Burberry Brand management

Introduction

Brand management is usually the idea of marketing a strategy based on initiating certain value to a brand according to people's current perception (Worthington, Russell-Bennett &amp Härtel, 2010). This action will give scope for the brand to create a worthy customer base and give them an opportunity to increase the brand's price. In today’s report, one of the premium fashion brands from Britain called Burberry is being discussed. Looking at the history of the brand, it was established in the year 1856 with its headquarters situated at London. Trench coats, perfumes, cosmetics, apparel, footwear, etc are some of the products being handled by the brand. The report also contributes to the information regarding how the function of branding can be used as an excellent tool for marketing. It will also help in the addressing of the salient models and theories that are necessitated to assemble a strong brand name. Among them, some of the models are also used to inspect the brand management at Burberry. Also, the management strategies at their local and international market are discussed.

L01 Brand Building and Brand Management

What is branding ?

The procedure of creating an exclusive along with a contemporary picture of the company among the people which in turn will help them to stand out when compared to the other brands present in the industry is called branding (Robinson, Tuli & Kohli, 2015). Some of the methods to glorify the process would be to come up with unique taglines, logos, and so on. By doing so people will be able to recognize the products quickly and can purchase from the desired brand.

Building a brand

Branding is a very crucial process as it is responsible for the class of the product. Well-known brands always attract a huge crowd as they have the trust of the people instilled in their products. Customers never turn towards a brand that has no equal reputation or recognition. Due to these reasons branding plays an important role. Also, branding alone does not help in the progress of the company, alongside retaining the quality of a product also will help a lot in this regard (Abela, 2003). Nowadays people consider owning a branded product as a symbol of prestige. Hence even if the product might not have many attraction skills, the name of the brand can entirely change the point of view. Only building a brand is not enough. Maintaining credibility consistently is the next challenge the brand has to keep up with. This can be done by maintaining the quality of the band and also by marketing the brands through different mediums such as by advertising, social media, creating an awareness of the products and services, and also by making the brand available for the customers online and offline.

The use of a customer’s opinion to mark the commercial merit of a product can be referred to as brand equity. One important aspect of brand management is to consider the opinions and reviews provided by the customers. By doing so the brand can help the products to be more user-friendly and much more reliable.

Importance of Branding and marketing

Being emerged as a premium fashion brand, brand management is very important for Burberry. Also, the same is required for such fashion brands to involve in financial institutions and investment advisors (Abela, 2003). This aspect is very important for the customers to come in terms with the brand among other options available in the current market.

The culture of Britain has very much influenced the brand Burberry. The commercial value of the brand is the mixture of emotions of the people with a connection to the culture of Britain (Chandon, 2003). The customers are able to link to the products of Burberry due to this. Also, people consider the procession of a product from this particular brand as a priced ownership. The people who own the product from this brand are mainly the ones who are in a hunt for a product that is of authenticity sense and also wants to own a piece of British culture.

Branding always helps the company have an upper hand during the process of marketing. As discussed before, a good brand will always have a greater chance for the products to catch the eye of the customers. This will also help to bring about greater investment flow to the company.

The employees of the brand are always benefitted from the company and also takes huge pride in being recognized as an employee of the brand Burberry (Miller & Mills, 2012). Due to this, the employees always make sure to stay loyal to the brand and work for them with great job satisfaction. This in turn will increase the productivity of the firm which will assisst in the overall production of the company The company gives away promotional merchandise to its employees which in turn will give them a sense of attachment to the place.

Components of successful branding strategy

David Aaker’s model of brand equity consists of five discrete possessions that is the foundation of producing values for business. The five possessions include loyalty towards the brand, distinguished quality of the brand awareness of the brand, associations with the brand and the proprietary assets of the brand (Kaolawanich, et al., 2020). Aaker pointed out that by the usage of these steps the brand can, switching prices, satisfaction level brand preferences, repurchase rates and expected quality on the products and services. Discussed below are the five assets of Aaker’s brand equity model

Brand Loyalty

One of the fastest ways to increase the number of customers to a product is by being loyal to the needs of the customer. It is very time-consuming but the outcome of the process is worth every minute lost. Once the brand achieves the trust of the customers, there is no running away from them. This process will also help in controlling brand equity.

