Brand Management - Case Study Example

A brand can be construed to mean a service or product or concept produced or offered by a given company and can be distinguished publicly from other concepts, products or services. The distinction of a brand means that it can readily be communicated to the public and thereby it can be marketed. A brand name is often given to the brand to distinguish it from all other brands. Therefore branding basically refers to the process of generating and publicizing of a brand name (Belinda, 2000: p1). This process of branding is applicable to services, individual products and even to the corporate identity. This paper seeks to highlight the benefits Private Label Worldwide can get from developing its own brand as compared to manufacturing sportswear and supplying them to the leading brands such as Nike. Further, the paper specifies the products that can be under the umbrella of the Private Label Worldwide brand, what customers will be targeted and thus the market segment, the pricing, promotion, distribution and marketing strategies employed in the brand so far developed by Private Label Worldwide which is a cost conscious company. Private Label Worldwide has no brand of its own but focuses entirely on manufacturing sport clothing and footwear and supplying them to the leading sporting labels such as Umbro, Nike Adidas etc through its major trading arm Sports label UK based in Manchester. Even though the company has been reaping good profit margins, it has definitely become dependent on the customers who are few but place voluminous orders. The dependency means that at times the profit margin can be squeezed and there is fear of the possibility of the customers moving out or shrinking orders and thus bringing down the profit margin. It should be noted that if the customers move out or reduce the quantity of their orders then the company will have to downscale or even close down. The bottom line therefore remains to be that Private Label Worldwide is controlled by the customers who have its fate at their hands and any decision by the major customers as far as the sizes of the orders, prices of the commodity supplied to them by the company etc are concerned will definitely and ultimately affect the profit margins of the company. The process of developing a brand is often lengthy and tedious. Besides being tedious and lengthy, a lot of care has to be taken through out the process because it is a long term venture in that once the brand is released to the public, it will remain there until maybe the owners of the brand decide to better it, withdraw or transfer it. The process ranges from getting the brand name also called the trademark (Belinda, 2000: p1), to the promotion and marketing of the brand before and after its release to the market. The brand itself is surrounded by a number of attributes whose absence means that there is no brand at all. Brand therefore may bee said to be the sum total of all the intangible attributes of the product. These attributes include things like the name the presentation represented by the packaging, its history, its reputation, its pricing and even its advertisement approach. All these are necessary for the success of the brand in the market place but advertisement and marketing of the brand have greater stakes in the determination of the brand success. Marketing involves advertisement and it is synonymous to promotion. It is necessary that the public has to be aware of the product if at all they have to buy. Therefore, marketing is very important as far as the marketplace success of the brand (Rik et al 2003). As stated earlier, brand can apply to both the product produced and the identity of the company itself. It is important that before the product is marketed, the company should be marketed first to prepare the public of what the company stands for, its values, commitments etc. This will help the public create associations when the product eventually hits the market. Brand marketing, in the sense of the corporate identity, is the management of the media and communications in such a way that a powerful, consistent and a non equivocal statement of organization’s values, objectives and commitments so as to establish a distinct organizational personality in the minds of both those within and without the organization. In other words, brand marketing not only gives the company publicity but also a distinct identity. Importantly, if the organization’s constituents capture the brand of the organization first, then the whole process of brand marketing is just as well as successful. The converse is also true. The insiders have to have a conviction before the outsiders do. When the product follows after the company identity has been established it is easier to associate the product with the value promise and the trust mark (to both the internal and external audiences) milestones made in the initial steps of the brand marketing (Rik et al 2003: pp 140-6). Therefore, if Sports Label UK, or Private Label Worldwide for that matter, started manufacturing their own brands of sports apparels, this will give the company its independency from its present customers and thus raise the chances of widening the profit margins and thus manage the risk of the customers pulling out or reducing the orders. It will also increase its market segment and thus open up possibilities of expansion as opposed to the present scenario. Another benefit of own brand is the fact that the company will sell itself to the public because brands coupled with the public awareness of these brands are factors in the company’s evaluation which originating either from the public or from within the company itself. Such an internal company evaluation courtesy of the performance of their brands in the marketplace activates both the management and workers with insights into the future status of the company which is an aspect of strategic planning. Private Label Worldwide in India has the capacity to manufacture footwear clothing and other apparels that it supplies to leading brands such as Nike. Nike sells shoes jerseys, shorts, base layers, tracksuits etc for various sporting activities such as cricket (commonly played in India) Football, soccer (Quite an active sporting activity popular in UK and the entire Europe), baseball, tennis, ice hockey, basketball, etc. Based on the manufacturing capacity of Private Label Worldwide in India if it launched its brand some of the products within its brand range would include those that it already manufactures or new line product venture. However, because the company is already in production of a number of productions and based on its cost consciousness, it would be most appropriate to brand the products that it manufactures. Some of these products would include footwear and clothing for sports such as cricket, tennis, soccer, basketball and athletics. The footwear and clothing for these games can be bought introduced in the Indian, UK and the entire European markets. The domestic Indian market will be most appropriate because of low labour and production investment costs besides lack of the hauling and transportation costs. This therefore means that it can capture the Indian market by producing similar brands of footwear and sports clothing to those it supplies to Nike and other leading sporting apparel dealers such as Adidas, Umbro etc but of but of superior quality. The superior quality and low price (slightly above the price it sells to Nike and others) will definitely help capture the Indian market. Besides setting up supply outlets at major towns in India it can also source for tenders to supply sports apparels to colleges, teams (cricket, basketball, tennis, soccer etc), and sports training academies in