Analysis of Brand Management Strategies at Marks and Spencer

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Brand Management
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task 1- Building and managing brand over time (LO 1)................................................................4
Task 2- Brand Portfolio and hierarchy management (LO2)............................................................6
Task 3-Brand extension and leverage (LO3)...................................................................................8
Task 4- Measuring and Managing brand value (LO4)..................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Reference List................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Brand management is about targeting the market for the products or services of the organisation
by generating confidence in the minds of the customers. The brand management as a concept
aims at conveying messages regarding the brand in order to gain the loyalty of the customers and
convince them to purchase the products along with connecting with the customers. The
organisation Marks and Spencer has been undergoing a lowest phase, which can lead to the
slowest death of the brand. Hence, this report focuses on the building and managing the brand
over time in context to Marks and Spencer. Further, the report shed light on brand portfolio and
hierarchy management, brand extension and leveraging along with managing and measuring the
brand value. Therefore, this report provides complete analysis of brand equity and brand
management. Thus, the report provides suitable ways to manage the brand of the organisation.
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Task 1- Building and managing brand over time (LO 1)
a) Explain the importance of branding for an organisation
According to Heding et al. (2015), brands have several diverse and interesting perspectives. The
firms invest millions of money in planning and executing activities related to the brand managing
activities. Several researches are being conducted in order to devise frameworks, which shall
lead to the complete understanding of the brand management. The brand management is
significant for every organisation because the firms attempt to maintain strong brand. The strong
brands are noted to have good market share and provides support to the firm for sustaining in
longer run. The weak brands are ones, which has little action and the brand is not able to reach
its customers appropriately (Elliott et al., 2015).
Branding is important for organisation like Marks and Spencer, which will enable it to retain its
customers and sustain in the market. Since, the business of Marks and Spencer is going
backwards from April to June. The rate of revenue fell by 1.2 per cent (Ritson et al., 2019).
Hence, brand management shall help the organisation to maintain its brand and hold strong
position in the market. It has been noted that the brand management is better but the condition
can be improved if the brand equity is enhanced. Therefore, this points out that the brand
management is necessary for making difference in the operations of M&S.
b) How do organisations develop and grow brand equity?
Brand Equity can be defined as the relationship existing between the brands and the customers.
This is a debatable term, which highlights the vitality of having long-term focus within the brand
management. In other words, brand equity underlines the strengths and description of the brands,
which contributes in attracting the customers. The organisations can develop and grow the brand
equity by applying several models such as Keller’s model of brand equity and Aaker’s brand
equity model (Kladou and Kehagias, 2014). These models if applied to Marks and Spencer shall
help in making its operation and overall condition better.
Keller’s brand equity model: Keller’s model of brand equity is known as Customer-Based Brand
Equity (CBBE) Model. The aim of this model is to build strong brand by influencing the
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customers regarding the product or services. This concept helps in shaping the perspectives of
the customers by ensuring that the customers have right experiences of the brand. It is evident
that if the brand equity is strong, the customers will tend to purchase the brand more and would
recommend to others as well (Keller and Brexendorf, 2017). Hence, the customers will be more
loyal to the company. If Marks and Spencer applies this model for enhancing the brand equity,
the brand management shall improve and maintain a balance between the quality and value of its
products.
c) Provide suggestions of how the M&S brand can be extended reinforce and revitalised.
Marks and Spencer in order to improve the brand management and brand equity must utilise
brand extension, brand reinforcement and brand revitalisation. The three aspects of brand
marketing shall enable the organisation to manage itself in the market for longer run. Thus, brand
extension is way of marketing a product in the name of another renowned and established brand
referred to as parent brand. It is not necessary for the new product to be related to the existing
brand. Brand extension has several advantages such as it makes the product’s acceptance easy,
reduction in risk perceived by the customers and the parent brand improves as well. The brand
extension imposes risks to parent brand by damaging the image and there maybe loss of
reliability (Hem et al., 2014).
Brand reinforcement is an activity to persuading the customers to be loyal to the brand along
with attracting new customers. The primary aim of brand reinforcement is to enhance and
maintain the brand equity and this has both positive as well as negative reinforcement. The brand
reinforcement ensures that the consumers have complete knowledge of the product, which will
provide the brand with necessary equity (Zahid and Raja, 2014). Marks and Spencer can adopt
innovative marketing strategies for reinforcing the products on its customers. Brand revitalisation
refers to the marketing strategy adopted by companies after the product reaches a particular stage
of maturity in its life cycle and profits have reduced. Through brand revitalisation, the product
attempts to bounce back in the market. Hence, brand revitalisation shall help Marks and Spencer
to regain it market status (Pearson, 2016).