Brand awareness

This mainly has to do with brand recognition. The achievement of a brand for its customers to identify the product and also compromise with the products and services provided by the same is called brand awareness (Oeppen & Jamal, 2014). It is constructed at various levels. They are a sense of expertise as well as a sign of affluence, devotion, and responsiveness at the level of recognition of the brand. This also helps the customers to have their preference on the products to purchase. Brand awareness is a crucial factor as it helps the brand to uplift its business. It is responsible for the increased purchasing rate, sales, and profits earned by the business.

Distinguished brand quality

The perception of the people regarding the various aspects when it comes to the quality of the brand will make up for the brand quality. It helps in promoting the products with high price by being marketing them in the perception of its customers (Romão, et al., 2019). This again instils the trust among the customers.

Brand associations

The different collaborations taken up by the brand will result them in getting much better recognitions. This gives the customers a clear-cut idea on how one brand is different from the others and how to chose them wisely (Olteanu, 2020). Then another faster way to excel in this aspect is by developing and giving the customers a feel of personal relationship with the brand which in turn increases degree of profit of the company.

Proprietary asset

Some of the products of the brand gets involved in certain procedures such as for partnerships, patents and trademark, along with channels that are capable of providing a major competitive advantage (Moore & Birtwistle, 2004). This can be achieved by using common name, package or icon. Trademark is a sign which is used by the brand equity from its nemesis who might try to confuse with the validity of the original product. This will help the customers to recognise the brand even when the brand will try to regulate the channel of distribution.

Keller’s Brand Pyramid

Keller’s brand pyramid will help the brand to gain more information and insight regarding the ways in which the branding in an organisation can be guided. One can see that the models are divided into four divisions. Each one are discussed in detail below (Keller, 2001)

Fig 1: Keller’s Brand Equity Pyramid (Source: https://researchleap.com/reviewing-the- concept-of-brand-equity-and-evaluating-consumer-based-brand-equity-cbbe-models/#prettyPhoto)

From a very basic individual level, Keller described that brand awareness to a foundation, which consists of networks of associates working in an abstract manner The main reason why this process has come into force is that it develops the consumers to produce a positive feeling and leaves a good impression among the customers (Weston, 2016). The products and services also creates a scenario in which the customer’s thoughts are taken into consideration and the brand is being developed. He also developed six elements for a brand namely identity, salience, performances, imagery, feelings, judgements and relationships.

L02 Brand portfolio strategies and brand hierarchies

The portfolio of a brand mainly deals with the different labels that work under broader corporate structures. Though each brand exists on its own, they have the tendency to follow the portfolio of other brands for reference and cross promotional benefits.

Strategies of Brand portfolio

Every brand needs a very efficient portfolio. A portfolio plays a very important role as it will help the firm to function effectively and also keep up the identity of the corporation. The three brand strategies which have to be paid attention to in this regard are as follows

Brand Property: When taken this property in regard, here the brand name will always remain the same no matter how much ever new products are released in the same line. By using this single name, it is letting the brand have a cohesive voice (Junior, 2018).

House of brands: When two products are separated from each other, this product acts as a foundation for that process to take place. More than one different product is used to present a single brand (Junior, 2018).

Hybrid Strategy: This strategy comes into the picture when the goods are to be differentiated and the prices are to be reduced based on the consumers of the brand (Junior, 2018).

Burberry always uses the below strategies to improve their brand during the process of channelling.

