Branding at NOKIA

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Branding at NOKIA

Chapter-01

1.01 Introduction

Perhaps the more distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create maintain, protect and enhance brands. Marketers say that “branding is the art and cornerstone of marketing.” The American marketing Association defines “a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.

In essence, a brand identifies the seller or maker. It can be a name, trademark, logo, or other symbol. Under trademark law, the seller is granted exclusive rights to the use of the brand name in perpetuity. Brands differ from other assets such as patents and copyrights, which have expiration dates.

Branding is a major issue in product strategy. On the on hand, developing a branded product requires a great deal of long-term investment, especially for advertising, promotion and packaging. Many brand-oriented companies subcontract manufacturing to other companies. On the other hand, manufacturers eventually learn market lies with building their own brands.

Brands vary in the amount of power and value they have in the marketplace. At one extreme are brands that are not known by most buyers. Then there are brands for which buyers have a fairly high degree of brand awareness. Beyond this are brands with a high degree of brand acceptability. Then there are brands that enjoy a high degree of brand preference. Finally there are brands that command a high degree of brand loyalty.

Customer’s attitude towards branding-[Phillips kottler, Millenium edition-p,126, 2000]

Ø Customers will change brands, especially for price reasons. No brand loyalty.

Ø Customer is satisfied. No reason to change the brand

Ø Customer is satisfied and would incur costs by changing brand.

Ø Customers value the brand and see it as a friend.

Ø Customer is devoted to the brand

Marketing is the process of spreading a product identity and Branding is the tools of marketing and customer attitude is much influenced by branding. So, that branding is popular to create a brand image.

1.02 Objective

  • The objective of this report is to have an overview on Branding essentially in monitoring of promotional process in marketing aspect.

1.03 Methodology

  • For the preparation of the paper both secondary and primary sources information are used. The secondary sources of information are published books concerning the issues. However, various articles and research reports published in different journals and website also are studied and taken inconsideration. As the brand employee especially the higher management plays a significant role for implementation of the projects regarding brand and branding, the views of some branding approaches which are effected issues are collected and incorporated in the preparation of the paper. The empirical method used is a multi case study. Data were collected from few same companies in the (mobile) business industry through in-depth interview. The data were analyzed using systematic coding and categorization of qualitative evidence.

Chapter-02

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature review is described under two questioners-

· Why branding is important in marketing?

· How advertising helps to build a brand?

2.0 Background

Branding is an issue which receives some, but not much, attention in literature on international marketing. Independently, globalization and branding have been given due attention, but the interrelation between the two has not. The aim of this article is to examine the approaches and benefits of a global branding strategy and set out a framework for implementation. A global brand is also known as an international universal of worldwide brand. For the purpose of this article, global branding can be defines as the international offering of a predominantly uniform good, the name of which is associated by consumers which high symbolic value of estimation of worth. The products and substantial consumer’s loyalty and brand provide convenient identification. Callman[1], Kronz[2]

2.1 Essential nature of global branding

Holmes and West [6, p.23]draw attention to the search for “..The secret formula that can sell a brand worldwide”. The “search for similarities rather than differences” means that, with respect to a particular product of brand, people from different countries may have more

in common with each other than with other types of people in own country.

[Kaynak-7] further argues that changing global business and marketing systems are re- orientating management philosophies and organizational structures towards regiocentrism and geocentrism which in term create a favorable environment for the development of regional and global brand.

Branding is thus a method, strategy and philosophy by which the products of an international seller can be differentiated within an exciting product category. Its execution depends to at least some degree on a strategic planning process in terms of both content and process that sees cost reduction and achievement orientation as deriving from the manifold benefits of brand awareness that permeates the world market. The branding process used to define the product as an extraordinary market offering.

2.2 Functions of branding strategy

The overall aim of branding strategy is to attain cost and quality leadership so as to erect barriers to future entry and to free existing firms out of the market.

Marketing with branding policy are driven from the following functions— Quelch and Hoff [16].

???Low costs and users prices

???International advertising and advertising cost saving

???Improvement of strategic-competitive position

???Rapid introduction of product innovation

???Improved goodwill

???Demand for standardization and culture based differentiation

???Improved identification and motivation of the workforce with the enterprise

Effect of strategy

???Raise the sail

???Establish consumer’s loyalty

???Facilitate monopolistic rent

2.3 Managerial and organizational conditions:

In this section, the essential guidelines for corporation modification and implementation of a branding strategy are outlined-

o Strategic planning and controlling-

Branding policy is a strategic planning and controlling process which incorporates especially brand-oriented elements such as homogeneity analysis with the more conventional components of risk, sensitivity, cost-benefit analysis and so on.

o Organizational goals, philosophy, corporate culture-

es represent one of the fundamentals of a strategic plan and branding conception. Need to correspond with “global vision setting” and the culture of the enterprise. Simultaneously ,need to link the internal operation of the firm with its market based corporate identity, these can established visually the brand itself and quality of advertising and its visual logos and messages.

