Measuring Brand Equity - Research Proposal Example

The marketing strategy, especially for the university sector is both short term and long term. While a lot of universities carry out an active promotional and marketing campaign via relevant media as part of their short term marketing strategies, some of them rely wholly on the word of mouth and on the publicity gained by their students’ placements. In the long term marketing strategy of a university, the management has to decide upon the branding of the University for attracting future students.

The concept of branding, and simultaneously creating a brand image and accruing brand equity, plays an important role in gaining competitive advantage. Creating a brand name for itself, any company or university can expect to have created a unique positioning for itself in the minds of its prospective customers.Traditionally, branding is viewed as a tool to achieve marketing objectives, such as gaining growth in market share, creating top of the mind recall, increasing repeat purchase, and positioning the product as desired.

Consequently, branding is seen primarily as a marketing discipline: for example, a brand can help grow market share by creating an awareness of a product; and it can increase repeat purchase by building a sense of liking in the minds of the consumers. However, though a brand can play these roles, a brand strategy is more than just marketing. In order to create a really powerful brand, mostly requires generating a deep understanding of the target customers and their needs. In addition, a brand strategy needs to be fully aligned with the overall business strategy and should result in creating the value that is organization sets as its objective.

In the context of the universities, a long term branding strategy is prepared and executed while using various marketing tools.