Brand Management Report: Analysis of Bentley Motors Limited Strategies

This report examines brand management strategies in the context of Bentley Motors Limited, a luxury automobile manufacturer. It begins with an introduction to brand management, emphasizing its importance as a marketing tool and its evolution in business practice. The report then evaluates successful brand management over time, applying relevant theories and models, such as Keller's and Aaker's brand equity models. It identifies key components of a successful brand strategy, including purpose, consistency, emotion, and flexibility. The report also explores different strategies for portfolio management, brand hierarchy, and brand equity management. Furthermore, it assesses various techniques used to leverage and extend brands, focusing on the application of techniques for measuring and managing brand value within Bentley Motors Limited. The conclusion provides recommendations for Bentley Motors Limited to strengthen its brand and increase market share, emphasizing the importance of strategic planning to maintain brand equity and gain brand value.

BRAND MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................1
Importance of branding as a marketing tool and why and how it has emerged in business
practice........................................................................................................................................1
Evaluating how brands are managed successfully over time using application of appropriate
theories, models and concepts.....................................................................................................2
Key components of a successful brand strategy for building and managing brand equity.........4
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................5
Different strategies of portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand equity management.5
LO 3.................................................................................................................................................6
Evaluating the use of different techniques used to leverage and extend brands.........................6
LO 4.................................................................................................................................................8
Different types of techniques for measuring and managing brand value in Bentley Motors
Limited........................................................................................................................................8
Application of techniques for measuring and managing brand value for developing a strong
and enduring brand......................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Brand Management is the planning and analysis on how an organization or its brand is
perceived in the market and is the process of maintaining, improving and preserving it to the
name associate with positive results (Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011). It involves self-
important aspects like cost, customer satisfaction, store presentation and competition and is built
on marketing and promotion foundation and focuses brand directly and its favourable existence
to consumers. Brand management is the function of the marketing that will be used in techniques
in terms to enhance the perceived value of product line or brand over the time. Thus, effective
brand management will be assistive in order to attract the loyal customers with the use of
positive brand association and images or a strong awareness of the brand in market. In this, it can
be said that brand has powerful influence in the mind of the customers and it can affect the
overall working in the enterprise in the positive aspects. With the help of strong brand it will be
possible to differentiate the firms products from its competitors so it will be helpful to establish
the brand in market and the competitive advantage can be achieved. Thus, brand will be
inclusive of the number of the factors as price, packaging, logo, associated colours etc. this all
kind of the feature has to be implemented in order to grab the attention of the customers.
Furthermore, it can be said that brand management will be consisting of creating the brand and it
helps to enhance its value. The informal report prepared on Brand Management will elucidate the
importance of understanding and achieving effective management of brand. It is prepared in
context of Bentley Motors Limited which is a British manufacturer of luxury auto mobiles and a
subsidiary of Volkswagen AG founded in 1919.
It is a part of Volkswagen Group which has acquired company in 1998. It was founded
by H.M Bentley and W.O Bentley. Firm had produced 9107 vehicles in 2012 which were just
7593 in 2011. Net income in 2011 was €8 million in 2011 and employees were 3600 in the year
2013. The assessment will explain the portfolio organising, brand hierarchy building and
managing strategies of Bentley Motors Limited. It will also discuss the types of techniques
applied by Bentley for measuring and managing their brand value. The report will suggest
Bentley Motors Limited with strategies and brand managing activities to strengthen their brand
and increase market share successfully. In this report, strategic plan must be implement in order
to maintain the brand equity or to gain brand values and this all will be requires in terms to
comprehensive understanding of the brand, its target market and overall vision of the enterprise
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so that all things can be undertaken in much more effective manner. Branding is important for
Bentley Motors Limited as it increases company's value. Moreover, it provides direction to
employees and motivates them for achieving group goals in the best manner possible.
Furthermore, it is important as it easily helps to acquire new customers in effective manner.
LO 1
Importance of branding as a marketing tool and why and how it has emerged in business practice
Branding is a complex marketing term in rising competitive business environment which
is a perception in the minds of consumers when hearing the name of a company, services or
products rendered etc. and is legally termed as trademark. Centuries ago it was just defined as a
name, slogan, sign and symbol or combination of all these to distinguish one product or service
from another which leaves a mental picture of brand's identity. This process began with ancient
Egyptians who were engaged in livestock branding to differentiate one's cattle from another's by
burning animal's skin with a distinctive symbol (Hanna and Rowley, 2011). Branding in 21st
century emerged as a business practice with rise of various brands to mean strategic personality
of a product or for company that suggests values and promises that a customer perceives to
purchase it. Branding has a significant role in creating wealth, enabling spending and economic
growth for individuals and organizations and are significant for technological, medical and
humanitarian development. It is followed by humanitarian organizations like UNICEF for
spreading message of service of work in developing countries are not only used by profit making
firms.
