The Role of the Beijing Brand within the Context of Product Strategy - Assignment Example

Lucinante Academia Research Product Marketing (Order 119840) 10 April 2006 Explain the role of the Beijing brand within the context of product strategy and identify its importance in attracting the targeted sponsorship requires. To account for the closest management of Beijing Brand for attracting sponsorships, it is important to put emphasis on the proposal of Keller (1993). According to him, the aims of brand management are: one is financial to estimate the value of a brand more precisely for accounting purposes. The second is strategic to improve marketing productivity. It is important to manage two key aspects, one is related to brand awareness and the other related to brand image (See Figure 1). Brand awareness is related to the likelihood that a brand name will come to mind and the ease with which it does so. Brand awareness consists of brand recognition and brand recall. The former relates to consumers' ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue. The latter relates to consumers' ability to retrieve the brand when given the product category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or some other type of probe as a cue. The management of Beijing brand awareness will play an important role in potential sponsorship decision making for three major reasons. First, it is important that potential sponsorships think of Beijing brand when they think about Olympics games. Second, Beijing brand awareness can affect decisions about brands in the consideration set, even if there are essentially no other brand associations. Finally and the most important, Beijing brand awareness affects sponsorships and consumers decision making by influencing the formation and strength of brand associations in the brand image. A necessary condition for the creation of a brand image is that a brand node has been established in memory. Is Beijing Brand established in sponsorships' memory It is the first question that the marketing team has to answer. This is a key preliminary step to develop a Beijing brand image strategy. On the other hand, related to brand image, it is defined as perceptions about a brand as reflected by the brand associations held in consumer memory. Likewise, brand associations are the other informational nodes linked to the brand node in memory and contain the meaning of the brand for sponsorships and consumers. Based on the proposal of Keller (1993), marketing team of Beijing Olympics games has to consider three major categories of increasing scope: attributes, benefits, and attitudes. The attribute category is related with the features that characterize the Olympics games. Likewise, attributes are categorized in product-related and non product-related. The former is defined as the ingredients necessary for performing the product or service sought by consumers. The latter is defined as external aspects of the product or service that relate to its purchase or consumption. The four main types of non-product related attributes are: price information, packaging or product appearance information, user imagery (e.g. what type of person uses the product or service), and usage imagery (e.g. where and in what types of situations the product or service is used). In the case of management Beijing brand focused on sponsorships, marketing team has to put emphasis on user imagery. Associations of the typical sponsorship of Beijing Olympics are based not only on demographics aspect but also on psychographics. User image attributes can also produce brand personality attributes. Plummer (1985) assets that one component of brand image is the personality or character of the brand itself. Consequently, potential sponsors will expect to form part of a brand which is composed by sponsors of their same "personality" (e.g. brand image of the sponsors). The benefit category is the personal value consumers (in our case sponsorships) attach to the product or service attributes, that is, what consumers think the product or service can do for them. Benefits can be distinguished into three categories according to underlying motivations to which they relate (Park, Jaworski and MacInnis 1986): functional benefits, experiential benefits and symbolic benefits. In the case of management Beijing brand, marketing team has to focus on functional and symbolic benefits instead of experiential one. Remember that we are directing to firms and one of the objectives they follow is to improve not only their profits but also their brand image. On the contrary, marketing team has to put great emphasis on experiential and symbolic benefits that consumers feel. The whole associations mentioned above can vary according to their favourability, strength and uniqueness. The success of the Beijing Olympics marketing program will be reflected in the creation of favourable brand associations, that is, potential sponsors and customers believe that the brand has attributes and benefits that satisfy their needs and wants such that a positive overall brand attitude is formed. The strength of associations depends on how the information enters consumer memory and how it is maintained as part of the brand. The essence of brand positioning is that Beijing brand has a sustainable competitive advantage or unique selling proposition that gives consumers a compelling reason for buying the service (Aaker 1982; Wind 1982). Managing the Beijing brand in this way, the Olympics committee will improve its economic benefits, the economic benefits of sponsors and satisfaction of consumers. FIGURE 1 Beijing Brand Management for Sponsorships Source: Self-Devised based on Keller (1993) 2. Explain the concept of service quality as it impact the consumers' experience when attending the Beijing Games, and discuss methods that the Organising Committee could adopt in ensuring that service encounters meet the expectations of visitors to the Games. Understanding the impact of service encounter such as physical good quality, service quality, and servicescape on visitors' behavioural intentions is a key for getting impact on visitors' experience in the Beijing Games (See Figure 2). The four concepts that need to be managed are described as follows: a. Physical good quality is "the consumer's [subjective] judgment about a product's overall excellence or superiority" (Zeithaml 1988). b. Service quality is "the consumer's overall impression of the relative inferiority/superiority of the organization and its services" (Bitner and Hubbert 1994). c. Servicescape is the environment in which the service is delivered and where the firm and the customer interact (Baker and Cameron 1996) d. Behavioural intentions "can be viewed as indicators that signal whether customers will remain with or defect from the company" (Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman 1996). The expectation that physical good quality, service quality, and servicescape all have a direct effect on the behavioural intentions of service customers stems from the theoretical foundation developed by the Nordic School of Service Marketing (NSSM) (e.g., Grnroos 1984). What Do Beijing Olympics Games have to do to have a critical impact on the perceived service and future behavioural intentions of visitors According to the NSSM theory, the visitors evaluate the service encounters along two dimensions: a technical, or outcome, dimension and a functional, or process-related, dimension (Grnroos 1984). For the technical dimension, what visitors receive in their interactions with the service organization is important to them and to their service evaluation (Zeithaml 1988). This is often considered the quality of the product delivered, and it represents the technical quality of the outcome of the service process. Based on this service organization interaction has to be manage carefully. The physical good quality that Olympics games give is a component of the total perceived quality of the service encounter (Grnroos 1990), which has a direct effect on visitors' behavioural intentions (Normann 1984) However, the technical dimension does not account for visitors' total evaluation of the service interaction. Visitors will also be influenced by the way the technical quality, or the outcome or end result of the service encounter, is transferred to them. As such, visitors will be influenced by how they receive the service, which incorporates the more subjective service quality and servicescape aspects of the service encounter (Grnroos 1990). According to the NSSM theory, service quality is directly linked with visitors' behavioural intentions. The idea that visitors will prefer greater service quality is rather intuitive, especially if price and other tangible and intangible cost elements are held constant (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1994; Zeithaml, Berry, and Parasuraman 1996). The servicescape will also affect visitors' behavioural intentions (Bitner 1990). Visitors' behavioural intentions are directly influenced by their perceptions of the service environment. The atmosphere of the place is more influential than the product itself in the purchase decision. According to Baker and Cameron (1996), marketing team of Olympics games has to manage three elements of the servicescape-ambient (background conditions that exist below the level of the visitor's immediate awareness), design (stimuli that exist at the forefront of the visitor's awareness), and social factors (considered the "people" element of the environment). Managing these elements, the visitors' service encounter will be better. Consequently, if the organization committee manages the Beijing Service Encounter taking into account the service organization interaction (physical good quality), the service quality, and the ambient, design and social factors of the service environment of the Olympics games (servicescape), the Olympics games organization will improve its economic benefits and satisfaction of consumers. FIGURE 2 Beijing Service Encounter Management Source: Self-Devised REFERENCES Aaker, David A. (1982). "Positioning your Product". Business Horizons, 25 (May/June), 56-62. 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Zeithaml, Valarie A., Berry, Leonard L. and Parasuraman, A. (1996). "The Behavioural Consequences of Service Quality". Journal of Marketing, 60 (April), 31-46. Read More