Branding and Product Life Cycle - Essay Example

The organizations generally implement aggressive promotional strategies in order to create awareness about the newly developed product. This introduction stage has two characteristics, such as low competition and low sales growth rate.

Growth
Growth stage is the second common stage in the product life cycle model. This stage comes with recognition in the competitive market. Profit of the products starts to flow from this stage. The organizations can try some new innovative ideas in order to maintain the sales growth of products. This growth stage is considered as the appropriate time to develop new competitive and effective prices in the competitive marketplace. This strategy helps the organizations to develop a potential customer base for the products.

Maturity
Maturity is the third stage in the product life cycle model. The sales growth rate of products starts to slow down from the end of the growth stage as the products have already achieved significant acceptance in the market. Several new organizations start to experiment with new innovative products in order to achieve potential competitive advantages. In the maturity stage, a specific product has to compete with several newly developed potential products to secure present market share. It affects the sales of products. Several organizations try to redesign their products to secure market share and customer loyalty towards it. However, low-profit margin, limited sales growth rate, and implementation of new innovative models are the major characteristics of this maturity stage.

Decline
The decline is the last stage of the product life cycle model. Generally, the majority of the products die in this decline stage due to a huge low sales growth rate. Several organizations share the same market for a single product class. It is difficult for these products to compete with the new entrants. It is true that market demand and the needs of customers change constantly due to the organizations’ product differentiation strategy (Lamb, Hair and MacDaniel, 2008, p.30). This strategy reduces the demand for the existing products. Target customers generally perceive these products as old and ineffective products. Therefore, people try to experiment with newly developed products in the marketplace. It is not necessary that every product would go through this specific product life cycle stage. It highly depends upon the category of products, the scope of that particular product, and market competition.

Question 2: Branding Strategies
Branding strategy can be defined as the long-term plan for a particular brand. It includes the determination of potential target audiences and a significant understanding of the market demand and needs of target customers. Effective branding strategy helps to identify the brand and its experience. There are several branding strategies that have been implemented by the organization. This part of the essay will discuss Company Name Branding, Individual Branding, Attitude Branding, Derived Branding, and Umbrella Branding strategy.

Company Name Branding
In company name branding strategy the organizations combine its name with a separate product brand name. In this case, a strong brand name has developed the vehicle for a significant range of several subsidiary brands. For example, Cadbury Dairy Milk in the US comes under this branding strategy.

Individual Branding
Under this branding strategy, each and every brand generally poses a separate brand name. The individual brand name generally allows significant flexibility by permitting various products under this brand name. The major advantage of this branding strategy is that the products cannot harm the image of the company if those products are not performing well. For example, Head & Shoulder comes under this strategy.

Attitude Branding
Several leading organizations like Nike and Starbucks implemented this attitude branding strategy. This branding strategy is the approach to represent a significant feeling that is not necessarily linked with the consumption of products. It is a unique branding strategy. Generally, leading global organizations implement this branding strategy to differentiate their brand names from other potential competitors. This strategy is considered as the aggressive branding strategy in which the organizations focus on the quality of products, unique promotion activities, and emotions of target customers. Nike is one of the leading global brand names. They are targeting the inner feelings of people through effective promotional activities.

Derived Branding
Derived branding is a unique branding strategy that is not practiced heavily in the global marketplace. Under this branding strategy, the potential suppliers of key components try to provide guarantee their own existing position by offering those components as a strong brand in their own right. For example, Intel comes under this branding strategy as the service-providing organization positions itself within the global PC market through its unique slogan, i.e. “Intel Inside”.

Umbrella Branding
Under this particular branding strategy, an organization offers different products with various characteristics and competencies. In maximum cases, the products are offered under an overall parent brand. It is the most significant branding strategy. For example, Johnson & Johnson's baby care products come under this specific branding strategy. There are several advantages of this branding strategy (Kapferer, 2008, p.364). The organization needs limited promotional costs for the umbrella brands. This branding strategy integrates and combines different products and services, promotion, advertising, and integrated marketing communication altogether. Moreover, it can be stated that the introduction of new products under the umbrella branding achieves significant recognition easily due to the strong brand image of the existing brand name.