KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD.

TRIVANDRUM

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The ultimate goal of most businesses is to increase sales and income. Ideally, you want to attract new customers to your products and encourage repeat purchases. Brand refers to how aware customers and potential customers are of your business and its products. The word awareness means to have the capability to perceive, feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or patterns, which does not necessarily imply understanding. Awareness comprises a humans perception and cognitive reaction to people and things happening around them. Creating brand awareness is one of the key steps in promoting a product. Brand awareness is a significant way of promoting commodity-related products. This is because for these products, there are very few factors that distinguish one product from its competitors. Therefore, the product that maintains the highest brand awareness compared to its competitors will typically get the greater part of sales. Good branding is the product of a clear sight, and nobody knows more about having a clear vision than small business owners. Small businesses have a limited amount of resources so creating a brand identity can be difficult. Building brand awareness on the Internet doesnt need to take a lot of money or resources so that option is very appealing to small business owners to brand their products and services. As more and more people become attentive of social technology we are all becoming more aware of peoples preferences, profiles and affinities to things and other people. When people join Linked in, Face book and Twitter they are making markets more responsive of who they are and what their personal brand stands for. Choice is a very important factor of influence. If people prefer to connect with your brand that choice is driven by numerous personal affinities. If our brand is able to create positive consideration, attraction and affinity then you will be able to create an audience waiting to be loyal customers and provide their business to your company. One of the most important factors affecting brand awareness is the brand name. Brand name plays a significant part in creating awareness for a brand. Also whether the name is really meaningful or completely useless they both influence brand awareness.

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KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD. TRIVANDRUM Many companies, particularly while introducing a new product in the market discover that sales cannot be sustained without constant advertising. Companies often rerun advertisement on different channels over the year to sustain the brand awareness and ensure that the consumers are exposed to the brand. A brand is a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: customers, staff, partners, investors etc. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect, brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand, of a brand from the experiential aspect. Brand elements Brands typically are made up of various elements, such as: Name: The word or words used to identify a company, product, service, or concept. Logo: The visual trademark that identifies the brand. Graphics: The dynamic ribbon is a trademarked part of Coca-Cola's brand. Shapes: The distinctive shapes of the Coca-Cola bottle and of the trademarked elements of those brands. Colors: Owens-Corning is the only brand of fiberglass insulation that can be pink. Sounds: A unique tune or set of notes can denote a brand. NBC's chimes are a famous example. Tastes: Kentucky Fried Chicken has trademarked its special recipe of eleven herbs and spices for fried chicken. Movements: Lamborghini has trademarked the upward motion of its car doors BRAND AWARENESS Brand awareness can be defined as The likelihood that consumers recognize the existence and availability of a company's product or service. Creating brand awareness is one of the key steps in promoting a product. Brand awareness is the probability that consumers are IMK-ICM POOJAPURA Page 9 Volkswagen Beetle are

KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD. TRIVANDRUM familiar about the life and availability of the product. It is the degree to which consumers precisely associate the brand with the specific product. It is measured as ratio of niche market that has former knowledge of brand. Brand awareness includes both brand recognition as well as brand recall. Brand recognition is the ability of consumer to recognize prior knowledge of brand when they are asked questions about that brand or when they are shown that specific brand, i.e., the consumers can clearly differentiate the brand as having being earlier noticed or heard. While brand recall is the potential of customer to recover a brand from his memory when given the product class/ category, needs satisfied by that category or buying scenario as a signal. In other words, it refers that consumers should correctly recover brand from the memory when given a clue or he can recall the specific brand when the product category is mentioned. It is generally easier to recognize a brand rather than recall it from the memory. Brand awareness is improved to the extent to which brand names are selected that is simple and easy to pronounce or spell; known and expressive; and unique as well as distinct. For instance - Coca Cola has come to be known as Coke. Brand awareness is a marketing concept that enables marketers to quantify levels and trends in consumer knowledge and awareness of a brand's existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brand. Brand awareness studies are most useful when the results are set against a clear benchmark such as data from prior periods, different markets, or competitors. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 61 percent responded that they found the "brand awareness" metric very useful. Purpose "Awareness, attitudes, and usage (AAU) metrics relate closely to what has been called the Hierarchy of Effects, an assumption that customers progress through sequential stages from lack of awareness, through initial purchase of a product, to brand loyalty." In total, these AAU metrics allow companies to track trends in customer knowledge and attitudes. Creation of brand awareness is the primary goal of advertising at the beginning of any product's life cycle, and has influence on buying behavior. Methodologies IMK-ICM POOJAPURA Page 10

KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD. TRIVANDRUM Brand awareness can be measured by showing a consumer the brand and asking whether or not they knew of it beforehand. However, in common market research practice a variety of recognition and recall measures of brand awareness are employed, all of which test the brand name's association to a product category cue. This came about because most market research in the 20th Century was conducted by post or telephone. Actually showing the brand to consumers usually required more expensive face-to-face interviews (until web-based interviews became possible). This has led many textbooks to conceptualize brand awareness simply as its measures, that is, knowledge that the brand is a member of a particular product category (e.g., soft drinks). Brand recall Brand Recall is the extent to which a brand name is recalled as a member of a brand, product or service class, as distinct from brand recognition. Common market research usage is that pure brand recall requires "unaided recall." For example, a respondent may be asked to recall the names of any cars he may know, or any whisky brands he may know. Some researchers divide recall into both "unaided" and "aided" recall. "Aided recall" measures the extent to which a brand name is remembered when the actual brand name is prompted. An example of such a question is "Do you know of the "Honda" brand? In terms of brand exposure, companies want to look for high levels of unaided recall in relation to their competitors. The first recalled brand name (often called "top of mind") has a distinct competitive advantage in brand space, as it has the first chance of evaluation for purchase. Brand recognition Brand recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized for stated brand attributes, parts, offerings, or communications. In some cases brand recognition is defined as aided recall and as a subset of brand recall. In this case, brand recognition is the extent to which a brand name is recognized when prompted with the actual name. A broader view of brand recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized within a product class for certain attributes. Logo and tagline testing can be seen as a form of brand recognition testing. For example, if a product name can be associated with a certain tagline, logo, or attribute (safety and Volvo; "Just do it" and Nike), a certain level of brand recognition is present. There are two types of brand awareness: IMK-ICM POOJAPURA Page 11

KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD. TRIVANDRUM Aided awareness- This means that on mentioning the product category, the customers recognize your brand from the lists of brands shown. Top of mind awareness (Immediate brand recall) This means that on mentioning the product category, the first brand that customer recalls from his mind is your brand. The relative importance of brand recall and recognition will rely on the degree to which consumers make product-related decisions with the brand present or not. For instance - In a store, brand recognition is more crucial as the brand will be physically present. In a scenario where brands are not physically present, brand recall is more significant (as in case of services and online brands). For example, in the soft drink industry, very little separates a generic soda from a brandname soda, in terms of taste. However, consumers are very aware of the brands Pepsi and Coca Cola, in terms of their images and names. This higher rate of brand awareness equates to higher sales and also serves as an economic moat that prevents competitors from gaining more market share. Brand Awareness Plan The major components of a plan to develop brand awareness are: Identifying and understanding your target customers Creating a company name, logo, and slogans Adding value through packaging, location, service, special events, etc. Advertising After-sale follow-up and customer relations management Targeting the right audience is crucial to your success. Of similar importance is understanding that you need a plan along with specific actions that increase awareness of your brand amongst your consumers. Throughout the entire process of creating a brand, it is of utmost importance to consider how what you do will increase brand awareness. The Importance of Brand Awareness Creating a strong and effective brand is one of the best ways to promote a business. If you provide a high level of service and a good product to your customers your brand will become IMK-ICM POOJAPURA Page 12

KERALA KOUMUDI (P) LTD. TRIVANDRUM synonymous with these traits, creating a conscious and subconscious bond between business and customer. If you think of strong global brands such as Coca-Cola, Virgin, Tesco, their branding has stayed the same after a long period of time in business. The consumer associates the brand with positive values so there is no need for the company logo to change, in fact this works well for companies looking to diversify their products as the positive reinforcement of the old brand is carried forward onto the new product, for example: Virgin have used the same logo since 1978 when it started as a record store, it has since diversified into markets including radio production, mobile phones, wines and air travel. Despite many failed business ventures the brand still holds power to promote any new endeavors. Tosco supermarkets have created a multi-layered brand by producing different quality levels of goods; they have a value range, a mid-range, and an expensive up market range. This allows their brand to appeal to a wide customer demographic, and also to diversify into other business fields where a broad customer base is required such as banking. Coca-Cola has such a strong brand identity it managed to change the recognized color of Father Christmas suit from green to red through a highly successful advertising campaign. There are many different ways to create a brand, a catchy name, some inspiring artwork, an annoying jingle, however the key is exposure. There is no point in creating a marketing strategy if your target audience is not exposed to it. The Printed Bag Shop aims to provide our clients with maximum visual exposure for their brand through high quality promotional merchandise. We can produce high quality carrier bags printed with your company or organizations logo and information. This form of advertising is ideal for retail units as your company brand is made visible to other shoppers after your customer has left the store. The bags can also be used at trade shows to promote a new product or service, again once your client has left your stand they will be walking around an area with a high volume of potential customers so the more visible your brand, the better the profit potential you have for your goods and services.

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