Brand Awareness – A Brand Building Concept
Awareness refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind. Awareness is measured according to the different ways in which consumers remember a brand, ranging from recognition to recall to top of the mind.
Recognitions reflect familiarity gained from past exposure. Recognition does not necessarily involve remembering where the brand was encountered before why it differs from other brands or even what the brands product class is. It is simply remembering that there was a past exposure to the brand. When consumers see a brand and remember that they have seen it before they realize that the company is spending money to support the brand. Since it is generally believed that companies will not spend money on products consumers take their recognition as a signal that the brand is good.
Many companies, especially while introducing a new product in the market find that sales cannot be sustained without constant advertising. Sales charts always show a meteoric rise post-advertising burst. Companies often rerun advertisement on different channels over the year to sustain the brand awareness and ensure that the consumers are exposed to the brand.
Complan repeats the same TV commercials for different target markets over a period of time to ensure brand recall and visibility.
Factors Affecting Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind.
Awareness is measured according to the different ways in which consumers remember a brand, ranging from recognition to recall to top of the mind. Some of the major factors affecting brand awareness are: -
Brand Name: One of the most important factor affecting brand awareness is the brand name. Brand name plays an important part in creating awareness for a brand. Also whether the name is really very meaningful or completely baseless they both affect brand awareness.
Bacardi Breezers - flavoured aerated vodka based drink
Fevi Stik - adhesive
Centre Shock chewing gum.
Advertising: Advertising also helps to create Brand awareness in a big way. Take any brand name Fevicol, Vicks, Pepsi all have used ad’s for creating awareness among their consumers.
Celebrity:- Another important factor affecting Brand awareness is the celebrities endorsing the Brand. Whenever you see a celebrity you love endorsing a brand you tend to propagate the Brand.
Coca Cola experienced a tremendous increase in brand following post ad campaigns with Hrithik Roshan and “Kaho Na Pyaar Hai”.
Parent Company:- To a large extent the parent company helps in promoting a brand. The parent company in many cases is so popular that its brand automatically become popular and people become aware about the product.
TATA always promotes it brand with its name along with the brand such as TATA INDICA, TATA INDIGO, TATA SALT.
Sales Promotions And Offers: - It also helps in making the consumers aware of the brand. Some of the sales promotion activities that companies carry out help them in a big way to make their target aware of the brand.
Reliance India Mobile’s Monsoon Hungama offer, wherein they offered their WLL services at an affordable price.
1st Mover Advantage: - Usually the company that enters a product category first has good awareness about its brand. Usually people tend to remember the first player to enter the market.
Parle products “BISLERI” in the packaged water segment.
Public Relations: – The coverage that the fourth estate and magazines provide a brand also helps in building awareness about a brand.
The popularity of local restaurants such as J.W.Marriot has been boosted by the page 3 mentions in the Bombay Times supplement of The Times of India.
Direct Selling: – Some of the companies use direct selling as a platform to create brand awareness.
Eureka Forbes water filter “AQUA GUARD”.
Peer Group Opinion: - Peer group opinion also plays an important part in the whole brand awareness exercise. Usually people tend to discuss a lot about the brand and tend to share their experiences or some recent ad’s they have seen which in turn increases brand awareness of their peers.
When opting for cellular network services (irrespective of prepaid or billing), most people generally go by the opinions of their friends and colleagues.
Recall Of Ads: - In some cases the brand awareness is also high due to specific ad recall, which is very high.
Amaron battery advertisement of race between tortoise and rabbit with the tagline “LAST LONG REALLY LONG”.
Celebrity Endorsements – A Brand Building Concept
The billions of dollars spent per year on celebrity endorsement contracts show that celebrities, like Liz Hurley, Britney Spears and Tiger Woods, play an important role for the advertising industry. This shows that the practice of using super stars in advertising generates a lot of publicity and attention from the public. The underlying question is, if and how the lively interest of the public in ‘the rich and famous’ can be effectively used by companies to promote their brands and consequently increase revenues.
CELEBRITIES AS SPOKESPERSONS
Companies frequently use spokespersons to deliver their advertising message and convince consumers of their brands. A widely used and very popular type of spokesperson is the celebrity endorser.
