Brand

What Does Brand Mean?

A distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, word, sentence or a combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others in the market. 

Legal protection given to a brand name is called a trademark. 

Brand Equity

What Does Brand Equity Mean?

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. Mass marketing campaigns can also help to create brand equity. If consumers are willing to pay more for a generic product than for a branded one, however, the brand is said to have negative brand equity. This might happen if a company had a major product recall or caused a widely publicized environmental disaster.

It may be explained 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.

One situation when brand equity is important is when a company wants to expand its product line. If the brand's equity is positive, the company can increase the likelihood that customers will buy its new product by associating the new product with an existing, successful brand. For example, if Campbell’s releases a new soup, it would likely keep it under the same brand name, rather than inventing a new brand. The positive associations customers already have with Campbell’s would make the new product more enticing than if the soup had an unfamiliar brand name.

Once a brand has created positive sentiment among its target audience, the firm is said to have built brand equity. Some examples of firms with brand equity - possessing very recognizable brands of products - are Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Ferrari, Sony, The Gap and Nokia. 

 

 Brand Awareness

What Does Brand Awareness Mean?

The likelihood that consumers recognize the existence and availability of a company's product or service. Creating brand awareness is one of the key steps in promoting a product.

Brand awareness is an important way of promoting commodity-related products. This is because for these products, there are very few factors that differentiate one product from its competitors. Therefore, the product that maintains the highest brand awareness compared to its competitors will usually get the most sales.

For example, in the soft drink industry, very little separates a generic soda from a brand-name soda, in terms of taste. However, consumers are very aware of the brands Pepsi and Coca Cola, in terms of their images and names. This higher rate of brand awareness equates to higher sales and also serves as an economic moat that prevents competitors from gaining more market share.