BRAND, BRAND MANAGEMENT & BRAND

POSITIONING

Kevin Lane Keller

Tuck School of Business
Dartmouth College

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 What is a brand?

 For the American Marketing Association (AMA), a

brand is a “name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a
combination of them, intended to identify the goods
and services of one seller or group of sellers and to
differentiate them from those of competition.”

 These different components of a brand that identify

and differentiate it are brand elements.

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Difference
Between Product
and Brand
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 Products

 A product is anything we can offer to a market for

attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might
satisfy a need or want.
 A product may be a physical good, a service, a retail
outlet, a person, an organization, a place, or even an
idea.

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 Brand vs Product
 Companies Make Products and Consumers
Make Brands
 Products Can Be Copied and Replaced but
Brands Are Unique
 Products Can Become Obsolete but Brands
Can Be Timeless
 Products Are Instantly Meaningful but Brands
Become Meaningful over Time.

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 Five Level of Product
 1. Core Product
 This is the basic product and the focus is on
the purpose for which the product is intended.
For example, a warm coat will protect you
from the cold and the rain.
 2. Generic Product
 This represents all the qualities of the product.
For a warm coat this is about fit, material, rain
repellent ability, high-quality fasteners, etc.
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 Five Level of Product
 . Expected Product
 This is about all aspects the consumer expects
to get when they purchase a product. That coat
should be really warm and protect from the
weather and the wind and be comfortable
when riding a bicycle.

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 Five Level of Product
 . Augmented Product
 This refers to all additional factors which sets
the product apart from that of the competition.
And this particularly involves brand identity
and image. Is that warm coat in style, its
colour trendy and made by a well-known
fashion brand? But also factors like service,
warranty and good value for money play a
major role in this.
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 Five Level of Product
 Potential Product
 This is about augmentations and
transformations that the product may undergo
in the future. For example, a warm coat that is
made of a fabric that is as thin as paper and
therefore light as a feather that allows rain to
automatically slide down.

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 A brand is therefore more than a product, as it
can have dimensions that differentiate it in
some way from other products designed to
satisfy the same need.

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 Some brands create competitive advantages
with product performance; other brands create
competitive advantages through non-product-
related means.

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Importance of Brands to Consumers
 Identification of the source of the product
 Assignment of responsibility to product maker
 Risk reducer
 Search cost reducer
 Promise, bond, or pact with product maker
 Symbolic device
 Signal of quality

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Reducing the Risks in Product Decisions
 Consumers may perceive many different types of risks in buying
and consuming a product:
 Functional risk—The product does not perform up to
expectations.
 Physical risk—The product poses a threat to the physical well-
being or health of the user or others.
 Financial risk—The product is not worth the price paid.
 Social risk—The product results in embarrassment from others.
 Psychological risk—The product affects the mental well-being
of the user.
 Time risk—The failure of the product results in an opportunity
cost of finding another satisfactory product.

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 Importance of Brands to Firms
 To firms, brands represent enormously
valuable pieces of legal property, capable of
influencing consumer behavior, being bought
and sold, and providing the security of
sustained future revenues.

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 Importance of Brands to Firms
 Identification to simplify handling or tracing
 Legally protecting unique features
 Signal of quality level
 Endowing products with unique associations
 Source of competitive advantage
 Source of financial returns

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 Can everything be branded?
 Ultimately a brand is something that resides in
the minds of consumers.
 The key to branding is that consumers perceive
differences among brands in a product category.
 Even commodities can be branded:
 Coffee (Maxwell House), bath soap (Ivory), flour
(Gold Medal), beer (Budweiser), salt (Morton),
oatmeal (Quaker), pickles (Vlasic), bananas
(Chiquita), chickens (Perdue), pineapples (Dole),
and even water (Perrier)

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 What is branded?
 Physical goods
 Services
 Retailers and distributors
 Online products and services
 People and organizations
 Sports, arts, and entertainment
 Geographic locations
 Ideas and causes
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 Importance of Brand Management
 The bottom line is that any brand —no matter
how strong at one point in time—is vulnerable,
and susceptible to poor brand management.

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Branding Challenges and Opportunities

 Savvy customers
 Brand proliferation
 Media fragmentation
 Increased competition
 Increased costs
 Greater accountability

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 The Brand Equity Concept
 The value premium that a company realizes
from a product with a recognizable name as
compared to its generic equivalent. Companies
can create brand equity for their products by
making them memorable, easily recognizable
and superior in quality and reliability.

 The additional money that consumers are

willing to spend to buy Coca Cola rather than
the store brand of soda is an example of brand
equity.
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 Brand Positioning
 Is at the heart of the marketing strategy

 “. . . the act of designing the company’s offer

and image so that it occupies a distinct and
valued place in the target customer’s minds.”
Philip Kotler

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Determining a frame of reference
 What are the ideal points-of-parity and points-
of-difference brand associations vis-à-vis the
competition?
 Marketers need to know:
 Who the target consumer is
 Who the main competitors are

 How the brand is similar to these competitors

 How the brand is different from them

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 Points-of-Parity
and Points-of-Difference
 Points-of-difference (PODs) are attributes or
benefits that consumers strongly associate with
a brand, positively evaluate, and believe that
they could not find to the same extent with a
competitive brand.
 Points-of-parity associations (POPs), on the
other hand, are not necessarily unique to the
brand but may in fact be shared with other
brands.
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 Defining and Communicating the
Competitive Frame of Reference
 Defining a competitive frame of reference for
a brand positioning is to determine category
membership.
 The preferred approach to positioning is to
inform consumers of a brand’s membership
before stating its point of difference in
relationship to other category members.
 Unique Selling Proposition (USP), Sustainable
Competitive Advantage (SCA)

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 Choosing POP’s & POD’s
 Desirability criteria (consumer perspective)
 Personally relevant
 Distinctive and superior

 Believable and credible

 Deliverability criteria (firm perspective)

 Feasible
 Profitable

 Pre-emptive, defensible, and difficult to attack

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 Core Brand Values
 Set of abstract concepts or phrases that
characterize the five to ten most important
dimensions of the mental map of a brand
 Relate to points-of-parity and points-of-
difference
 Mental map  Core brand values  Brand mantra

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 Brand Mantras
 (which some refer to as the brand essence and
others call a brand promise) is a 3 to 5 word
shorthand encapsulation of brand position.
Merely it's the articulation of the 'heart and soul'
of the brand or a spirit of brand positioning.

 Considerations
 Communicate
 Simplify
 Inspire

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 Brand Mantra
Company Name Brand Mantra Tagline

Nike Authentic - Athletic - Just do it

Performance

Coca Cola Sharing – Happiness - Tasty Thanda matlab coca cola

BMW Ultimate – Driving - Machine The Ultimate Driving

Machine

Apple Smart – Technologic – Listen Think Different

to Music

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