BRAND MANAGMENT - TYPES OF BRANDS IN MARKETING

1. Types of Brands

2. Differentiating features of brands
 How purchased/used/experienced.
cg products are traditionally dependent on
wide distribution networks. However, through
the use of e-commerce many have started to
sell direct to consumers.
 Frequency of purchase/use/experience.
cg products are bought much more
frequently, as the name suggests, than big
ticket items.

3. Differentiating features of brands
 Amount of thought/research/comparison typically
undertaken prior to purchase/experience.
The consumer decision process will vary according
to how much risk they perceive in buying a product
or service – the risk will depend on price, quality
variance, trust in the brand and other factors.
 Degree of customization available.
The intangibility of services makes them much
more suited to customization than cg products,
which offer a wide variety but little customization.

4. All brands have one goal
– to enhance their perceived value.

5. Different types of brands
 Product Brands
 Service Brands
 E-brands
 Media Brands
 Not-for-profit Brands
 Nation Brands
 Government Brands
 Global Brands
 Organization Brands

6. Product brands: FMCG
Characteristics:
 Cost Inexpensive.
 Balance of product to service
Almost exclusively tangible product, although
service component can be present (eg,
customer-care lines).
 How purchased
Mainly through conventional fmcg distribution
networks – supermarkets, other shops,
vending machines, relatively large volume
outlets.

7. Product brands (FMCG: cont.)
 Frequency of purchase : Frequent.
 Degree of research/thought/search prior to
purchase
Typically none, the brand is part of the
consumer repertoire, likely to be habitual.
 Degree of customisation
Very little. Often wide range of variants but no
real customisation for individual customers.

8. Product brands (Big Ticket Items)
Characteristics:
 Cost Expensive.
 Balance of product to service
Service is likely to take on a more
important role, before, during and after
purchase.

9. Product brands (Big Ticket Items)
 How purchased
Traditionally through specialised outlets
(luxury = high status outlets) but increasingly more widely
distributed. Frequency of purchase Infrequent.
 Degree of research on purchase
 A great deal of thought, research and comparison
goes into the decision, although with luxury goods,
investment is more
 emotional than financial.
 Degree of customization Can be considerable.

10. Service brands
Service brands are characterized by the need to
maintain a consistently high level o service delivery
throughout hundreds, or even thousands of staff.
Although a product component may be involved, it is
essentially the service that is the brand.
These are more complex than product brands for two
reasons:
 because it is always harder to brand something you
can’t touch
 because they are delivered directly by employees.

11. Service Brands
Characteristics:
 Intangibility
Service brands can seldom be tried out in advance,
which requires the establishment of a greater degree of
trust.
 Inseparability of production and consumption
Services cannot generally be stockpiled in advance but
are produced and consumed in real time.
 Inconsistency
Since humans are usually instrumental in delivering
services.

12. Different categories of
service brands:
 Classic service brands eg, airlines, hotels, car rentals and banks.
 Pure service providers eg, member associations
 Professional Service Brands
eg, advisors of all kinds – accountancy, management consultancy.
 Agents eg, travel agents and estate agents.
(This category of a brand has become endangered by the rise of the
Internet.)
 Retail brands
 eg, supermarkets, fashion stores and restaurants.
 Retail Brands are complex and multifaceted.
 Consumers have a much more involved and interactive experience
with retail brands. The meanings of retail brands are more heavily
 derived from consumer’s direct experience rather than from
advertising.

13. Brands from other spheres
 E-brands
 The Internet is a medium that presents new challenges for brand
owners, but the underlying principles of branding are unchanged.
 The Internet is developing a more direct style of relationships between
customers and brand owners, and all those interactions
 give an opportunity for strengthening the brand identity.
 A distinction needs to be made between ‘e-tailers’,
- e-brands’ primary activity is to deliver physical products like
Amazon.com
- e-brands focus on delivering a service or experience, like GTA.com
 In both cases, however, it is the intangibles, the brand values that
will attract online customers.

14.  Media brands
eg, newspapers, magazines, television channels.
 Not-for-profit organization brands
 Non-profits are often at a disadvantage when it
comes to branding.
 they don’t have the deep pockets of
corporations who can afford to hire brand
specialists
 they don’t have staff whose job it is to protect
the integrity of the brand, and promote it at
every turn.
 But successful branding can have a great effect
on raising awareness of the charity and its
mission, and on fund-raising

15.  Nation brands
 New ways of thinking lead to countries being positioned
as tourist destinations, enhancing status of goods and
services produced, and aiding under-developed
countries.
 Government brands
 Governments and political parties often have strong
brands as they are centerd on passionately held core
values, Branding is important in both securing votes and
in international diplomacy.
 Global brands
 Companies have been marketing their products and
brands in different countries for decades. However they
were almost always marketed according to local
conditions.

16. Features of Global Brands
[Quelch, 1999]
 Strong in home market – cash flow generated from domestic
market enables the company to fund a global roll-out
 At least minimum level of awareness, recognition and sales all
over the world
 The products meet the same human needs world-wide, even
though the physical product may be adapted locally (eg,
McDonald’s).
 Consistent positioning
 Consumers value the provenance of the brand, its country of
origin, and even associate the country’s expertise with
specific products (eg, German cars, American jeans).
 Focus on a specific product category
 Use single corporate brand name.

17. Act local, think global
“While there are global brands that have a
global presence, they don’t have global
consumers. The brand’s core values can be
global, although the brand needs to have local
relevance. To bring it to life you need to be
flexible and re-enact the brand as appropriate.
It is the think global, act local strategy.”
[Gavin Emsden, Nestle UK’s head of consumer
insight and planning for beverages]

18. The decision whether to standardize or localize?
Several other factors may affect the decision:
 >regulatory environments vary from country to
country, especially in pharmaceuticals, financial
services and utilities.
 >the Internet allows adoption of a standardized global
strategy without investing in distribution systems in
each country.
 >the threat of parallel imports from low-price to high-
price countries.

19. Organization brands
 What is an organization brand?
 It is neither a product/service nor a corporate brand, it is
wider than both.
- It relates to all stakeholders and in many cases is rarely
advertised.
 The organization brand represents the impression
that people inside and outside the organization
have.