MARKETING

Unilever Brand Strategy and Architecture of a Western Brand in India

Unilever Brand Strategy and Architecture of a Western Brand in India

Literature Review

Brands

Nobody disputes the importance of the brand for the company or the consumer: over the past 20 or 30 years its definition, functions and characteristics have been widely studied. However, since the early 1990s, brand has been the object of new questions and concerns.

From the marketing viewpoint, as Santesmases (1991) points out, marketing management is that which connects the company to the market, in order to find out about market needs and to develop the products which serve the demand and supply them. The firm must do this by designing products that will adapt best to such needs, at the same time competing with other firms or entities that also try with their offers to attract the market to themselves. Furthermore, the firm has to obtain benefits to be able to continue its survival and agreeing with its more or less laid down targets. It is within this perspective of marketing strategy that we consider the importance of brand value in marketing management.

One of the reasons for this interest, as indicated by McKenna (1991) and Bello et al. (1994) is the fact that new tendencies in marketing are concerned fundamentally with the creation of added value, long-term relationships, based on knowledge and experience with the aim of finding a way for the client to interrelate and integrate with the company. In the type of competitive market in which companies act, brands are the strongest, most stable values through time that they can count on (Aaker and Alvarez del Blanco, 1995a).

Another reason for a company's interest in studying brand value arises from strategic considerations. To improve its productivity in the market, marketing managers need an understanding of consumer behavior and attitude toward the brand on which to base strategic decision making. Here is where the study of brand value can offer us a measure of consumer attraction, or loyalty to the brand, which reflects a measure of the resistance to brand change if there is a change in commercial policy (Aaker, 1994).

The final motivation for analyzing brand value comes from the environment. From the company's point of view, it is becoming more and more costly and complex to develop new brands or manage existing ones in increasingly competitive markets. A slow down in economic growth and consumption only makes the situation worse. Thus in a world governed by uncertainty, we begin to realize that brand management and rationalization should be an important part in the strategic considerations of many companies (Guillaume, 1993).

For many companies, therefore, the brand name and what it represents is their most important asset: the basis for their competitive advantage and their present and future profits (Kim, 1993). However, the brand is rarely managed and coordinated coherently, with a long-term strategic vision (Aaker and Alvarez del Blanco, 1994), so that, as Farquar (1989) indicates, it can be used to increase the value of the ...