The purpose of writing this thesis proposal is to develop an overview for research that needs to be hired while writing the research newspaper. This proposal will serve as a guide for my research about co-branding and provide a basis of knowledge of the basic ideas pertaining to the topic.
The objective of the thesis proposal is to investigate and discuss the methods and strategies that may be applied to increase the understanding and execution of co branding. This proposal targets developing a clear understanding of the theoretical concepts related to branding, showcase the research strategy well suited for the task, and evaluate the pros and cons of co-branding. It also emphasizes about how brands are an epitome of luxury and exactly how luxury has become an individual strategy for every person.
A brand is a recognized personality of a particular product, company or a service. It's an identification of a product either through name, symbols, colors, tag lines, audio or a sign. The brand acts as recognition of your respective product differentiating it from others on the basis of brand experience. They offer the primary point of differentiation on the list of competition' products. Brand is the substance of what the merchandise offers and for that reason, they can be developed over a period of time. Brands are manufactured to relate positive images and belief with the merchandise to set-up brand value. Brand value is representation of how the market place and target market perceives the company's service or product. The experiential facet of a brandname, known as brand experience, is how people distinguish the brand based on some associated feelings, emotions, images, experiences, etc. Alternatively, brands likewise have psychological effect on its audience, called brand image, where people relate the product with a symbolic build or an image. A brand allows its audience to connect particular characteristics and features with the products to make it a unique market offering. Nowadays, marketers are making special work in their advertising to produce brands allowing its target market to affiliate special features with the merchandise. Brands are developed through different customer touch things which include:
Personal Offering, allowing customers to interact with the company
Advertising, through billboards and tv commercials containing constant messages
Suggestions of the product by friends and family
Quality or the experience of using the genuine product
Once the brands are developed, the artwork of maintaining the brand is called brand management. The proven brands provide amazing competitive and tactical advantage to the company because of their offerings in the market place. Thus, brands are manufactured to foster long term relationships between your company and its customers.
WHAT IS BRAND MANAGAMENT AND WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE MAJOR AREAS OF BRAND MANAGEMENT?
Brand Management is the procedure of fabricating, promoting and preserving the name and position of something to improve the brand consciousness, brand commitment and customer sales.
Brand management starts with understanding the brand itself. The procedure of understanding starts with top management who create and the control the brands. Then it moves down the organizational hierarchy and it should be well-understood by the sales staff of the company who actually signify the brand to its customers. The better the understanding of the product among the list of professionals, the better they are able to portray before the customers.
Another very essential requirement of brand management is defining the brand, i. e. setting up a brand promise. Brand guarantee is something which should impact on the minds of its consumers; it ought to be memorable and appealing. It will evoke thoughts as thoughts drive activities. A brand promise should provide as a differentiating factor from other market offerings and it ought to be thoughtful decision after evaluating the needs of the target market and the marketplace place.
After a brand promise is created, companies need to satisfy it through high quality products and brand setting. It ought to be recognized by the audience the way brand is being portrayed; there shouldn't be any misinterpretations by the mark market. That is effectively done through personal selling.
The most significant aspect of brand management is sustaining the brand guarantee. This is actually the most difficult part as well as companies must keep innovating to provide superior value of the product and each advancement must be aligned with the original brand offer.
(Brand Management )
Brand management for an organization is referred to as the continuous procedure for building brand value in the minds of the target audience, so that the recognized value of a product increases and is growing. (Brand Management)
WHAT IS BRAND Expansion AND HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE?
Brand extension is an integral part of brand management which is a online marketing strategy where the company tends to diversify in a fresh product category under the same brand name. It is designed to leverage the existing brand's image and devotion in to the new product's success. It is also seen as a method of creating built in brand structures. The acceptability of the new product under a recognised parent brand is a lot higher because consumers have already possessed the brand experience and there is a strong brand commitment of proven brands. Brand expansion is one of the most popular new product development strategies which can reduce economic risk through the effective use of the parent or guardian brand name to improve consumers' perception because of the core brand equity. It also reduces the study and development cost because company is well aware about its consumer's knowledge and preferences.