Global goals or objectives

o Organizational anchoring of a global branding concept-

The Chandlerian thesis of “structure follows strategy” has considerable bearing on the world wide concentration of organizational resources on the market.

Branding depends on factors:

[ the proportion of the enterprise’s turnover derived from its foreign branches, subsidiaries or export & imports;

[ the firm has progressed on the globalization path;

[ the breadth of the path;

[ the level of integration of the functional structure;

[ the integration of product or brand orientation with the overall multidimensional

[ structure of the organization

o Branding oriented market research-

In line with the goal of long-term market penetration, the branding strategy must incorporate some degree of standardization of all marketing mix fundamentals-product; price, distribution, communication and these must be permeated with the appropriate philosophy. Various physical and physic aspects of the potential for long-term branding and standardization through an undifferentiated mass-market strategy.

o Co-operative linkages-

Despite the very considerable improvements in the “global supply system” described above, it is frequently also imperative for firms to develop co-operative linkages with other firms, sometimes even with competitors

2.4 Limitations on branding

Under the branding policies few limitations or conditions are faces by the company. It is important to specify the condition which reasons branding is inadvisable or on longer visible.

  • Reason:

The fundamental reason when the firm does not have the necessary resources or organizational “critical mass” and the firm is of insufficient.

  • Effect:

According to the limitation, for these reason the firm will not able to control the implementation of branding in marketplace and may be not possible to provide local customers with certain services or interaction on to necessary level.

  • Limitation Impact on a large firm-

Necessary not only financial potential of expanding market but also have the recourses needed to implement branding strategies.

Limitation impact on a small firm-

Only viable option would appear to implementation of product strategy which would be coupled with growing brand awareness.

Standardization-

There are situations in which national or cultural pressures and differences from overwhelming insurmountable barriers to standardization, such factors may disrupt otherwise Promising strategies. There are other factors such as governmental relations on brand marketing and the regulation of advertising copy and media are equally prohibited. Heavy tariff of quota protection could also prohibit viable global strategies.

Brand piracy is a further problem and copying of brands and depreciation through to the brand symbolic and qualitative impact.

Building strong brands has become an important issue for many organizations since it yields a number of marketing advantages and increases Company’s competitive strength. [Hoeffler and Keller, 2002]

2.5 Challenges and opportunity-

Brand management faces several challenges and opportunities:

[ Globalization and greater openness of markets;

[ The impact of technological change;

[ Increased power of distributors;

[ Evolution of channels;

2.6 Characteristics-

In addition to traditional brand building activities like external brand communication, focus on the internal brand building process, where the strategic vision and value based aspects are related as well as external communication. But the external brand building process is successfully depends on the internal reality.

This internal brand building processes have five special characteristics:

[ Goals and perceived benefits of brand building

[ Resources in brand building

[ External and internal cooperation in brand building

[ Means and communication in brand building

[ The process of product brand building and its connection to product service development

2.7 Branding activities and communication:

Brand communication and marketing is affected by creativity in marketing and the budget available. For a mobile, the desire goal of its marketing activities and communication is twofold-

[ Want to create brand recognition

[ At the same time have to concentrate on selling

So, the brand management actively is leads to brand recognition and association, quality, attractiveness and as well as to turnover.

1.8 Branding approaches:

Conducting all of these needs to apply branding approaches, branding approaches is the effective way to spread the brand promise and vision.

Fundamental approaches:

[ Product driven

[ Marketing driven

These approaches have common features and approach specific feature and identified the winners.

Winners identified with product-driven branding had the main form of differentiation and the brand based around the wine, itself.

2.9 Characteristics of the wineries with product driven branding:

[ Focus at the cellar door being on the wine;

[ A personal approach where visitors can meet the wine market;

[ A limited amount of marketing and promotion

Marketing –driven branding developed brand and winners identified the brand with holistic approach that encompassed the experience at the winery as well as the wine. Resulting from a marketing-driven desire to create a “total wine “experience, views on branding are limited to advertising plus the brand name or logo. However, personal selling or face to face communication is a critical part of their marketing communications. Due to limited promotional resources, have to show directly to their customers.

In branding power and demonstrate a certain level of interest in conducting branding activities if the business grows and if time allows to do so.

Large firms are advocates of the branding concept and the way it is carried out is different.

