Brand Management and Analysis - Assignment Example

Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Describe the product briefly (you are a brand marketer) how would you explain elements of the brand? Brand elements are the physical or visual components of a product or service that identify and differentiate it from others. When building a strong brand elements such as name, logo, tagline (or slogan) and story are key. When taken together the formal brand elements of name, logotype and slogan form the visual identity of the brand or the parent company. They are meant to reflect the essence of the brand, the personality of the brand and the “corporate culture of the business”. To achieve this, the definition of each brand element follows a branding guideline called a visual identity code. The visual identity code for the elements of a brand follows a set of choice criteria to ensure that the brand does not get diluted or weakened. These criteria are descriptive and describe a strong brand element as available, meaningful, memorable, protectable, future-oriented, positive and transferable (Kotler & Pfoertsch, 2006). The branded food product chosen is the Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk. It is produced by Capitol Chilled Foods Australia which is the only dairy manufacturer situated in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk is packaged in a 300ml carton that has a Southcare helicopter on it. The inclusion of the helicopter in the visuals of the brand is motivated by the fact that Capitol Chilled Foods Australia has been a major sponsor and supporter of the rescue service for many years. The helicopter is an element of this brand that can easily be described as meaningful as it captures the nature and values of the parent business. It is also positive as it evokes positive associations in the market, in particular its support for rescue services. The Capitol Chilled Foods Australia brand is available and usable across all markets, hence it can also be legally protected in Australia and other countries in which it is marketed. Research trends that can /do affect this product and discuss how a brand manager can utilize these trends to manage the brand and ensure the brand is relevant over time. One of the key determinants of milk production is the world market price of milk. The world market has changed with the development of modern techniques of filtration and blending. These have greatly reduced the cost of production and increased the range of dairy products that can be specially produced. These products are individually tailored to specific needs of consumers. Global trade in highly specialized protein products has been growing, being buoyed by “low levels of global tariffs and quota protection”, in addition to the relatively high prices of competing traditional milk protein products (Conditions of Competition, 2004). According to Cleanhous and Thuraisingam (2010), “fresh white milk” is dominant on supermarket shelves and accounted for 90% of white milk sales volume in 2009. Fat modified milk (FMM) made up only 45% of the market share of milk in Australia. FMM was also observed to be more expensive than whole milk. Additionally, FAO Staff (1993) made an observation that there had been a trend towards lower consumption of milk fat, especially butter in the developed countries, Australia included. Consumers have been switching to low fat milk and dairy products. This has been sustained over the years and has seen a rise in the global trade of major milk products except for butter. To sustain brand relevance in the face of dynamics such as those illustrated before, Aaker (2010) suggests losing category or subcategory relevance for fading brand elements in favor of emerging ones. He also suggests losing energy relevance and the visibility of the fading brand features. The brand manager should innovate to encourage consumer rediscovery of the brand, take chances on new perspectives and forms of distribution, and develop brand messaging that is compelling. Identify the various components/levels (generic, expected, augmented and potential) of the brand as they apply to the product. It is important that marketers differentiate their brands from those of competitors by developing relevant added values to be able to satisfy the needs of consumers. Marketers achieve this by incorporating further value into the brand through levels. One of the levels is the generic level which defines the generic product that makes it possible for the company to be in the market. In developed markets, the generic product is rarely used to sustain the brand because of the ease with which competitors can emulate them (de Chernatony, McDonald and Wallace, 2013). For the Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk brand, this is represented by the milk that is marketed and sold by other brands as well. The expected level encompasses consumers’ perceptions of the characteristics of the brand that make it different from those of competitors in the same product field. At this level, the products are made to satisfy the minimum requirements for attributes like name, price, quantity, packaging, price and availability. The consumer will consult the brand details in order to determine the extent to which competing brands satisfy their motivational needs (de Chernatony et al., 2013). In the case of the Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk, its association with the rescue service represented by a helicopter on the carton sets it apart and affords it a lot of customer loyalty. At the augmented level, the consumer is more experienced, more confident and can experiment with and discriminate brands based on their prices and in relation to their (the consumer’s) motivational needs. To maintain customer loyalty and price premiums, the marketer augments their brands by adding further benefits, such as brand personality. The consumers use these extra benefits to narrow down their list of suitable brands, alongside their motivational needs. Then they select their brand of choice based on the brand discriminators that match their lifestyles (de Chernatony et al., 2013). The Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk brand can be said to be augmented through the school feeding program that it supports. The potential level signifies the phase of the brand where more innovative value additions are guided by the opinions that the consumers have of the brand. The brand marketer seeks the opinion of staff and consumers at every level that they interact with the product. They then use this feedback to identify areas that the “customers and consumers would welcome new added values” (de Chernatony et al., 2013). The Fresh Full Cream Canberra Milk brand may be ignored over the cheaper Costo Milk which is marketed in the same ACT area. There is also the challenge of disproving consumers’ belief that the two are marginally different. Identify and describe environmental sustainability features of this product. Environmental sustainability of a product translates to looking for ways to cut costs and reduce the impact that the product has on the environment. This can be achieved through energy and water conservation, as well as reducing the usage of packaging material. Sustainability has become a permanent feature of food systems and is receiving increasing attention from consumers, firms and governments. These parties are more and more thinking and acting with regard to sustainability. Consumers have become more conscious of the environmental and ethical consequences of their behavior (Klopčič, Kuipers and Hocquette, 2013). One of the concerns of environmental sustainability is the problem of packaging waste. This issue may not be resolved using recycling activities even with the recent regulatory and technological advances. Packaging design has progressively been oriented towards being environmentally friendly by using “green” materials. Furthermore, there has been a “concomitant reduction of volumetric capacities and consumed energy” in the perspective of the packaging “carbon footprint” (Brunazzi, Parisi and Pereno, 2014). The packaging of this product is environmentally friendly because it uses aseptic Tetra Pak cartons. Tetra Pak packaging consists of different layers of raw paper, plastic and aluminium that are all separately recyclable. Recycling of the packaging results in aluminium and pure paraffin which can be used in industry. The aseptic packaging can also be re-used without recycling in engineering equipment. There are also studies and exploration of ways to substitute the aluminium and use renewable plastic made from sugarcane (de Jong, 2013). References Aaker. D. A. (2010). Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Brunazzi. G., Parisi. S., & Pereno. A. (2014). The Importance of Packaging Design for the Chemistry of Food Products. New York, NY: Springer. Cleanthous. X. & Thuraisingam. S. (2010). Whole milk vs fat-modified milk in the current Australian market: a comparison of nutritional content and market share. Food Australia, 62 (7), 304-306. Conditions of competition for milk protein products in the U.S. market investigation no. 332-453. (May, 2004). Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing. de Chernatony. L., McDonald. M., & Wallance. E. (2013). Creating powerful brands (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. de Jong. P. (Ed.). (2013). Sustainable Dairy Production. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. FAO Staff. (1993). Commodity Review and Outlook: 1992/93. Rome: Author. Klopčič. M., Kuipers. A., & Hocquette. J. F. (Eds.). (2013). Consumer Attitudes to Food Quality Products: Emphasis on Southern Europe. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Pub. Kotler. P., & Pfoertsch. W. (2006). B2B Brand Management. New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media. Read More