Branding is an important marketing practice that helps in clearly delivering a message,
motivate buyer to make purchase, render credibility of brand in-market and emotionally connect
with target prospects (Spence and Hamzaoui Essoussi, 2010). Branding helps an organization or
brand to grow and develop reputation that will easily establish the business and help in
generating future business by increasing value. Strategic professional branding will assist in
building employee pride, satisfaction and help in reinforcing strength of the brand which will
render support in developing trust with customers, potential prospects, suppliers and
stakeholders. Customer loyalty gain, attained through a trust and belief that products from brands
that are intensively marketed would always perform better is the major importance and benefit of
branding that will attract potential clients with increased revenues and shares. Branding as a
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marketing process is necessary for the organization to expand into new geographical locations or
potential markets and prosper its estimated worth that keeps competition away. The quality
image that is created by branding assists an organization survive temporary crisis, attracts
investors, strengthens firm's negotiation capacity with suppliers and increase profitability (What
Is The Importance Of Branding In Marketing?. 2018).
Evaluating how brands are managed successfully over time using application of appropriate
theories, models and concepts
Operating business in the dynamic changing market demands constant evolution of
products, services, adapting advance technology, abiding government legislations and meeting
customer taste and preferences. Organizations need to devise marketing and communication
programs to maintain customer based brand equity and effective brand managing requires long
term decisions of marketing and recognizing trends to manage brands over time (Annie Jin,
2012). Managers of the organization need to manage brand equity over time by reinforcing brand
meaning by making adjustments in marketing program for identifying new sources of brand
stake that are depended on nature of its association. Modifying the brand image is the challenge
in all these efforts are not no spoil the existing equity and managers need to consider role of
different relationships and portfolios over time. By applying various models, theories and
concepts of brand equity are followed by various brand and organization to manage their value
over time some of them are as follows:
Keller's Brand Equity Model
Kelvin Lane Keller who was a marketing professor at Dartmouth College developed this
model which is based on the idea that power of a brand and its equity to form depends on what
consumers think and feel about the product or service relying on positive experiences (Santos-
Vijande and et.al., 2013). This model is also termed as Customer Based Brand Equity Model
(CBBE) and according to this framework two general approaches are found; expand the depth of
brand awareness by improving brand recalling and recognition of consumers during purchase
and improve the strength, uniqueness and favorability of brand associations for developing a
good brand image.
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Aaker's Brand Equity Model
David Aaker developed this model and defines it as the set of assets and liabilities that
are linked to the brand that adds or subtracts value from the product or service under that (Braun
and Zenker, 2010). This brand equity model is the most comprehensive framework that consists
of five various assets which are the source of value creation; brand loyalty, brand name
awareness, perceived brand quality, brand associations and other property brand assets like
patents, trademark etc., and are also called as Five Assets Model.
Effective branding can result in higher sales of an organization's products or services. Brand
management fundamentals and elements are depended on several concepts some of them:
Brand Identity: It is the unique set of brand associations that the brand strategists or
manager's aspires to create and these represents the brand and implies a promise to customers
from the organization. This need to be focused on authentic qualities of the value and brand
promise rendered and sustained with organizational and manufacturing characteristics (Gatti,
Caruana and Snehota, 2012).
Brand image: It describes the brand with its features and differentiation from other
competing brands which reflects the perceptions of consumers regarding the brand.
Brand position: It is place that a brand occupies in the minds of target customers and is
how it is seen in the marketplace focusing on uniqueness of the brand. Attributes, consumer
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Illustration 1: Keller's Brand Equity Pyramid or Consumer Based Brand Equity Model
(CBBE) Source: Keller's Brand Equity Model. 2018

expectations, price, competition factors and perceptions of consumers are the major causes of
brand positioning.
Brand Equity: It is the popular and widely used concept in marketing is the intangible
asset that depends on the consumer associations and are mainly viewed from three perspectives;
financial, brand extensions and consumer related experiences.
