Identification and Evaluation of Brand Communication approaches of Luxury Sector

 Strategic Brand Management

Section A – Brand Values

1. Impact of Brand Values on Perceived Brand Image

The brand is a crucial concept of the modern-day business operation, through which a specific value of service quality is conveyed to the customers. The appearance of a brand and the characteristics of the products or the services of a brand have formed the strategic brand value. So, the name and symbol of the brand, along with the story behind the formation of a brand and the products and services offered by the brand, have an equal contribution to the formation of a brand value or a brand identity. In fact, the brand value or the identity of a brand is related to the different perspectives like the name of the product, the customer of the product, and the social connection of the products or services of the brand. The identity of a brand can be formed with superiority in its aspects (Alserhan and Alserhan, 2012). To analyze the impact of the brand value on the brand image, it is important to analyze the two terms separately. The brand value defines the story or the belief related to a specific brand. The story and actions related to the brand have identified the core values of a brand, where the brand image is a set of unique bundles of associations to a product or service (Kauppinen-Räisänen and Jauffret, 2018). Apparently, the brand image is the identification of the brand, for which it stands as an important name in the Business Arena. The brand value has been formed when the service or the performance of the product goes beyond the expectation of the customer (Balmer, 2008). For the evolution of brands, along with the Maker’s mark, the origin of the products and the story related to the product evaluation play an important role in the improvement of the brand value (Kauppinen-Räisänen and Jauffret, 2018). The Quality mark of the products and benefits to the society is the tool for the development of a symbolic status for the brand. These are simply the different steps for the improvement of brand identity. When the quality mark has been maintained in the products of the brand along with symbolic values can be expressed, a significant status of the product has been formed to be standalone from the others (Roy and Banerjee, 2014). The symbolic value of a brand has allowed the brand to build self-identity or opportunity for self-expression. Self-expression has a connection with social identity and social expression, which is related to the formation of brand image (Alserhan and Alserhan, 2012). As a part of the evolution process of a brand, when the performance of a brand has gained social exposure and self-identity, the brand image has become improved. Along with the performance of the products, the strategic marketing of the brand and celebrity associations with the brand are also important factors behind the development of the brand image.

Practical Example of Success

H&W is a famous watch company and established its brand in the year 1908 with a strong market presence. But the impact of the First World War has impacted the performance of the company and influenced the brand performance. Firstly, the name and brand history of H&W had worked as the strategic factors behind the success of the brand. A story had also formed behind the idea of this Brand name (Alserhan and Alserhan, 2012). The makers of the H&W had expressed it as one possible combination of letters. In the same way, the name of the brand is also short and attractive. Along with it, the history of the brand has demonstrated associations with celebrities such as Mercedes Gleitze, while swimming through the English channel had tied the Watch of H&W. Starting from the ancient days, in the present time, the engineers of CERN had also worn the watches of H&W as it has the power to resist the higher magnetic field (Nienstedt et al., 2018). From the early days, H&W had maintained strong celebrity associations, as well as the product has durability, accuracy as the USPs of the brand. When such a strong background and smooth performance collaborate with each other and creates prestigious brand value, the brand image of H&W is enhanced.

Reflection on Personal Experience

In my consultancy team, I was an intern who has worked for the identification of brand builders and the brand performance of different brands in the market. Working for the analysis of the performance of the different brands, I have analyzed that our brand also has a strategic position in managing the workplaces. My consultancy team has worked f0or the brand management of Snapchat and worked for a social media brand management project. The association of the consultancy team with social media platforms like Snapchat has improved the brand value of our consultancy team. The brand value of my consultancy team is that they have worked with Snapchat and also worked for the brand management of Amazon Web Services. Along with it, the chief managing director of our consultancy team had also participated in a meeting with the Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. The Photograph has been featured on the website of our consultancy. These stories are the background story of our consultancy team. Hence, the employees of our consultancy team have improved their performance and became more concerned about the perfection of their work. When last time Amazon Web Services increased the term of the contract for Brand management of their Amazon Web Services, our working team was in high spirits. After that, their workplace engagement has also increased with more perfection at work.

Section B- Brand Identity

2. Identification and Evaluation of Brand Communication approaches of Luxury Sector

For brand communication, consideration about the brand identities has been required. The brand identity prism identity prism of Kapferer has been formed with six different elements, and these six different elements are the physique of a brand, relationship of the brand, culture of the brand as well as the reflection and personality related to the brand (Seo and Buchanan-Oliver, 2015). The self-image of a brand is the value proposition of the brand, and it has the influence to enable a relationship between the brands and the customers. The value system of a brand has been formed with the behavior of the customers related to a brand (Matthiesen and Phau, 2010). Brand communication with the outside world is subjected to these six facets of brand identity.

Considering the luxury products and the Luxury fashion industry, materialism and information selections are the two important factors behind the selection of luxury preferences.

