Marketing Paper: Brand Equity, Product Life Cycle, Innovations in Marketing, Privacy Issues, Direct Marketing

This marketing paper discusses brand equity, product life cycle, innovations in marketing, privacy issues, and direct marketing. It includes definitions, real-world examples, and strategies for maintaining brand equity and addressing privacy concerns.

Running Head: Marketing Paper
Marketing Paper
Individual Questions

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Contents
Question 1........................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Answer 1............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Question 2........................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Answer 2............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Question 3........................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Answer 3............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Question 4........................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Answer 4............................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Question 5........................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Answer 5............................................................................................................................................................................. 6
References.......................................................................................................................................................................... 7

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Question 1: Define what is meant by “Brand Equity” and discuss what a company can
do to maintain brand equity.
Answer 1: Brand equity is one of the pivotal terms in marketing and branding
terminologies; the term defines and describes a brand value. The value is a function of
consumer perception and experiences of the customers with the brand. Positive brand
equity is when people speak highly about the brand; on the other hand if brand
consistently fails to deliver and underperform it has negative brand equity (Keller,
2016).
In the present day, businesses have a lot to do to ensure strong brand equity and take
the competitive edge over its competitors. Organization in order to ensure brand equity
has to advertise a lot, advertising can be done using both, traditional and web 2.0 tools.
The measure of effectiveness of branding activities is an important measure to build
brand equity. The organization has to use a thumb role in advertising, spending in
proportion to the market share of the organization will help in creating an impact on the
consumer (Rose et. al., 2016).
Another way the organization can ensure high brand equity is by consistently bringing
and adding innovation in the product line or the business function. Apple and Amazon
are the companies which are working in different spaces, but both have strong brand
equity; one of the strongest reasons behind the same is rapid diffusion of innovation in
the business process, practices and product offering. Consumers these days have
become smart and aware; they are always in look out for new offering by the
companies. Hence, they appreciate companies who are working towards innovation;
they recognize and appreciate the efforts of such organization. Another way
organizations ensure brand equity is by communicating with its target audience, using
the right communication channel and strong targeted message a brand can ensure
higher brand equity for them(Hur, Kim & Woo, 2014).
Question 2: Discuss the Product Life cycle concept and include the amount for sales
and profit during each stage

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Answer 2: Every product progresses through a sequence of stages which starts from
Product Development, Introduction and progresses through growth, maturity and
decline. This entire sequence of stages is called as Product Life Cycle and is strongly
associated with the dynamics in the marketing situation; it strongly impacts the
marketing strategy and marketing mix of the product (Holzbaur, Ross & Rothrock,
2016).
(Source: Stark, 2015)
Introduction Stage- This stage of cycle can be seen as most expensive for the company
as it is involved with launching of a new product. At this point in time the sales are low;
however they would increase with time. At the same time the cost elements associated
with the introduction such as R&D, testing and marketing research are high.
Growth Stage-This stage is characterized by strong growth in sales and profits, in this
stage the company looks to exploit the economies in scale and production; the entire
profit will increase during this stage.
Maturity Stage- This is the stage when the product is established in the market and
company has to spend money to keep up with the market share. Any product
modifications or improvement are part of this stage.

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Decline Stage-This can be seen as the last stage of the PLC; here the profit margins are
shrinking as the markets become highly saturated. The company here can still earn
some profits by moving to less expensive production facilities and more such options.
Introduction Growth Maturity Decline
Competitors Few Increasing
competition
Falling
numbers
Falling number
Customers Innovators Early adopters Middle level
majority
Laggards
Profits Negative Rising profits High Profits Declining
Profits
Costs High costs per
customers
Avg. cost per
customers
Low costs/
Customers
Low cost per
customers
Sales Less sales Rapid increase
in sales
Surge in sales Declining sales
(Source: McDonald & Wilson, 2016)
Question 3: How are innovations in interactive television and online services
expanding the strategies and tactics marketers employ today?
Answer 3: In the last couple of years or more, advertising world has significantly
changed, or it can be said that it has improved for the better. Advancement in
technology has made it easier for the marketers to reach the consumer and have two
way communications with them, ensuring high percentage of engagement.
Innovation in Social media and digital marketing had the most significant development
in the recent times, which have made the marketers to revisit their strategies for better
Return on Investment (ROI). Digital media is seeing better tracking of the advertising
campaign using the metrics such as CPM, CPC, PPC, CTR, and Reach and more so, this
gives a huge control in the hands of marketers to tweak the campaign according to the
results. It has become a significantly easier to see what is the user watching, when is he
watching, what type of products he want to see and buy, and many more such questions
have been answered which were difficult to answer before. With such vast
advancement in data analytics marketers have plethora of data to use in order to