Key components of a successful brand strategy for building and managing brand equity
All brands have some measures of brand for example; Apple, Nike etc., that accounts or
the customer experience differences which a brand name creates and is the factor of its ability to
preserve and attract potential clients. Brand equity can be negative or positive and consumers
with strong brand stake responds less favourably to unbranded offerings in the market (Balmer,
2012). Brand strategy is a plan that includes long term goals that can be achieved with evolution
of a successful brand with the combination of organization's features that makes it identifiable. In
the case of Bentley Motors Limited the organization is aiming at strengthening their brands for
increasing market share and to manage brands successfully need to apply various strategies that
affects all business aspects and elements connected to consumer needs, emotions and
competitive environments. The comprehensive brand strategy for Bentley Motors Limited that
can be successful for building and managing its brand equity are as follows:
Purpose: The major aim of Bentley Motors Limited is to strengthen their brands and
attain market share rise by rendering superior luxury auto mobiles to potential buyers that can be
viewed in two ways; Functional concept will focus on the success evaluations in terms of
immediate and commercial reasons for example; Bentley Motors Limited can aim for generating
cash flows. Intentional concept will stress on the success which relates to Bentley's ability to
generate money and render effective offerings to the consumers.
Consistency: Bentley Motors Limited's major uniformity is its delivering messages to
enhance their brand by focusing on their promise of rendering superior luxury cars and SUV's
that are built with superior quality enabled with advance technologies (Han, Nunes and Drèze,
2010). This will contribute to the brand recognition that will fuel customer loyalty with
harmonious marketing activities.
Emotion: Emotional branding can be applied by Bentley Motors Limited by creating a
community around its brand to connect their customers with the brand and rendering customers
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with an opportunity to feel that they're part of the large luxury auto mobile manufacturer. For
example; Bentley Motors Limited can
Flexibility: Bentley Motors Limited need to remain flexible in the rapidly changing
world to stay relevant and be creative with brand's campaign as it will help in making
adjustments to build interest and differentiate approach from competitors. To secure its place in
market it can use the advantage of being subsidiary of Volkswagen AG to position their brand
for anew customer base.
Employee involvement: Achieving consistency it is necessary for Bentley Motors
Limited to build brand recognition for which well versed employees and their high performing
involvement is unavoidable that includes their communicating, interacting and representing
brand with customers (Lee and Carter, 2011). Bentley Motors Limited must develop highly
talented and enthusiastic workforce by training and developing them with skills, knowledge and
abilities regarding the premium car brand and its objectives and values will help in delivering
good customer service and it will create reputation of the firm.
Loyalty: Bentley Motors Limited being the luxury and premium car manufacturer of UK
holds a good customer base and brand image all over the world. Good loyalty will render brand
with yielding of returning customers and profits by rewarding them for their interest towards
them.
LO 2
Different strategies of portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand equity management
Portfolio management is the union of all the brands or brand lines of a particular
functions of Bentley Motors Limited to serve the needs of various market segments. Brand
portfolio strategies of Bentley Motors Limited are based on basic principles like; maximising
market coverage for potential luxury and premium car customers and minimise overlapping
between organization's brands to avoid competitiveness with each other (Burmann and König,
2011). For the same Bentley Motors Limited need to identify the category for premium luxury
car customers with sub optimal strategy, understand the need states which are the crossroads
between what customers want and how they satisfy their need. The growth share matrix tool can
be used to identify the role of Bentley Motors Limited and after that differentiation of brands and
communicating it with customers can be devised.
The different types of brand strategies are as follows-
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Branded House-
In this type of model, firm is a brand, services and marketplace sectors are termed as
subsets of such brand and not formally branded with it. For example, Apple Inc's primary brand
comes many subsets such as iPhone, iTunes etc. It is not differentiated from its primary brand
and is popularly known as one firm brand strategy.
House of brand-
This model is opposite of Branded House as branding is mainly focused on subset brands.
In this, primary brand has low or no attention as pure focus is on subsets. This type of model
requires more investment in dedicated resources as each brand is operating as its own firm
particularly in elements of brand and message conveyed by it.
Brand hierarchy of Bentley Motors Limited is the means for summarizing the brand
strategy by displaying numbers and nature of communication and distinctive elements across it
product lines revealing the brand's products from one another. The strategy which Bentley
Motors Limited implements an individual product brand type of brand hierarchy to present
customers where the parent company Volkswagen is given lesser importance or no prominence
where the stakeholders, partners etc., will know the producer by the name of the company.
Brand equity management is the value and ability of Bentley Motors Limited that decides
its worth or value and is the differential impact of brand knowledge and choice of consumers
response to market place (Hutter, K and et.al., 2013). The brand equity management strategy of
Bentley Motors Limited focuses on their brand as a luxury and premium car manufacturer
showing consistent quality and standards. Being the subsidiary brand of Volkswagen Bentley
Motors Limited holds a fair brand reputation that is maintained with a strategic communication
manner by responding effectively to its customers.