The reason for using celebrities as spokespersons goes back to their huge potential influence. Compared to other endorser types, famous people achieve a higher degree of attention and recall. They increase awareness of a company’s advertising, create positive feelings towards brands and are perceived by consumers as more entertaining. Using a celebrity in advertising is therefore likely to positively affect consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intentions.
SOURCE CREDIBILITY AND ATTRACTIVENESS
A central goal of advertising is the persuasion of customers, i.e., the active attempt to change or modify consumers’ attitude towards brands. In this respect, the credibility of an advertisement plays an important role in convincing the target audience of the attractiveness of the company’s brand. Pursuing a celebrity endorsement strategy enables advertisers to project a credible image in terms of expertise, persuasiveness, trustworthiness, and objectiveness.
To create effective messages, celebrity advertisers also have to consider the attractiveness of the spokesperson. Source attractiveness refers to the endorser’s physical appearance, personality, likeability, and similarity to the receiver, thus to the perceived social value of the source. The use of (by corresponding standards) attractive people is common practice in television and print advertising, with physically attractive communicators having proved to be more successful in influencing customers’ attitudes and beliefs than unattractive spokespersons. This behavior mainly goes back to a halo effect, whereby persons who perform well on one dimension, e.g. physical attractiveness, are assumed to excel on others as well, e.g. happiness and coolness.
Simply assuming that a person just has to be famous to represent a successful spokesperson, however, would be incorrect, with a considerable number of failures proving the opposite. Very well accepted and attractive super stars have failed in turning their endorsements into success.
The late ’80s saw the beginning of celebrity endorsements in advertising in India. Hindi films and TV stars as well as sportspersons began encroaching on a territory that was, until then, the exclusive domain of models. There was a spurt of advertising, featuring stars like Tabassum (Prestige pressure cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings). Of course, the first ad. to cash in on star power in a strategic, long-term mission statement kind of way was Lux soap, a brand which has been among the top three in the country for much of its lifetime. Detergents on the other hand ran the whole gamut from Lalitaji (the antithesis of celebrity) to Shekhar Suman, stepping into the lives of ordinary housewives.
In the much talked about Shah Rukh-Santro campaign, the organisation wanted to overcome the shortcoming of an unknown brand, Korean at that. The objective was to garner faster brand recognition, association and emotional unity with the target group. The Santro ad. showed the highest recall amongst auto ads.. despite average media spends for the category.
Even the ill-fated Home Trade had hits going up to seven lakhs a day after their campaign featuring Hrithik, Shah Rukh and Sachin.
Basically, celebrity endorsements give a brand a touch of glamour, and the hope that a famous face will provide added appeal and name recognition in a crowded market. In the battle for the mind, you get the customer excited by showing him a known face, and an effective demand is created. This would normally work best when the concerned brand has close substitutes, or has a need for differentiation, or requires quick entry in a short lifecycle category.
Apart from this memorable bit, using a celebrity is supposed to lend instant credibility as well as aspirational values to the brand —– a hope to get people to follow the Pied Piper. For instance, usage of sports personalities in footwear advertising (where the consumer feels that as Sachin wears Adidas, so should he). But here, the marketer needs to be really disciplined in choice of celebrity and the celebrity needs to match the product. For instance, Coke’s Daler Mehndi campaign suffered from this very problem—–it wasn’t aspirational enough. On the other hand, Videocon is using Shah Rukh cleverly to lift the brand from the masses to a more upmarket, techie image.
Sports people have always been celebrities. Only now, the advertising industry is trying to cash in on their mass appeal. In the field of sports, the cricketers take the lion’s share of advertisement contracts for their wide mass appeal where this sport is considered as a religion and Sachin as God.
The much sought-after players of Indian Cricket are: Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Virendra Shewag.
Apart from cricket and cricketers other sport and sportspersons also attract considerable endorsement money. Leading tennis players like Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati (J Hampstead, Adidas), footballer Baichung Bhutia (Reebok, Omega), chess wizard Viswanathan Anand (NIIT), golfers Jeev Milkha Singh and Jyoti Randhawa (Mizuno of Japan), Narain Karthikeyan ( Tata group, Amaron, Kingfisher and JK Tyres) attract sizeable endorsement money among others.