A good exemplory case of brand extension sometimes appears when fashion designers stretch their brand from clothes to shoes, fragrances and accessories. They use the existing brand power to drive the growth of new ground breaking products.
There is also associated risk associated with brand expansion because when a great deal of products are launched under the umbrella of the same brand, it brings about brand dilution. Brand dilution is where the parent brand loses its associations using its target market, quality, area and price. In short, brand dilution brings about inconsistency in keeping the brand promises. (Juda)
WHAT IS CO BRANDING?
As already mentioned, a strong brand is the biggest asset of any company. The value of the company isn't just measured by its buildings and income, brand value performs an important role in identifying a company's financial condition. With increasing competition in the market place, companies are executing joint marketing assignments. This gives climb to the idea of Co Branding, also called brand relationship. Co branding is when different companies interact in a coalition to make marketing synergy.
One of the greatest brands partnership initiatives ever before, the Global Account joined forces with American Exhibit (AXP), Apple (AAPL), Converse (NKE), Dell (DELL), Emporio Armani, Distance (Space), Hallmark, and Starbucks (SBUX) to combat Supports African Region. The effort is known as (Red) and has elevated more than $130 million. (Crawley and McKee)
Tom Blackett and Bob Boad, in their book Co-Branding: The Technology of Alliance, identifies co-branding in pursuing words,
'. . . the word 'co-branding' is relatively not used to the business enterprise vocabulary and is employed to encompass a wide range of marketing activity involving the use of two (and sometimes more) brands. Thus co-branding could be considered to add sponsorships, where Marlboro lends it name to Ferrari or accountants Ernst and Young support the Monet exhibition. . . The list of possibilities is unlimited. ' (Put a Little LUV within your Logo!)
A brand collaboration is often a short term joint marketing project among brands to improve each other's brand setting and increase the target audience. A well designed co-branding strategy can often result in a win-win situation for both co-brand affiliates and facilitates in figuring out unexplored market niche categories and untapped market opportunities. Companies usually form co-branding organizations to fulfill the following goals:
To increase their earnings and profits
To react to customers hidden or unknown needs, this often requires tapping into unknown product category
To increase customer base
To strengthen brand image in the competitive environment
To enhance the recognized brand value
To launch a fresh product with a strong brand image
(Doshi)
SUCCESS FACTORS OF CO-BRANDING
Co-branding strategies are becoming popular to fend off competition on the market place and also to gain greater market share by way of a wider variety of products. Among the major features of co-branding could it be reduces financial costs noticeably as the companies combine their resources and achieve economies of size, resulting in higher sales and profits.
In co-branding, powerful brands with high brand commitment tend to affect the weaker brands with less reputation. Thus, allowing the weaker brand to improve its sales through the leverage of a highly reputed brand.
Companies create co-branded products through merging the unique and special features of their brands, and therefore they are perceived as "the on top of that worlds" products. Therefore, consumers trust co-branded products more and there is stronger brand commitment.
The dangers in co-branded products are often high, yet distributed. Therefore, companies utilize unexplored market segments and opportunities through co-branded products because it diversifies the risk and reduces the financial burden. (Co-Branding: BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS)
Masstige Method
Masstige is a marketing strategy where companies tend to do downward brand expansion. It is done to raise the target market of the brand. The term 'masstige' is a combo of the words mass and prestige and is described as prestige for the public. Masstige brands are defined as "premium but attainable, " and there are two tips relating to masstige products:
They are regarded as premium goods
They have price tips that fill the space between midsection and upper class.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The most notable examples of co-branded products exist in fashion industry. A famous co-branding connection of your Swedish brand, H&M, with luxury fashion designers and superstars has not only proved to be successful but also one of the very most progressive retail brand partnerships. In March 2007 the internationally founded Swedish clothes company H&M launched its new luxury collection in cooperation with the well known American musician Madonna, who has made her own design collection for H&M: M by Madonna. Remember this example, research technique will be based on a combo of qualitative research and quantitative research. The research will further be split into secondary and key research. The supplementary research depends on reliable internet sources, publicized articles and journals, established theoretical concepts and real world examples of co-branding.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
Interviews
The key research will use fashion industry expert interviews used through mobile phone since it is additional time and cost effective qualitative method which allows gathering area-specific information. These interviews would gather information on the mark market, consumer choices, affordable price range, and type of products that will be offered under the brand umbrella. The data collection technique will likewise incorporate on-spot interviews with the consumers in the H&M stores, who choose the collaborated brands, to question their inclination to avoid respondent bias.