LO 3
Evaluating the use of different techniques used to leverage and extend brands
Brand leveraging is the strategy used to promote the power of existing brand name to
support an organization's entry into the new or related product and services category by
communicating valuable information to the consumers. It is required to render a familiarity to
consumers and perceives instant recognition to the brand as the products belong to different
categories they will not compete for market shares. Brand extension is the use of established
brand name in new product categories and the class or category to which the brand is extended
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can be related or unrelated with the existing products. The use of different brand leveraging
strategies which can be used by Bentley Motors Limited are:
 Designing a remarkable experience to customers are the major brand leveraging strategy
or technique used by Bentley Motors Limited by focussing on quality of its brands in all
matters to enable the higher price for the luxury and premium auto mobile brand (Valette-
Florence, Guizani and Merunka, 2011).
 Understanding the importance or need of premium car brand in the chosen market with a
superior strategy will help Bentley Motors Limited perform will help the brand to
positioning firm as luxury or premium brand in the potential marketplace
 Creating a new customer base or niche market and strengthening its brand for increasing
the market share is the primary motive of Bentley Motors Limited for which they need to
understand the behaviour of customers. This will help in identifying methods to promote
the brand to segmented and targetted customers to leverage the brand.
 Employee energising and motivating them to perform better with customer interaction
and involving them in Bentley Motors Limited's processes and decision making is the
strategic technique used by organization for leveraging the brand (Herstein and Zvilling,
2011).
The techniques used for extending brands of Bentley Motors Limited are:
 Line extension are useful to reach out to new segments of customers who are seeking
new benefits and will lead to managerial focus on modifications, advertising than real
innovations (Brand: 3 Ways of Leveraging Brand Equity, 2018). Bentley Motors Limited
launches its new models like Mulsanne, Flying spur, Bentyaga etc., are launched bearing
the established brand name.
 Bentley Motors Limited uses their expertise in building luxury and premium auto-
mobiles for gaining a reputation which is necessary to extend to areas or potential
markets while achieving leverage.
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LO 4
Different types of techniques for measuring and managing brand value in Bentley Motors
Limited
Brand equity is the market capitalization of Bentley Motors Limited which are not
defined by assets and liabilities but is the value that is earned or generated by the brand for their
luxury and premium auto mobiles that makes them recognizable (Keller, Parameswaran and
Jacob, 2011). Reliable and superior in quality. Bentley Motors Limited after, knowing the
current equity of its brand can set metrics for improvisations and measure its brand value in
different ways that may include customer awareness, financial numbers of shareholders etc. The
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Illustration 2: Brand Extension of Bentley Motors Limited
(Source: MODELS, 2018)

various types of techniques for measuring and managing brand value of Bentley Motors Limited
are as follows:
Brand Awareness
It is the extent to which customers are aware or are familiar regarding the Bentley Motors
Limited brand and their ability to recognize the brand. Customers of Bentley Motors Limited
must be aware of the products and services offered by the brand by communication (Hanna and
Rowley, 2011). Measuring brand awareness among the target customers of Bentley Motors
Limited can be done by applying various methodologies like surveys, feedbacks, web traffic,
products and brand search volume and social mentions and reviews.
Preference metrics
Preference of consumer towards the Bentley Motors Limited is a major factor in purchase
decisions of customers that can be measured by focus groups, sales data and surveys that
includes; accessibility, relevance of brand, emotional connection and value of brand. For
example: Bentley Motors Limited can analyse the brand's value by studying the interest and
attraction of customers towards their brand with previous year's sales information.
Financial metrics
These are directly connected to sales performance and if financial metrics are related to
financial value of Bentley Motors Limited which are rising revenue will be in a same manner
which can be measured by certain aspects like; customer lifetime value, price premium over
competition, sustained growth rate and average transaction value (Spence and Hamzaoui
Essoussi, 2010). For example: Bentley Motors Limited can investigate the financial performance
of the brand by analysing their previous year's balance sheet and profit and loss account.
Application of techniques for measuring and managing brand value for developing a strong and
enduring brand
Effective management of brand comprising brand personality is important in attaining the
overall goal of Bentley Motors Limited which is to strengthen its brand and increase market
share with satisfaction of customers, profitability and loyalty. To develop the strong and
enduring brand by applying different techniques of measuring and managing value of Bentley
Motors Limited requires extensive market research and awareness of various considerations that
are as follows:
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