India. This will help capture a wide market segment besides the retail t and wholesale market taken care of by the outlets established at major towns. Further, it can apply the sponsorship approach applied by most apparel sellers such as Nike in which it can easily enter into contracts with popular sporting personalities in India to help promote its brands. This kind of approach will not only help publicize the brands but will also be seen as a corporate social responsibility if the company sets out to sponsor the development of a particular popular game such as cricket and this is likely to widen its corporate image thus marketing its brand further (Keller& Kotler 2006). . Besides the local Indian market, the company can take advantage of its retail outlet, Sports Label UK in UK to capture the UK national market. Despite the high competition in the European market especially from Nike and Adidas the company can count on the experience of Sports Label UK in marketing and distribution within UK and the entire Europe to claim a share in the European market. The products going to the European can be diversified further than those being sold in India as a way of achieving brand identity to counter the steep market competition. The sponsorship approach can also be employed in the European market by the brand sponsoring big teams such as Manchester United or Manchester city soccer teams such that strongly introduces its brand and permanently install its product identity and value promise to its European market segment. Further, sourcing of contracts from schools, colleges and sport academies can also help capture and maintain stake in the market in Europe. Venturing into the international market is always better than limiting to the domestic market. This is so because of the marketing aspect of the international market on the local market. When members of the local market realize that the home produced brand is being marketed elsewhere outside the country, they will identify with the brand thus increasing the local market potential. Further, international market performs well because of the price advantage. One is likely to sell a product at a higher price than that at the local domestic market after factoring all the costs and logistics. Even though the promotion strategies have been mentioned partly in the foregoing paragraphs, it will be better if these are extensively covered together with the pricing strategy that can be use to help the company claim and maintain competitive market stake in both the Indian, UK and the entire European market. The promotion will start with the advertisements in the national TV and radios in both market territories where the brand identity equity, personality and promise shall be broadcast. Then after the advertisements have been launched, the product launching will follow both at the two markets during which the public will view the assortment of the products offered by the company and will be able to buy the products at discounted price. This approach bears dual functionality in that it will not only raise public awareness of brand identity, brand personality, brand promise and brand equity but will also register some initial sales in which the profits can be used to foot he future promotional activities. After this initial promotional approach, what will follow will be the sourcing of contracts to supply sportswear to sports clubs, schools colleges, sports academies etc at highly discounted prices which shall be slightly lower than those offered by the leading players such as Nike and Adidas. The pricing shall be strictly above 45% above the cost of production which will definitely be lower than that of Nike because the company often supplies to Nike at a profit and Nike as well has to make profits and thus obviously their prices will be higher than those of the similar brands launched by Private Label Worldwide (Marn et al, 2004: pp 87-9). Finally, the promotional activity that will follow will focus on boosting of the brand personality. Here, popular sporting figures such as Wayne Rooney of Manchester United FC can be used to promote footwear and sporting apparel brands initially launched. Based on the numbers of fans these personalities enjoy, they can easily urge their fans to purchase the jerseys or sneakers to show their support. Besides, low cost but fashionable jerseys shall be produced with the names of football team players and sold to clubs who will in turn sell them to the fans during matches. The fans will buy those jerseys with the name of the player they fancy. The distribution strategy will involve stationing of outlets with both the retail and wholesale functionality at major towns in the entire UK, India and most countries in Europe in which sporting activity is rife. This will help in market penetration to help counter the competition posed by the leading players such as Adidas and Nike. The extensive supply chain will target even the lowest single buyer but the outlets shall be located with cost consciousness in mind. They should be placed in places where the whole range of promotional activities are possible and at the same time the retail and wholesale activities also occur at the same time. However it should be noted that the supply of the brands into the European market will be done directly from the Sports label UK besides a marketing and sourcing office that shall be set up in UK to coordinate the market research and cost effective market penetration. Outside Europe, the marketing and sourcing office can arrange for franchises whose regulations and logistics can be determined later. However at the moment, the market segment shall constitute of the Indian, UK and the entire Europe. The branding venture will definitely be better than the supply of apparels to leading companies such as Nike because of the following reasons: Knowledge of design and manufacture capacity in a low cost zone are already in existence Experience in the supply of the apparels to the customers will help identify the most ordered product thus branding a similar product of superior quality at the same cost as that supplied to the customers Pricing advantage enabled by location of the manufacture function in a low cost labour and production investment. This will imply that the superior quality brands produces at low cost will be sold at a slightly lower market price of similar brands but earning maximum profit margin of up to 45% which can not be compared to the present profit margin earned from the supply function. However, the initialization of the branding process can take longer time and probably disrupt the present supply function of the company which may lead to lower profit margins before the brands pick up. Despite this, the branding venture will not only emancipate the company from dependency on its customers but will also help test the creativity, innovation and the managerial capacity of the company of which are not being used entirely because the design specifications, quantity specifications, packaging specifications, branding specifications, forwarding specifications etc all come from the customers thus leaving the company with more of marionette operations. The branding will give the stolen independency and decision making functions to the company thus making it operate at the maxima of its potential as a way of creating a more impacting corporate image in the world. References Belinda Isaac (2000) Brand Protection Matters Sweet & Maxwell Publishers, p1 Rik et al (2003) Brand Management: A Theoretical and Practical Approach, Financial Times Prentice Hall publishers, pp132-5 Kevin Keller& Philip Kotler (2006) Marketing Management, Prentice Hall Marn Michael et al (2004) The Price Advantage John Wiley and Sons, pp 87-9 Read More