Promotional tools such as television and print advertising and large-scale sales promotions that help build a brand image and convey communication message are more prevalent in big firms.

Wong and Marriles (2005) developed the branding-archetype leader model, model includes three

Leaders-

[ Minimalist brand orientation;

[ Embryonic brand orientation;

[ Integrated brand orientation;

These leaders are characterized by two dimensions:

[ Level of brand orientation;

[ Brand marketing performance.

2.10 Brand equity:

Brand equity has been used both in the accounting and marketing literature (Wood, 2000). Keller (1993) identified two general motives for studying brand equity.

One is a financially based motivation to estimate the value of a brand more preciously for accounting purposes, interns of asset divesture purpose. A second reason for studying brand equity relates to a strategy-based motivation to improve marketing productivity.

Brand equity refers to the total monetary value of a brand as separable and intangible asset. Also brand equity is a ‘measure’ of loyalty, perceived quality and leadership, association and differentiation, awareness and market behavior (Aaker, 1996).

The study found two major components of brand equity:

[ Perceived value

[ Trust

Perceived value is driven by performance indicators and tangibles, including:

[ Functionality

[ Technological superiority

[ Support and training, and

[ Flexibility to respond to future changes,

Therefore, all of discussions are only for known branding strategy, approaches, and characteristics and implementation and develop the branding in marketplace.

2.11 Advertising –

Because of the many forms and uses of advertising, it is difficult to make all-embracing generalizations. (j.johnson,9,no-2,1994,3-4). Yet the following qualities can be noted:

  • Public presentation-

Advertising public nature confers a kind of legitimacy on the product and also suggest a standardizing offering, because many persons receive the same message, buyers know that motives for purchasing the product will publicly understood.

  • Pervasiveness-

Advertising permits the seller to repeat a massage many times. It also allows the buyers to receive and compare the messages of various competitors. Large scale advertising says something positive about the seller’s size, power and success.

  • Amplified expressiveness-

Advertising provides opportunities for dramatizing the company and its products through the artful use of print, sound and color.

  • Impersonality-

The audience does not feel obligated to pay attention or respond to advertising. Advertising is a monologue in front of, not a dialogue with the audience.

Advertising can be used to build up a long-term image for a product or trigger quick sales. Advertising can efficiently reach geographically dispersed buyers. Certain form of advertising can be requiring a large budget, whereas other forms can be done on a small budget. Advertising might have an effect on sales simply through its presence. Consumers might believe that a heavily advertised brand must offer “good value”.

Three relatively new advertising media should be noted.

  • Advertorial are print ads that contain editorial content and may be hard to distinguish forming a newspaper’s or magazine’s contents.
  • Infomercials are TV commercials that appear to be few minute televisions shows demonstrating or discussing a product. Viewers can phone and order the product.
  • Banners are small signs on Web pages advertising an offer or company that can be reached by clicking on the banner.

Chapter-03

Summary and Conclusion

The scientific contribution of this empirical study relates to the literature review and theoretical framework.

Mainly, under the findings part is related to the branding implementation of the NOKIA.

Indeed, as may found in literature review, much has been written about branding, the mobile business how a company done the branding session in marketplace with the competitors.

This study corresponds to this need by increasing the knowledge of brand management in mobile market with the empirical study. The study contributes by different implementation of overview branding and monitoring process of Nokia Company, but its a few part in findings.

Key words in findings-

Special characteristics, promotional segment with supply chain, competitive internal and external branding (product driven and marketing driven),

Analysis

Chronological demand of Nokia and their share in the mobile market

Branding Strategy of NOKIA

3.1 Special characteristics of Branding:

[ Goals and perceived benefits of brand building

[ Resources in brand building

[ External and internal cooperation in brand building

[ Means and communication in brand building

[ The process of product brand building and its connection to product service

Development

3.2 Strong brand quality formation

According to literature review on branding

· Choice modeling of brand equity-

— achieving strong brand differentiation is absolutely fundamental relationship with customers.

— brand equity can be through of as the differential effects of brand image by marketing of the brand.

Brand knowledge comprises two components

Æ Brand awareness (brand recognition and brand recall)

Æ Brand image (consumer preparation)

NOKIA branding is effected by means and communication brand building:

This study found that the mobile, name is often the product lines “family name”, and individual product are named by combining with a product-specific extension. The reason for the different approaches may be due to different industry characteristics, i.e. brand versus non brand mobile company, this study found that the contain of the communication includes two main streams:

1. Product feature focused communication

2. Benefit –based communication

On the other hand, NOKIA tried to spread the information all about the product feature and benefit by the media communication and media is the essential part of push the message from up to bottom levels.

