The Brand Value

Brand is a new cool thing with the people now a day. Today is the world of manufacturing and lots of manufacturing; obviously for growing population, demand is increasing every day. Manufacturers use brand names or symbols to distinguish their products that from the counterparts.

Many companies use unique names and combining them with catchy lines and logos, graphics & illustrations, colors & shapes, scents, sounds & music too. All these efforts are directed towards attracting potential customers. Customers are considered at the top of the strategic planning by the producers. Customers should make the most of it by exploiting the competition in the market as their own weapon. Even there is a special niche of customers who are Brand conscious. They spend most of the time on reviewing various brands and their products. They are the ones who have special kind of demand of their own from the products. Major discussion is all about what are the various parameters one might consider before putting belief on a particular brand or becoming loyal to a particular brand.

We are often seen fighting with our friends and colleagues over our choice of brand; but how do you make your choices is the interesting thing of this study. The real story starts from the board room of the company. A lot of churning of the ideas goes into choosing a name for the brand, artists design suitable logos for it, creative minds match it with attractive catch lines, there is a thought process over creating an unique selling point for making product distinguishable e.g. iPhone by Apple, apart from brand name and a logo, it has an unique shape for their mobile handset (iPhone) and there is home button of unique shape irrespective of its variants. Does all this have any nuisance value other than its existence? Ultimate consumer does possess patronage for the brands because of their uniqueness. I believe there is much more to it than just buying a branded product. Every distinguishable product is a brand by its name or any trademark but consumer’s preferences and choices drives the demand for the product, which is derived in value in terms of various factors and forces. Value of a brand is determined by its superiority in providing utility to the customer. That may be in terms of performance, quality and service in market or may be in terms of respect in the corporate world, reputation of board of directors and managers of the organization also.

Now getting back to the agenda, about how is one supposed to do evaluation brand value of a product?

Here are my thoughts –

Availability

Looking at typical Indian mindset we generally believe in products available in market easily and everywhere. Beside that some electronics and mechanical products require after sale services too. So a good brand will make its sales and services available for you at frequent places.

Utility

For the most of the things out of which we realize our need is the utility or the service. The need should be satisfied by the article or service we are purchasing.

Reputation of the brand

The brand value of a product increases by its reputation in the market. You can always opt for most preferred product in the market by the customers. A reputed brand will even take some economic loss to keep its reputation intact.

Luxury

Not every product is meant to satisfy only the basic need, there is much more ahead of it. Elite class people have the special demand for superior quality and utility. So you can always opt for some premium brands which dispose the best quality of services and articles.

Beliefs, Values & Actions

These parameters with regard to the enterprise are nonetheless very important factor which increases brand value of their products besides the above four factors. The press conferences, press notes, news, campaigns, commercials, company officials’ public appearances & directors’ reports are the sources from which you come to know about beliefs, values and actions that are advocated by the organization.

There is always a different delivery of features by different companies but you can always go for comparison for choosing right suit for you. You are disposed with loads of techie and brand’s websites who do differentiation for you, be it any electronic gadget or a pair of jeans or shoes or even food items. Trust levels may vary upon those sources since it depends on how and who is taking this effort. Internet is disposed with wide variety of knowledge and corporate world is also using internet as medium to reach ultimate consumers. So you get better idea about products.

The markets are perfectly elastic in terms of information & choices in these days. There is rarely any monopoly in private sector markets. Yet the companies providing premium features use skimming of prices in newly launched products i.e. charging of high prices for making available latest technology or unique feature or a rare resource.

Novelty of the product drives higher prices whereas the older one fetches cheaper prices because of new entrants. There you are required to think upon the expense you would make, whether it is worth it or not. So you do not waste your time and money on unworthy products. The brand you are loyal with may not deliver as it always used to. No need to be too rigid upon it. Quality goods and services are all you are seeking for and you should search for it continuously.

– Dheeraj Bhole

(C.A Final Student)

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