Radical Brand Evolution - Assignment Example

Name: Instructors Name: Course title: Institution: Date: Introduction For a long time, there have been a general believe that firms should strategically position themselves in the market to tackle raising competitions from emerging players. Most of marketers base their reasoning on the fact that positioning creates a positive impact on brand image to the customers and stakeholders (Goodyear, 2006). Kapferer (2010) argues that, large corporate, especially the multinationals invests up to 15% of their annual revenues to the aspect of positioning, through offline and online advisement methods. For those firms, which have experienced reduced market niche due to lack of adequate market positioning, they have had to carry out radical rebranding exercises through advisement among other notable aspects. This paper, critically evaluates on the element of radical brand evolution in Canadian Tire Retailer. Question 1 Canadian Tire is a main mass merchandiser in Canada, having annual retail sales of more than $ 6 billion in retail sales. There are approximately 500 associated stores operated by few associates’ dealers in relationship resembling franchising but not franchising. In the last decade, Canadian mass merchandise markets have become highly competitive with arrival of firms such as Wal-Mart, after taking over Woolco, Zellers as well as additional pressure from category killers such as home depot among others departmental stores like the Bay and Sears (Bedbury, 2002). In 2001, the firm appointed a new marketing manager in an effort to carry out rebranding exercises. This was a clear indication that the firm did have recognizable forms of market positioning prior to the appointment of the marketing manager. However, this does not mean that the firm did not have a strong brand name. It is worth noting that, CTR Canadian Tire Retailer) had strong heritage with majority of people in the country growing up with this particular brand, as it was comfortable to them. De Chernatony (2010) indicates that brand as icon is one way that used in describing nature of CTR before to rebranding exercises. One of the major strength of the firm was its advertising skills, which included powerful weekly fliers with specials, as apart of the firms’ high-low promotions strategies. Constituent to the strong culture of merchandising was assumption that, CTR could have been all things, to all people. This stands in great contrast to the usual marketing approaches of tight forms of segmentations, positioning, targeting among notable forms of marketing. De Chernatony (2010) indicates that by creating the desired cultures among its customers, firms may continue to enjoy large sales volumes despite lack of a clear positioning strategy such as CTR. Other successful global firms, without clear portioning strategies include the ester Airlines, most of margarine firms that have not developed unique names for their products. Further, most of consumer electronic firms generally lack proper positioning most of their products. For instance, Samsung and Motorola phones, both run on Google Android software’s, thus similar properties. Similarly, Samsung galaxy tablet and iPad have similar properties, despite the enormous success of these firms. Question 2 There is great need of firms to build strong brand names, to tackle increased competition from emerging players in the industry. Crawford and Mathews, (2010) indicates that retailers are required to be dominant on of the five attributes of associated to brand, which includes product, price, access, service and product. This way, they will be able to have point of difference on another broad attribute as well as to be competitive on the remaining brand attributes. AMA (The American marketing Association) defines the term branding as name, sign, design or symbol or combination of any of these elements , intended at indentifying products or services of a single or group of sellers, and differentiating them from others offering similar or related products. Based on this argument, it is important for firms to recognize the fact that branding does not entail getting the targeted markets to choose your firm over competitors, but it is getting your prospects to distinguish you as sole providers of solution to their problems (de Chernatony, 2010). For CTR, there was a need of developing a branding vision to enable the firm compete accordingly in the contemporary market. Previous research on the customers pinpointed on the targeted market, the primary group being parents, whose kids were less than 18 years, while the secondary group was the empty nesters (Crawford and Mathews, 2010). From the research, it was evident that customers required high quality products as well as commencement of new activities such as projects, new seasons, life events, sporting among other notable activities leading to marketing position tagline or slogan: “let’s get started”. It is worth noting that, global firms such as Wal-Mart use price as high services support as their brand-differentiating factor. By coming up with new and wide range of product and raised customers services, the adopted brand DNA strategy would attract and retain potential customers, most of whom have high affinity to the products and services offered by the firm. For CTR to achieve the desired positioning, it had to educate its vendors, suppliers and all other stakeholders on the impact of product development. This is based o the fact that, all these groups are crucial in enhancing effective customer service hence an overall success of the firm, as it was now easy to attract the broader market. Other selling propositions, to be employed by CTR