Media line-

1. Print media

2. Telecast media

3.3 Branding line:

Out door visual branding

· ATL(above the line)-out door visual branding

· BTL(below the line)-indoor visual branding / visual merchandising.

All of these are external co-operation in brand building and the external brand building frame work.

In internal co-operation in brand building found that the decision –making related to branding is conducted by few managers and other personnel are not involved. [ Krake,2005, p.230]

This found that the responsibility for brand management lies, in all cases, at the highest management level. Highest-level involvement in brand building is certainly important for the process. However, my study found that if the brand building planning and activities are conducted by the highest management level only, it has certain negative side effect. Indeed, if personnel are not involved this causes a lack of commitment and resistance to change among them with regard to the brand building effort.

My study strongly indicates that in a successful brand building process in an NOKIA, the marketing personnel should also be involved.

Moreover, this study found that it is a challenge to get technology and marketing oriented people to co-operate in brand building. [Mowle and Merilees-2005] identified two approaches-

1. Product-driven branding

2. Market-driven branding

However, they did not report any challenges related to making the choice between the two, or challenges related to co-operation between people having difference orientation in branding.

3.4 Advantages of branding

Strong brand provide advantages to both buyers and sellers.

  1. They can lead to fundamental differences t to customers
  2. Produce differential responses to specific marketing activities
  3. Increases customer’s confidence in their choice
  4. Selling company get premium prices and competitive products will be rejected
  5. Marketing communication will be more rapidly accepted and organization’s power in the distribution network will be increased

Overall a brand like NOKIA is developed over the time through four steps process-

1. Intelligence gathering- this phase involves gaining understanding about the brand’s situation and provides the information necessary to develop the brand strategy.

2. Strategy- this phase of brand building, the organization defines the brand’s promise, rationality, attributes and message.

3. Communication- “brings the strategy to life”, means creating and communicating all expression of the brand to both internal and external audiences and it should convey both the “purpose and personality of the company early and consistently”.

4. Management- this phase is all about sustaining and developing the brand further. At that stage organization level commitment, time and intellect are required. In addition, a proper management system is needed-and infrastructure to measure the effectiveness of branding and to support its development along the changing needs of the market.

3.5 Promotional segment:

Another strategic decision in the area of promotion concerns the allocation of effort among the three different methods of promotion.

Promotion

Personal selling
Sales promotion
Advertising

Figure-01

Advertising refers to no personal communication transmitted through the mass media (radio, television, print, outdoors, and mail). The communication is identified with a sponsor who compensates the media for the transmission.

Personal selling refers to face-to face interaction with the customer. Unlike advertising, personal selling involves communication in both directions, from the source to the destination and back. All other forms of communication with the customer other than those included in advertising and personal selling constitute.

Personal selling has three distinctive qualities-

Ø Personal confrontation- immediate and interactive relation between two or more persons.

Ø Cultivation- sales reps will normally have customer’s best interest at heart.

Ø Response- the buyer feels under some obligation for having listened to the sales talk.

Ø

3.6 Internal and External branding:

Internal branding is follow for internal visual affect, like inside of showroom, market place, shopping mall, internal staff etc. people are mostly affect by eye contract that’s a physiological concept and over the visual contract need to both external and internal branding with the brand logo or name also brand promise and services.

Billboard
Out-of-Home
Company Confidential
© 2008 Nokia V1-Filename.ppt / YYYY-MM-DD / Initials
Building branding
Staircases leading to retail

3.7 Analysis the demand of Nokia

Figure-02

Sources-official documents

3.8 A framework of Nokia brand equity formation

Firm Brand and Corporate Consumer Market

Image formation behavior

Product

Corporate Image
Brand Name
Promotion
Place
Price
Attributes

Utility

Objective utility

Modern

Reliable

Figure-03

Sources- Google-branding website

3.9 Brand reputation drivers frame work:

Figure-04

3.10 Market share of Nokia

Figure-05

Sources-2008 survey report of Market Express

Conclusion:

The purpose of this study is to increase the knowledge of brand management in brand building process. The method used a multiple case study and the study contributed to the literature by identifying special characteristics of brand building in mobile brand. The special characteristics identified relate to goals and perceived benefits of brand building, resources and approaches in brand building, external and internal cooperation in brand building, means and communication in brand building and the process of product brand building and its connection to mobile product development.

This study found that the methods for branding may be very different from those in large companies. Indeed, more research in needed to explore and develop such affordable and effective methods for use in brand building in mobile business. Moreover, this study found that the cooperation between technology and marketing-oriented personnel is a challenge in brand management in the mobile business and more research is also required on the managerial approaches used to synchronize the branding and brand development process.

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