6 Reasons Why Branding is Important to Customers

Following the 6 Reasons Why Branding is Important to Customers

1. Brands provide a tool of self expression
   1. Brands provide opportunities for consumers to express themselves in different ways. Brands help consumers to express their psychological needs like personality, social status, aspiration, etc.
   2. Brands exist in consumers’ minds and sometimes speak more than words do. For example, owners of ‘Honda Activa’ express pride in owning a technically advanced vehicle.
2. Brands offer choice
   1. Since market segmentation has become the buzzword of the twenty-first century, marketers are providing different choices to different consumer segments.
   2. Brands provide choices to consumers, allowing them to distinguish between the various company product offerings.
   3. For example, HLL offers Lifebuoy for the low income segment, Breeze and Lux for medium income and Dove and Pears for luxury class.
3. Brands simplify the Decision Making Process
   1. Suppose a consumer enters a home appliances shop, he is offered goods in varieties ranging from cheap to high priced.
   2. In case the consumer has not thought over what he/she wants to buy, he/she might get confused. In such cases, if he knows any brand, the decision making is simplified.
4. Brands assure Perceived Quality
   1. To the extent possible, consumers try to buy products/services which have certain quality.
   2. Since a brand is regularly advertised, consumers perceive a minimum quality from the product/service. For example, inspite of low priced models offered by Akai and Aiwa for music systems, Philips today also maintains a reasonable market share.
5. Less risk
   1. Buying a commodity at low price without knowing about the promoters is like jumping in the dark. As such, consumers may not like to buy a product if they have doubts about the performance of a product.
   2. A positive experience of a brand provides consumers reassurance and comfort in purchasing a brand, even though it is expensive. Trust or faith is one of the major factors why consumers buy certain products following certain technology.
   3. For example, GSM technology is much advanced than CDMA technology, but the way RIM branded telecom services presents the product, the perception is CDMA is the latest technology.
6. Brand emotional dimension
   1. For industrial products, rational appeal (promotion based on merits of the product) is always helpful, but in case of consumer goods, if the marketer wants to stand out, he must try to build the brand around emotional dimensions like pride, love, threat, humour, affection, etc.
   2. For example P&G’s Vicks talks about ‘mother’s touch’ rather than ‘pain-balm’, soft drink giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi also have used emotional dimensions in their product offerings.
   3. Brands add an emotional component to the customer relationship and become friends with the consumer.

Must Read: Brand Management Notes for MBA & BBA Students

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