Brand Strategies

Coming up with a successful brand strategy in today’s world is often the most challenging and herculean task which a company faces (Broniarczyk & Alba, 1994). If there is no good brand strategy then the firm faces consumer frustration, shortfalls, mixed resources, and resource reallocation. All the brands have a set of functions wherein they are supposed to partake accordingly to mark the success of their firm. In order to overcome all these problems, one should have an efficient brand strategy.

Brand hierarchies

The method of summing up the strategies of a particular brand so that the quality and essence of the brand can be explained in a better manner to retain the names of the popular brand is called brand hierarchies (Moore & Birtwistle, 2004). This method has turned out to be very useful as this will break the concepts into fragments and one can understand the tactics more in detail. The three different branding degrees are mentioned below :

Corporate branding: This type of branding is particularly used to attract the customers of a particular vocation. by aiming at the consumers of a particular area. They are mainly distinguished by their lifestyle, demographic variables, and geography.

Umbrella/ Family Branding: Marketing more than one item from the usage of a unified brand is called Family branding (Paulssen & Bagozzi, 2006). Whenever the goods have good business value, this type of branding comes into the picture.

Individual branding : Under this strategy, the new products are given new names in regard to their attributes as they are not relatable to the labels of signified brand identities.

Branding strategies employed by Burberry

Recently Burberry started the concept of digitalization into its business strategy to keep up with the present-day competition (Laforet & Saunders, 1994). Some of the recent inclusions by the firm in this regard are analytics software and artificial Intelligence as well as reward and loyalty programs, to gain consumer insights, resulting in improved customer engagement.

Brand Segmentation: The fragmentation criteria of Burberry could be in the following as adults as in men and women, children as in boys and girls, fitness freaks and enthusiasts., and operates in the Asia-Pacific, America, Europe, and Middle East geographic segments. It is mostly based on demography.

The main target customer of Burberry falls under the category of 20 and 45 and mostly are upper-class consumers. The wide varieties of options given by the company to the customers are clothes and associated accessories, grooming factors, and cosmetics. The main reason for the brand to receive the recognition it has today is because of the artistic heritage and rich culture of the United Kingdom.

Brand Equity Strategy: The British brand Burberry is ranked 147 by Forbes magazine under the list of top Global Performers. The market capitalization of the brand was around $9.6 billion dollars according to the month of May in the year 2017. One way for the brands to connect with their consumers is by partaking in shows and events. Burberry too has shown a lot of co-operation in this regard and has been able to gel up with their customers.

Burberry always makes sure that it reduces the uncertainty caused for both the customers and the company by making the portfolios are made simple making them easy from both ends.

L03 Extensions of Brand and brand leveraging

Extension of brands

Brand expansion is nothing but the selling of more than two products under the name of the same brand. This can be achieved by adding up the offers of a particular brand to the current product range which in turn will help in adding services and products of the same brand. By performing brand expansion, the product can only expand the services which are only connected directly to the brand and not otherwise. This is followed as it will help in avoiding the harm of reputation to a greater level. Also, the brand expansion will be a success only if the brand is already in a good position and is pretty much popular among its customers. Because nobody trusts a new product unless it comes from a reputed brand. This is because people tend to believe that the firm will not make any compromises in the making of a product as they always judge the previous products and come to the same conclusion with the new ones too.

Strategies and Approaches

Taking the current customer demographics into consideration, Burberry has made certain changes according to the likings of the youth. They have been working on partnerships and hence have been releasing many goods early this year (Weston, 2016). A new trending logo also was released by the firm keeping the younger generation in mind. But the new symbol; was not taken well by the marketers and had faced heavy criticism. This was because it had the urge to include artists and many other aspects from different communities.

Brand reinforcement

To make a note of their success story in a collective manner, Burberry made a movie trailer in the genre of a romantic drama which depicted the life story of the founder. The intention behind this move was to bring in the interest of their target audience that is the younger generation.