In an attempt to fly deeper into the hearts of Indian travellers, tourism promotion boards from the South East Asian region are now looking at Indian ambassadors. Topping the list is Tourism Malaysia, which is in negotiations to sign up both Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai as its brand ambassadors to promote this predominantly Muslim tourist destination among the Indians. Not to be left behind, the Sri Lanka Tourist Board (SLTB) is also planning to ink a similar deal with the Indian cricket team.
Brand Success
But have you ever think what makes the brand great? What are the important things we have to remember to make a brand successful?
There are different practices to make a brand successful and it differs from product, services to services and corporate brands.
Some points to make your brand successful
1) Protect your brand -: through trade mark, patent etc.
2) Honor your shareholders
3) Treat your brand as an investment, not a cost
4) Exploit the financial potential of your brand
5) A clear and consistent positioning
Cost effective promotional items to build company brand presence
There are few tips to make cost effective promotional items to build company brand presence
- Pen and Pencil -: the first promotional item is Pen or Pencil. Imprint company logo, catchy-phrase or punch line on pen or pencil (Pen or Pencil with matching company’s color or style) and distribute them in meeting, trade shows etc. As everyone love to enjoy getting pen and pencil which they have received favorably.
- Coffee bug -: Now days coffee bug is also one of the most popular branded promotional item. New employees, clients and prospects love to get new mug to enjoy their favorite beverages.
- T-shirt -: for last few years we have notice that t-shirt option has became popular as brand promotional item. For this we need to say thanks to casual dress codes at most companies. We need to develop a cool t-shirt design with corporate logo, theme and message. T-shirts can be used at trade shows, for corporate companies and events, as well as sales giveaways for a “walking” advertisement of your brand.
- Flyers, business cards and folders, forms and letterhead-: these items are also great way to develop company image or brand. Use these materials to send out business proposals, estimates, invoices, and more. Use the best quality service and paper for imprinted or printed promotional items. The hallmark of a professional level business is having a coordinated suite of high quality printed promotional items with a great logo, so be sure to keep this in mind as you invest in your corporate marketing materials.
Stress Management
Stress is a normal part of most of us life. But luckily, there are ways to manage stress. Take a look at the following tips.
Recognize the signs of stress.
Monitor yourself for the following symptoms:
• You’re not sleeping.
• You feel nervous all the time.
• You forget important things.
• You get sick a lot.
• You’re always tired.
• You eat a lot more or less than usual.
• You no longer enjoy everyday activities.
• You think about leaving the teaching profession. Read more…
V2 is planb of Vishal Retial.
Ramchandra Agarwal is promoter of Vishal Retail. He is a born entrepreneur as business runs in his blood. We heard from many that his career path is the resembles of an aircraft’s as he stated one of his interview that like the aircraft, which is either preparing for take-off or making a landing in every few minutes, I made Vishal Retial, the company, which is started in makeshift shop, took off on the retail flight, but crash-landed when the economy plunged.
In year 1994 Mr. Agarwal has set up his first vishal Garmets store in Kolkata. With the booming and emerging demand in retailing sector he moved to Delhi in 2001. And took up carpet-bombing strategy (extension in systematic & extensive manner to reach large target audience) to expand itself across the country.
But what we saw that he had sold his business to Airplaza Retail holdings, a Shriram Group Company and PE firm TPG wholesale at worth Rs. 70crore due to falling in sales and rising costs. With his experience we have learned that we have to deal & understand our customers patiently. Don’t be too fast to expand and to trust so easily. Future Group ever teaches us with famous Indian philosophy that Value for money. They state Indian always seeking value make product (low price good quality). With keep this point they came up with V2 (his retail venture) to sell quality clothes at low & economy price. Mr. Agarwal plans to sell products at least 45-60 per cent economic than his nearest competitors. Currently, there are Six Stores of V2 across the country and might be added four more stores by the end of this year.
Goal-: to generate maximum revenue on per sq. ft. sales
Strategy behind V2
1. Quality clothes at low price
2. Seek best merchandise whose clothes do well on the store shelf so that they can replenish it soon.
He knows people and capital are the pillars of any business which they didn’t have for Vishal, but for V2 they are to trying to perfect and took the mantra of creating a strong and professional management team.
Thought of the Day
“The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.” -Dolf de Roos
Bharti Walmart sweetens portfolio: launches beverages
To match with Indian taste, Bharti Walmart has launched a wide range of ready-to-drink fruit based beverages under its Great Value brand.