• Luxury product branding has considered visual attraction as one of the most important aspects of brand communication. Hence, the brand name, brand logo, and brand endorsements are the most important aspects of brand communication. Audrinet al. (2018) have identified that fashion and luxury have adopted the branding strategy, which has a beautiful brand physique, and the psychological value about the product has been created with the visual representation of the product.
• Visual attention has created a specific attraction towards the information of the products in the context of luxury product consumption. Along with the brand physique, the visual representation strategy of the brand is another influential aspect of brand communication. Eye-tracking visual representation of the brand has created a special attraction towards the product (Nia and Zaichkowsky, 2000). The strategy of the visual representation has the capacity to alter the duration of eye fixation of the consumers on the luxury brand. As the degree of eye-fixation over the luxury and fashion brand has increased, the pre-decisional gaze has become prominent and became influential for the decision-making for purchasing of the product.
• The diffusion drift model has identified that the time duration of the pre-decisional gaze has an influence over the brand knowledge and information gathering about the specific brand product (Matthiesen and Phau, 2010). Hence, the DDM model has suggested that the information of the brand and the strategic placement of the information on the brand to improve the brand knowledge of customers during the pre-decisional gaze has improved the brand communication.
• Extrinsic cues are the product information that has no direct connection with the product information. The brand labels have been considered as the extrinsic cues by Audrinet al. (2018). Brand Labels are also efficient influences on the brand performance and brand communication process. The intrinsic cues are the texture of the product or the look of the product, the color combination of the products. These have influential significance over brand communication in the context of the Luxury brand consumption process (Seo and Buchanan-Oliver, 2015). Products with equal pleasantness can be differentiated based on extrinsic cues in terms of brand communication.
• Luxury products have an approach to offer an ultimately pleasant experience with the products. The attachment of the celebrities and sportspersons with the Luxury brands has increased the brand value, and more preferences to the brand with strong celebrity engagement have been observed (Nia and Zaichkowsky, 2000). Based on this consideration, it can be stated that celebrity engagement to a brand can enhance brand communication.

Section C – Brand Image

5. Arguments for and against the role of Implementation of ethical and socially responsible behavior

Corporate firms have an approach of social responsibility in maintaining the social relevance of the firms and in managing the brand engagements. The brand performance and brand engagement can be improved with the social engagement and social responsibility of a brand. The social attention of a brand has created a social sensation for that brand, and a transparent brand image has been formed within the society (Khojastehpour and Johns, 2014). Hence, the ethical and social responsibility of a brand has improved the brand image enabling social awareness through brand performance.

• Belief-driven buyers have become a significant trend, so the brands in the present-day market operate. Lindgreenet al. (2012) identified that the social engagement of the brand could be increased with the CSR and Ethical responsibilities; as a result, the customer choice regarding the brand has also influenced with that approach of a brand. In the same way, when a brand acts for the minimization of the environmental impact of the business process, the Belief driven customer has felt a value proposition through buying the brand. So, social responsibility has improved the brand image (Cronjé and van Wyk, 2013).
• Brand leadership theory as proposed by Lindgreen et al., (2012) has mentioned that, social engagement of a brand for social welfare results in the improvement of brand identity. Improved brand identity acts as a factor for brand equity development and leveraged market share in competitive environment. Hence, the social engagement has improved the brand leadership.
• Brand loyalty and brand affinity have been influenced by the degrees of affinity of the brand to society. If the degree of affinity of a brand to society has increased, then the discrepancies of the brand can be overlooked by the potential customers. Hence, brand loyalty remained unaffected (Guzmán and Davis, 2017). The competitive strategic advantages can be gained in the market. The customer preference for a brand has been formed with the approaches of the brands towards a specific social and environmental issue.
• For strategic brand management and brand performance within a specific administrative region, compliance to the administrative policies of that region has strongly been required. Lindgreenet al. (2012) opined that the compliance to social and ethical responsibilities had minimized the risk of governmental restrictions and bans on the brand regarding the violation of any of the insignificant administrative guidelines. Customer-based brand performance theory of Liu et al. (2014) mentioned that, maintaining the social and ethical responsibilities, a brand can improve their customer engagement. Complying with the governmental regulation, the social identity of the brand can also be glorified.
• Participation in social and ethical responsibilities also minimizes the impact of the brand scandal. Guzmán and Davis (2017) commented, the brand prestige and grand identity remained less affected from the scandals with the CSR approach, and stakeholders regarding the brand performance can also be ensured with the CSR and ethical brand management approach.

Likewise, the positive aspects and positive impacts of the social and ethical responsibilities of a brand, the negative issues are also related to it. The negative aspects of CSR and Ethical approaches also have an impact on business performance.

• CSR adds an extra cost to the brand management process. The improvement of the brand performance in the CSR adds extra value to the cost of the products and services of the brands. That extra cost has to be borne by the customers. But the approach of the customers to pay more for the ethically sourced brand is quite negative. That negative impact is also reflected in brand equality (Guzmán and Davis, 2017).
• The CSR approach entails a certain degree of complexity to the brand management and brand operation (Khojastehpour and Johns, 2014). The understanding of the social and technical issues and addressing those issues through the product performance has created a certain degree of complexities in the brand-building activities.
• Act participation in CSR activities and ethical practices also comes with a certain degree of risk related to brand operation (Cronjé and van Wyk, 2013). Failing basic norms and goals of social and ethical responsibilities identified the illegitimacy of the firm and brand reputation or the brand image faced a threat from it.