality available?
1) Sincererity
2) Exitement
3) Sophistication
4) Ruggedness
5) Competence