This is a first step of Bharti Walmarts’s toward stiff competition in beverage segment (India). 50:50 cash and carry joint venture between them have already been selling grocery and homecare products range under its Great value private label brand. And Walmart’s push-pull strategy plays vital key role in the enhancement of value chain of JV
Sweet sips
The wide range of beverage basket includes fruit based drinks in flavor of mango, lemon, apple, mixed fruit, pineapple, litchi, and guava, flavoured milk in kesar, elaichi, coffee, and rose as well as traditional flavourings like masala cola, jaljeera with pudina, and an aloe vera pineapple drink. Through these series Bharti-Walmart is looking to penetrate into a wide range of customer segments and satisfy the taste palettes of different classes of consumers.These beverages are competitively priced with a 500 ml masala flavoured cola and pudina flavoured jaljeera priced at Rs 25, and a one litre bottle of aloe vera pineapple drink priced at Rs 55.
This new move has definitely created a wave in the market primarily owing to the huge brand value of Bharti Walmart. But will it be successful in establishing a firm grip over a segment which is characterized by strong brand loyalties?
Recipe for success?
Most focus on diabetic children and offer real low calorie packaged drinks. This is the only reason why the company launched variety of localized flavors along with the conventional fruit flavors. It has also tried to catch on to the health bandwagon by introducing healthy, fruit based drinks. Read more…
Driving factors for the selection of university
As India believes in globalization, the Government of India grants permission to many foreign universities to establish their education houses in India for providing quality education and it has provide the number of opportunities for business houses and industries offering education services. It may be a threat for those institutions which are not providing the quality education.
With the increase in supply of money in the market and increase in the standard of living of service’s class people, the disposable income of the people has increased that makes the future of education industry quit profitable. As the modern students’ seek value for their money, so they consider various factors like location of university, infrastructure, quality of teaching, brand name, training and placements, accommodation facilities and fee structure, etc. before making the choice of a university. Due to this, the identification of students’ preferences becomes very important for university management. Understanding of students’ behavior is key challenge for the marketers because different students have different consumption patterns and examples, as one may spend for learning and other for fun.
With the help of understanding of students’ preferences, the marketers of potential institutions can target different groups of students. So, the marketers need a mechanism that can interpret the students’ preferences towards various universities.
There are basically 19 parameters; we have found during our study. These are the common 19 factors seeking by students while deciding university/institute for admission which are discussed below:
1. Location of institute
2. Excellence of Governing body of institute
3. No. of specialization in UG and PG courses
4. Provision for studying interdisciplinary courses
5. Library facilities
6. E-learning facilities
7. Faculty quality
8. Infrastructure includes classrooms, labs, seminar hall, auditorium and play ground etc.
9. Quality of students
10. Administration performance
11. Opportunity of professional growth and scope for entertainment
12. Living expenses (food, ludging, hostel)
13. Medical facilities
14. Student-faculty rapport
15. Rules & regulation of hostel and institution
16. Transparency in students’ evaluation system
17. Economic fee structure
18. Good training and placement facilities
19. Appreciable Research work done by faculty
As we have noticed that in the present education industry, most of the educational institutions are running to tap the pockets of students’ parents. But fact is that students prefer those universities which are delivering over promises and provide a sense of great satisfaction not only to students but also to their respective parents.
The most essential factors affecting the students for the selection of universities are location cum training and placement, cost infrastructure, academic cum administrative competence, course cum services (health, accommodation and quality of learning)
The marketers who are looking for students to run their education houses must focus upon these factors; otherwise they will have to exit out of this Industry.
Exit Interview
Smooth way of separation
Exit Interview is the interview which scheduled at the time of leaving the job (current job) by employer.
Popularity of exit interview is increasing day-by-day with the aim of discovering the way of improving the organization culture and its retention rate. Experts say that an exit interview helps the employee as well as employers. “Outgoing employees have nothing to lose by being honest about their reasons for leaving job”.
Both parties should be prepared for an open, honest conversation. And employee should give their report in very polite manner without spoiling their own rapport with the organization.
The following questions ask by employer to employee during exit interview:
1. How employees perceived the organization upon their entrance and how they perceive it at time of exit?
2. What are their views on the company policies?
3. How was their experience of working with team?
Pros and Cons of each method of Exit Interviewing
In-Person Exit Interviews
With in-person exit interviews an HR representative meets individually with each terminating employee.
