Brand Management for Mazda Motor Corporation

Executive Summary
Brand management is an essential aspect for any business. Effective brand management helps
firms in associating with customers and building long term relationships with customers.
Customers do not consider brands as simply products that they need. Instead, there are a lot of
emotions and feelings associated with different brands in the minds of various customers. Brands
management assists brands in generating these feelings. This report highlights upon a brand audit
for automobile giant Mazda. The brand’s several elements and building blocks have been
critiqued to gain a deeper insight about the brand’s image and equity in the minds of its
customers.

Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Critique of brand elements...............................................................................................................2
Brand resonance model....................................................................................................................5
Brand Salience.............................................................................................................................5
Brand Performance......................................................................................................................5
Brand Imagery..............................................................................................................................6
Brand Judgments..........................................................................................................................7
Brand Feelings.............................................................................................................................7
Brand resonance...........................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
Mazda Motor Corporation was founded in 1920 and is headquartered in Japan. At present the
organization is led by a transformational leader Masamichi Kogai. The brand has earned a
significant name in the automobile industry through effective manufacture and sale of passenger
cars and commercial vehicles. Mazda hires over 48000 employees. Mazda has a strong brand
name that is synonymous to power, speed, quality service and immense trust. Over a period of
time, Mazda’s target market has significantly increased due to enhanced brand awareness. Mazda
has been manufacturing and delivering automobiles in different parts of the world and hence has
a massive target market that it caters to. This report aims to gain a deeper insight on Mazda as a
brand. In order to achieve the same, several brand elements of Mazda have been analyzed based
on the six criteria for choosing brand elements. Followed by which, brand resonance model has
been created which throws light upon six important brand building blocks. The primary objective
of the report is to gain a deeper insight about various facets of Mazda as a global brand.
Brand management strategies are adopted by several leading brands in order to set the right
positioning in the mind of their consumers. These strategies include curating creative content for
their brand, enhancing awareness about the brand, making the brand responsive to customers and
delivering quality products and services which exceed customer expectations. There are several
elements of a brand which help the brand in gaining likability, being adaptable, transferable and
increase its recall value. Mazda’s brand elements are described as below:
Critique of brand elements
There are six essential criteria for choosing brand elements (Heding et. al., 2015). These criteria
involve memorability, meaningfulness, likability, transferability, adaptability and protectibility.
The brand elements for any particular brand includes its logo, slogan, symbols, characters, names
and URL. The critical assessment of these elements is as below:
Logo: The logo of the brand represents a well styled first letter of the brand’s name. This shape
has often been recognized as the 3D model of stretched wings placed inside an oval. The V
shaped wings represent growth and improvement. The logo is meaningful and memorable. The
color of the logo is also appealing. The logo is easy to understand and since the brand effectively