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improve the customer buying experience and giving them curated deals (Strauss &
Frost, 2016).
Similar is the case with Interactive television, people now can easily with a press of a
button get engaged with a show or an advertisement and can obtain any information
they want, at just a click of a button. This has even given an option to further increase
the reach of the campaign and given strong power in the hands of the marketers. They
have the ability to control their target audience, selection of content and also to monitor
the time the advertising campaign was being watched (Camilleri, 2018).
Question 4: What are some of the personal and business related privacy issues
associated with the growth in database marketing and how should they be addressed?
Answer 4: Data has become the new king over the last couple of years, it is this reason
why organization are spending billions of dollars in keeping the data of customers safe,
secure and encrypted on cloud platform. Some of the privacy related issues in data base
marketing is the unethical use of the data to access competitors customer base, and
target the customer through all the channels of communication.
The biggest sufferer here is the consumer, who unnecessarily gets plethora of
telemarketing calls, is subjected to wrong product marketing, and the same product is
remarketed to him over and over again. This is one of the biggest personal concerns
related to data base marketing (Weinberg et. al., 2015).
In the last 6 months, news have erupted on the web and print about Ransom ware and
the recent case of Cambridge analytica. In both the cases data of consumers were
compromised and was subjected to multiple threats. The companies were forced to pay
millions of dollars to keep the data safe and not to delete the data, it was exceptionally
huge and a tragic situation.
In order to decrease the same the database marketers have to understand the criticality
of the consumer’s data and accordingly use it, for the convenience of the customer and
not to harass them. It is the duty of both the marketing organization and the data base
collector organization to not let the data be in any wrong hands, as customer’s personal
and financial information is integral to them. For business organization they have to up

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their data base security, just like Apple and keep the entire infrastructure closed. This
way they would be in a position to not only safeguard them from any data security theft,
but also ensure the safety of user’s data (Witten et. al., 2016).
Question 5: Define direct marketing and give some real world examples.
Answer 5: Direct marketing is one of the earliest forms of marketing and highly
evolved in nature, in simple words direct marketing is when business directly addresses
the customers through a number of channels such as email, tele- sales and also in
person. Direct marketing has high conversion rate due to the personalized touch and
specific call to action (Lund & Marinova, 2014). The main channels of direct marketing
are:
 Mail
 E-Mail
 Tele-marketing
 SMS
 Coupons
 Insert and rich media
 Door to door and face to face selling.
Direct marketing is used by almost every organization, for example a bank selling credit
card to the customer via telesales or door to door selling. Email campaigns are the
present day technique of direct marketing, people who opt for mailing lists directly fall
into the purview of direct marketing, as they have already expressed desire in the
company’s product offering. These type of customers are sent a direct mail to click on
the link and buy the product, it is one of the most convenient and effective form of direct
advertising (Lang & Lang, 2015).
Before the advent of digital marketing, most of the FMCG organization used to send
daily almost tens and thousands of messages to its database, letting them aware of the
new deals and discount in the market. For example, Unilever used to send 100,000 of
messages daily to its customers or potential customers, who then would get interested
in the product and buy them. Direct marketing as mentioned earlier gives a good
conversion rate and it is easy to evaluate a measure the success of the campaign. It also

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gives a high degree of control to optimize the campaign to better suit the needs of the
customers (Wang, Moustier & Loc, 2014).

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References
Camilleri, M. A. (2018). Integrated Marketing Communications. In Travel Marketing, Tourism
Economics and the Airline Product (pp. 85-103). Springer, Cham.
Holzbaur, E., Ross, J., & Rothrock, T. (2016). Epro Product Life Cycle: Guidance For A Successful
Management Phase. Value in Health, 19(3), A109.
Hur, W. M., Kim, H., & Woo, J. (2014). How CSR leads to corporate brand equity: Mediating
mechanisms of corporate brand credibility and reputation. Journal of Business
Ethics, 125(1), 75-86.
Keller, K. L. (2016). Reflections on customer-based brand equity: perspectives, progress, and
priorities. AMS review, 6(1-2), 1-16.
Lang, M., & Lang, A. (2015). The 2014 German renewable energy sources act revision–from
feed-in tariffs to direct marketing to competitive bidding. Journal of Energy & Natural
Resources Law, 33(2), 131-146.
Lund, D. J., & Marinova, D. (2014). Managing revenue across retail channels: The interplay of
service performance and direct marketing. Journal of Marketing, 78(5), 99-118.
McDonald, M., & Wilson, H. (2016). Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from
them. John Wiley & Sons.
Rose, G. M., Merchant, A., Orth, U. R., & Horstmann, F. (2016). Emphasizing brand heritage: Does
it work? And how?. Journal of Business Research, 69(2), 936-943.
Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp.
1-29). Springer, Cham.
Strauss, J., & Frost, R. D. (2016). E-marketing: Instructor's Review Copy. Routledge.
Wang, H., Moustier, P., & Loc, N. T. T. (2014). Economic impact of direct marketing and
contracts: The case of safe vegetable chains in northern Vietnam. Food Policy, 47, 13-23.

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Weinberg, B. D., Milne, G. R., Andonova, Y. G., & Hajjat, F. M. (2015). Internet of Things:
Convenience vs. privacy and secrecy. Business Horizons, 58(6), 615-624.
Witten, I. H., Frank, E., Hall, M. A., & Pal, C. J. (2016). Data Mining: Practical machine learning
tools and techniques. Morgan Kaufmann.