Pros
• Can provide information regarding benefits and retrieve company property during the interview
• Gives a personal touch to each employee
• Can probe for more information on each question
Cons
• Employees may be afraid to share sensitive or negative information during an in-person interview
• For larger companies, it may be too time consuming to interview every employee
• It’s difficult to track information received verbally during an interview
Telephone Exit Interviews
Telephone Exit Interviews are conducted over the telephone by an HR Representative or an outside third party consultant.
Pros
• Can probe for more information on each question
• Can enter data into a tracking system while conducting the interview
• Easier to schedule than in-person interviews
Cons
• Time consuming if done in-house by an HR Representative
• Expensive if done with an outside consultant
• Employees often reluctant to verbally share sensitive or negative information
Paper and Pencil Exit Interviews
Paper and Pencil Exit Interviews are usually conducted by a form that is given to the employee on their last day or mailed to the employee’s home.
Pros
• Takes less time to provide a form compared with conducting an in person or phone interview
• Employees can share information on paper that they may be reluctant to say in person
Cons
• Return rates for exit interview forms average just 30-35%
• Difficult and time consuming to compile and track the data from paper and pencil forms
Online Exit Interview Management Systems
Pros
• Employee self-service so easy for HR to administer
• Employees comfortable sharing information by computer so more honest responses
• Information automatically compiles and tracked
• Reports available at a click of a button
• Participation rates (for WebExit customers) double that for paper and pencil exit interviews
Companies believe that data collected from exiting employees can be used for making improvement policies of the organization. And it can also help in designing retention program for short term as well as long term.
Reference: 1. shinejobs
2. http://www.nobscot.com
Reverse Supply Chain Management
A reverse supply chain deals with the reverse flow of material, where the product moves back from the end customer (point of use) to the manufacturer. It can deal with either the entire product or a part of product (e.g., packaging material like the bottles in which Coke is sold). A firm has to manage this process during different phases of the product life cycle. The most common instances of reverse supply chain are as follows:
• New product return -: In developed markets, firms have been offering liberal return policies where customers may return the product for any reason within a few months of purchase. Approximately 6 per cent of retail purchase in the United States is returned by customers. In India, product returns of this kind are offered by catalogue companies and e-retailers. This category of products is usually re-packaged or re-branded for existing or new markets after minor repair operations.
• End-of-life product return-: Because of tough environmental regulations, firms in developed markets have to take responsibility for their products at the end of the product life and must provide for collection and product re-manufacturing or proper disposal. Many progressive firms have been promoting the idea of a green supply chain by ensuring that they re-use most of the components of the returned product and, consequently, achieve their goal of sustainable development. BMW has been working on the idea of a ‘totally reclaimable’ automobile.
There can also arise situations of product return at an intermediate stage of the product life cycle, as observed in the recent case of Mattel, where the company recalls its product because of unforeseen problems related to safety. (In 2007, the global toy manufacturer and market Mattel, Inc. recalled almost 8,00,000 Chinese-made toys.)
Reverse chains are more difficult to manage because of uncertainties in quantity and timing. Further, one may not have the necessary economies of scale in collection and transportation. Most firms have not been able to integrate their forward and return supply chains. In India, reverse supply chain is still in a nascent stage. However, as observed in developed markets, reverse supply chain will become an important issue of concern for most firms in the coming decade.
The supply chain of Marico Industries
The retail trade for the company consists of 1.6 million retailers, of which less than 2 per cent represent organized retailers. More than 95 per cent of the retailers are grocery stores, each occupying less than 300 square meters.
To reach all areas of the nation, the company’s products (35 million consumer packs per month), bought by 18 million Indian households monthly, are sold to approximately 1,000 distributors. These intermediaries, in turn, store, sell and deliver the company’s products directly to those 1.6 million retailers or indirectly through 2,500 stockists which is clear in picture of distribution network. A part of the company’s business strategy is to expand continuously into ever-smaller locales until its brand are available to most Indian households. Currently, the company’s distribution network covers every Indian community with a population of 20,000 or more, and the plan is to penetrate more of the rural areas, where 70 per cent of India’s people live. Currently, its rural sales and distribution network ranks among the top three in the industry and contributes 24 per cent to the company’s sales.
Reference-: Shah Janat, SCM, pearson education.