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Task 2- Brand Portfolio and hierarchy management (LO2)
For each of the following models of managing brand portfolio, identify an organisation that
follows each of the models with an analysis of the difference between the models:
a) House of brands
House of brands is Brand Hierarchy model, where one organisation sells two or more brands.
The organisation is typical parent large consumer company. As per this model, the each brand
under the parent company is allowed to establish to its own brand value and provides prospects
to its customers. The strengths and infrastructure of the parent company is applied to the various
markets. The organisations following this model are Procter and Gamble, and Unilever. It must
be noted that these organisations are the parent company and under it, there are several brands
with variety of products (Jones, 2017).
b) Branded house
As per the branded house model, the organisation presents itself in the market as single and
unified voice. The value of the company is considered as one. In this case, the brand and
corporate name is same. The company markets its products under one name, whether there are
several products or one product. Hence, the company is able to promise as well as position its’
products and services appropriately (Brexendorf et al., 2015). The organisations like Harley
Davidson, Virgin groups; Google and Apple follow this branded house model. Apple being the
master brand has several products like Mac Book, iPod, iPhone and continues to brand it
products through its sub-brands. Similarly, Google also have sub-brands but brands like Drive
and Calendar are extensions, which have its own value as well.
c) Hybrid
This model is the third type of brand hierarchy model. The hybrid model incorporates the
strategies of other two models. The organisations following hybrid model starts with a flagship
brand/product and then diversifies in order to grow its market share. The organisations like Coca
Cola and Marriott follow hybrid model. Coca Cola has extension brands like Diet Coke and
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house brands Sprite under its flagship. This will help the organisation to expand market share,
and this will increase its strengths as well. Marriott also has the similar structure with brand
extensions like JT Marriott or Courtyard Marriott.
From the above structures, it is evident brand hierarchy models that different organisations
follow different brand hierarchy models. In order to simplify the two models, organisations like
Apple, and Procter and Gamble is taken. Both follows different models- Apple follow Branded
House model, and Procter and Gamble follow House of Brands model. As stated, Apple has
brands under it but the products are sold under the name of the master company only. Each
product tends to market other products of the company (Herrero et al., 2017). On contrary,
Procter and Gamble is diversified it products range into different brands. All the brands have
different value and are sold under same name. For instance, Procter and Gamble have brands like
Pampers, Pantene, Head n Shoulders and many more. The hierarchy of the brand is divided into
several sub-divisions like master brand, divisions, categories, brands, and products.
The CBBE model explains the brand equity of the organisations in relation to the brand
hierarchy. Apple following the model of Branded model enhances the value of its products by
building strong brand. The customers of organisation are influenced by providing them with
quality products. The good quality of products enhances the experience of the customers and
contributes in building the brand equity of products (de Oliveira et al., 2015). Moreover, this
provides brand loyalty to the organisation. The company Procter and Gamble needs to follow the
CBBE model in order to improve its brand image in the market. Firstly, the organization has to
identify what it does and the target market it caters. This will help the organization to have
knowledge of the target consumers. Secondly, the company needs to cement its position in the
market. It should invest in clear advertising and positioning methods so that the potential
consumers are aware of the brand in the market. In the third stage, the judgements and the
feeling of the consumers towards the brand need to be tested.
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Task 3-Brand extension and leverage (LO3)
a) Explain the meaning of brand leverage
Brand leveraging is a strategy of using the brand name of any powerful brand in order to support
the entry of company into a new and related product category. Brand leveraging is process of
providing the customers with valuable information related to the new product. It will help the
consumer, as it will have prior knowledge about the product’s quality and shall relate the
knowledge of existing product to the new product. If the customers are disappointed, there will
be chances of risks regarding the growth of new product (Hsu et al., 2016).
Brand leveraging is a vital strategy for introducing new products because the consumers will find
a sense of similarity, as the existing products’ positive characteristics shall help the customers to
trust the new products. The notable advantages of brand leveraging are increase sales of the
brand, cost effective strategy and more products increases efficiency of manufacturing facilities
and raw materials. However, brand leveraging imposes risks as well, such as damaging; the
reputation of the existing product as well as the leveraged brand is limited to the category of the
existing products.
b) Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the M&S brand.