to attract broader market includes “quality is what you get”, “value for merchandise bought” among other notable propositions indicating value changes for products and services offered by CRT (Kapferer, 2010). Question 3 Bedbury (2002) argues that, one of the main ways of maximizing the revenues of any given firms is regarding and treating all levels of customers and prospect interfacing functions like the media. Simply put, brand informs all prospects what to expect from the products offered by a firm and differentiates it from the competitors. Therefore, there is need of informing the prospective market on what the firm offers through effective and efficient modes of communication such as advertisements. After improving on quality of products and services offered, the management launched a revitalized brand, which came with television advertising on Spring in 2002. The proposition used titled “Lets get started” and aimed at aim was to helping CTR to reposition its self as retailer to help the customers get started with new season, life events and sports. Goodyear (2006) argues that most of the firms prefer advertising their products on TV as opposed to other means of advertising such as billboards and radio due to its impact, pervasiveness and targeting abilities. For instance, global televisions such as CNN, Aljazeera TV, ABC, FOX among others reach to more than 100 million households with approximately 300 million viewers (de Chernatony, 2010). Further, it is easy to segment the market along gender, age, ethnic and racial groups, thus better results in comparison to radio and printed media. By using television advertisement as lead medium in rebranding exercise, it became easier for CTR to pass the desired brand image to its customers, thus more revenues. Upon rebranding, I would have opted for advisement over the social networks as opposed to television advertisement. This is due to the large number of consumers, who use these sites as compared to customers watching television. For instance, Face book and twitter have more than 0.6 and 0.3 billion followers globally, thus offering ample market for advertisement activities. One of the concepts that would have coexisted or replaced “Let’s get started” was “we have improved” as it, indicates the changes taking place in the firm. Question 4 Bedbury (2002) indicates that rebranding is a part of life cycle in any successful firm. Marketers approximate that existing market materials such as design, logo, and products among other notable aspects are good for 5 to ten years. After this period, it is crucial for a business to rebrand to reflect existing marketing strategies, design themes, inform its transition into new phase of conducting business as well as communicating the firm’s vision on its future. Further, rebranding reaffirms the firm commitment to its targeted market and portrays growth and raised reputation (Kapferer, 2010). For the purpose of rebranding strategy, the CTR, appointed new marketing manager, whose responsibilities included consumer research, quality engineering, loyalty programs including Canadian Tire Money and improving retail brand. In addition to all these responsibilities was the CTR brand strategies and positioning of integrity of Canadian tire retail market though out its networks. Prior to rebranding, CTR had some of products such as mastercraft, which were highly received in the Canadian market, thus contributed to increase corporate indentify as compared to close competitors. The firm’s strong brand in the Canadian market was also evident on the high sales volumes made in the past years. Despite this strong name, the need of rebranding, to strategically place the firm as one of the market leader was inevitable. If CTR had remained with the concept of “brand as icon” due to the strong merchandise culture developed by the firm to its customers, the overall growth would have decreased (Goodyear, 2006). The reason for this is that customers are more attracted to those organisations that have positioned themselves as leaders in different areas. The rebranded firms also offer raised competition due to their fair pricing policies such as Wal-Mart, or quality products and customer services such as home Depot, which would have negatively affected CTR sales revenues. Due to the firms rebranding exercise, CTR have subsequently recorded raised profits. For instance, in 2010 the firm recorded an impressive $ 8.8 billion in revenues making it to be one of the largest firms operating in the country. One of the advisement appeals that could have been a feature of brand vision was emotion appeal. This form of appeal can either be personal or social appeal. Some of the concepts would be the need buying the CTR products and services for self-esteem, joy, safety, comfort among other notable aspects associated to CTR products Conclusion From the above information, it is clear that firms should continuously rebrand themselves, in order to attract and retain customers. For CTR, rebranding process have made the organisation competitive, thus raised profitability levels in both the short and long run. References Bedbury, S. (2002).A New Brand World: Principles forAchieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century. New York: Viking. Crawford, F., and Mathews, R. (2010). The Myth of Excellence. New York: Crown Business, 2001. De Chernatony, L. (2010). Modelling the Components of the Brand. European Journal of Marketing 32, (11):1074–90. Goodyear, M. (2006).Divided by a Common Language: Diversity and Deception in the World Kapferer, J. (2010). Reinventing the Brand. London: Kogan Page.of Global Marketing. Journal of the Market Research Society 38, (2): 105–22. Read More