Brand revitalization

Burberry threw a brand turnaround campaign. It was launched by its former chief executive Rose Marie Bravo (Moore & Birtwistle, 2004). Later on, it was taken in charge by the present boss Angela Ahrendts, in 2006. As the introduction of more subsequent labels from the brand and also with the inclusion of digital marketing made it one of the most accepted luxury brands on social media platforms with a great back up from the younger audience.

Brand leveraging

Usually when talking about luxury brands, it always seems like it is reserved only for a few. But Burberry has made an exception in this regard. They have a build up a scope in the fields of leveraging in digital content, social media and all other platforms which attract a lot of people especially their target audience, the youth.

Collaborative Partnership and agreements

When a brand works in association with another brand, then the action is termed as collaboration. The reason for brands getting involved in collaboration with other brands is to attain the competitive dominance in the market. By doing so, both the brands can attain equal popularity and also by collaborating the product will receive equal feedbacks from the customers (Oeppen & Jamal, 2014). The organisation makes sure that it acknowledges the brands with which it had collaborated. Burberry also mainly looks upon working on a long-term goal with its partners and also keep changing with the present trends of the industry.

By creating a mutual connection with other popular brands, it leads to a healthy give and take of opinions and ideas which will give birth to many creative products. Also, some of the organisations with whom the brand has collaborated are Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), Living Wage Foundation, Canopy (an NGO working to protect forests) etc.

L04 Evaluating Techniques of brand management

One can go through the financial aspect of the brand, the graph is always high. The brand has been able to achieve the trust of their customers by giving good quality products. Because of this the customers always opt for Burberry products for the same.

Techniques for measuring brand value

By the standardisation of ISO that is the International Standard Organisation (ISO), the company follows the guidelines of the same. The three ways in which the brand can be measured are as follows :

Legal Analysis : By conducting this analysis, it helps to differentiate the brands from one another. By doing this analysis, one can understand if the brand is going through a positive or negative effect (Miller & Mills, 2012). Also, if negative, the company can get things done right (Chandon, 2003).

Behavioural Analysis : This analysis is mainly done by closely examining the products and services of the brand to its customers. Also, the market size of the brand and also its exposure to the market will be noted (Chandon, 2003).

Financial Analysis : When going through this aspect, the brand’s expenditure on particular products can be assessed. By going through this the brand can defect where they went wrong and can correct their actions (Chandon, 2003).

Approaches to measuring the brand value

The brand value is usually measured by a partner of a different company who have higher financial value in order to reduce the risk. Also, this is one of the ways to meet large scale consumers. The reason why higher financial officials are chosen is because they have much more control on the smaller groups in the business. This value of assessment will help one to understand the image of the brand (Abela, 2003).

Cost based approach : The measuring of the brand from the beginning will always help in calculating the values of a brand. The price of ads, commercials and do on are included.

Market based method : This method will help to compare and contrast from two equally competitive brands (Abela, 2003).

Income based approach : By following this approach, one can understand the profit generated by the brand.

Licensing

The merit of the brand can be intended and expanded by using the technique of licensing. The profit that is gained from the previous purchase which will add up to the revenue of something new (Abela, 2003). By doing so, it will also help in quantifying the yield on their brand investment . This also helps in creating a portfolio at the same time. This will also contribute to the information regarding the competition wherein the brand stands in the market.

Brand auditing

The method of evaluating the financial status of a brand in comparison with its rivals is called as brand auditing. This will help to intensify and influence the brand. Brand monitoring can be defined as calculating the behaviour of brand image in a workspace (Robinson, Tuli & Kohli, 2015).

Conclusion

Brand management is usually the idea of marketing a strategy based on initiating certain value to a brand according to people's current perception. This action will give scope for the brand to create a worthy customer base and give them an opportunity to increase the brand's price. The report also contributes to the information regarding how the function of branding can be used as an excellent tool for marketing. It will also help in the addressing of the salient models and theories that are necessitated to assemble a strong brand name. Among them, some of the models are also used to inspect the brand management at Burberry. Also, the management strategies at their local and international market are discussed.

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