Focus Groups
Focus categories would be conducted for collecting qualitative data. It can be used to compare how consumers react to top quality products and co-branded products and how they understand their brand value. Concentration Groups topics would revolve around how the superstars have added value to the H&M products and just how do consumers independently understand H&M products and these stars.
Surveys
Quantitative most important research will be conducted through questionnaire surveys and telephone studies. As already mentioned, expert marketers of co-branding shall be approached and questioned in detail on the idea of co-branding, its benefits, and disadvantages and how do they perceive the H&M collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Viktor & Rolf. Consumer surveys shall be conducted through questionnaires to quantify the brand value of H&M cooperation with Madonna, and how do the consumers view the products regarding saturated market offerings of different brands. Internet surveys through email and social multimedia shall also be conducted to measure the importance and popularity of H&M collaboration brands.
DATA SAMPLING
The research shall be designed based on the target audience who are definitely more conscious of using top quality products and how do they value brands over their price. In each case, random sampling shall be done to ensure the objectivity of the population sample. While performing useful research, data examples are not consistent and this becomes a restriction in research. (Begemann)
LIMITATIONS
There are several constraints associated with research and co-branding of H&M campaign.
In this campaign, their target market was smaller than normal H&M products because Madonna's connection added brand value and it became an extravagance brand. Thus, luxury brands are just for few. Research constraints include time constraint which is nowadays one of the main restrictions. Another very important constraint is cost of executing primary research. It also requires physical existence of the researcher to interact with the consumers. Limitation of qualitative research is that this usually consists of respondent bias sometimes due to peer pressure and subjectivity. Expert interviews are also subject to personal biases. Often, transforming qualitative data into quantitative data is a problem. Researcher bias is often there but it could be minimized through continuous objective analysis. (Co-branding - Interpretation, Types and Advantages and Disadvantages)
(The Marketing Aesthetics of Co-branding and Joint Ventures)
CO-BRANDING ASSOCIATIONS
Co-branding partnerships are becoming popular everyday & most often, a similar research methodology is used by other co-branding alliances.
Some of the famous types of brand partnerships include 'Mentor Edition ES300' by Lexus and Coach in 1996 which is one of the very most flourishing strategic alliances which have celebrated huge success since the launch.
Another very important co-branding example is of McDonalds and Wal-Mart where McDonald's unit is situated in Wal-Mart's territory and gains access to large number of its customers.
A similar example is of Little Caesars with Kmart. Within this relationship, Kmart is a franchisee of Little Caesars franchise system.
A typical exemplory case of co-branded products in the American market is Betty Crocker chocolates supreme brownie mix partnered with "Hershey's special dark syrup".
Another recent example of co-branding is the collaboration between Levis and a fashion designer Veronique Branquinho. The amazing outcome of this alliance is a totally new market offering that's not by any means related to fashion industry. It's a wall paint that is sold under a slogan 'Fashion for Surfaces'. (Slavkina)
Also a good example of co-branding is the collaboration between Adidas (ADDDY) and Polar Electro, who created Task Fusion, which include heart rate, rate and distance monitoring equipment into sportswear. (Crawley and McKee)
An example from fashion industry is the collaboration between much-admired Issac Mizrahi and Focus on stores, who designed a women's ready-to-wear clothes for the store.
CONCLUSION
The M campaign of H&M web links the M of the company name in the same way with the M such as Madonna, leading to collaborative beliefs being distributed between them in a win-win manner. This thesis research proposal assists as groundwork for conducting a detailed research on co-branding by H&M. It illustrates the appropriate research that is done, how it is conducted and what exactly are the constraints of research. This research will help understand better the principles and strategies of co-branding, brand extension and brand management and help develop a deeper understanding to be able to execute these strategies in our business plans. Despite the limits of cost and time, the thorough research will be conducted to improve the marketers knowledge of co-branding so that they develop an improved brand strategy for co-branded products. (Huynh)