Line extension can be defined as expansion of the prevalent product line. When an organisation
employs line extension, this leads to expansion of the variety of products, and enables the
organisation to reach diversity of customers along with attracting the existing customers with
provision of new variety of products (Athanasopoulou et al., 2015). Marks and Spencer also
follows line extension intensively. Marks and Spencer being quite popular with fashion,
introduces several new product lines related to women and men fashion.
Brand extension indicates the expansion of the complete brand into new market (Athanasopoulou
et al., 2015). Brand extension is one of major strengths of Marks and Spencer. The brand
extension of Marks and Spencer proved successful in the fashion market. Marks and Spencer
ventured into fashion industry and gained 11 % market shares. Brands like Per-Una are quite
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popular among the women as well as ventured into jewellery market by launching platinum
jewellery line. .
Strengths Weaknesses
 Brand extension has attracted diverse
customers for Marks and Spencer’s
venture into fashion and jewellery
market.
 Marks and Spencer have loyal customer
base due to line extension of its fashion
products. This is because the products
range shall be able to cater diverse
customers.
 The strength of Marks and Spencer is
that it has many stores in the market,
which is due to increasing customer
base.
 Since Marks and Spencer is catering to
diverse customers through brand and
line extension, it is noted that it is
unable to retain it s efficient employees.
 Despite the wide range of products,
Marks and Spencer is unable to
penetrate the global markets.
Table 1: Strengths and weakness of Marks and Spencer
c) Evaluate some options for collaborations and partnerships to help grow the M&S brand
local and international.
For Marks and Spencer to grow locally and internationally, the strategies used are brand
extension and line extension. The brand extension of Marks and Spencer are platinum plated
jewellery launched in 2003 and venturing into fashion market specially women’s wear. The line
extension of Marks and Spencer included products line like Autograph label, Blue Harbour,
Beverly Knight and Truly You (Marksandspencer.com, 2019). Apart from these two strategies,
the other strategies, which can be implemented by Marks and Spencer, are collaborations and
Partnerships.
The collaborations of Marks and Spencer are fashions lines by ‘Archive by Alexa’, which is
collection of distinct pieces of archive of M&S and designed by British icon Alexa Chung. Apart
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from this, other collaborations are Michael van der Ham collection inspired by Michael Ham
designer and Marie Chantal children wear collection (Marksandspencer.com, 2019). Further,
M&S can enhance its international operations and market share by entering into partnership with
designers like Yohji Yamamoto, the renowned Japanese designer, brands like Roka, designer
like Laura Kim, a Korean designer, and many other brands. Hence, these shall help Marks and
Spencer to expand successfully.
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Task 4- Measuring and Managing brand value (LO4)
Using specific organisational example, provide an evaluation of various techniques used for
measuring and managing;
I. Brand value
The brand value or brand equity can be measured using Brand Equity Index. This tool helps in
combining the measurements related to the perception of the brand image, the packaging of the
brand, pricing, marketing plans, the products, and the user’s conviction for developing the index
value, which can be tracked. This technique monitors overall branding of the product and it is
quite beneficial for the organisation (Baalbaki and Guzmán, 2016). The method of managing the
brand equity is through models like CBBE model or Aaker’s model of brand equity. This model
benefits the organisation by enhancing the brand loyalty and increasing the brand awareness of
the product by identifying the assets and liabilities related to the brand. For instance, Zara is one
organisation that the uses several techniques for enhancing the brand value of the products.
II. Brand awareness
Marks and Spencer can employ Local Partnerships for measuring the brand awareness. The local
partnership shall help the brand to be creative and cater diverse customers, as the local
businesses understand the customers well. However, this strategy shall impose risks as well in
case that the partnership organisation can hamper the image of the original company (Haven-
Tang et al., 2014). The brand awareness can be managed by implementing effective strategies
like branded packaging. This strategy shall help the organisation to make its brand aware among
its customers. This strategy is effective in attracting more customers through its innovative and
creative packaging. However, this strategy is not cost effective as well as it may create negative
image of the brand. Apart from this, the customers shall negate from purchasing branded
products. Tesco is the suitable organisation, which involves in various things to make its brand
more visible in the market.
III. Consumer attitudes
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