The Impact Of Branding In Customers Satisfaction Marketing Essay

Introduction

Most vital part of a product is its branding; a brand can add additional value to the product. For example, majority of the consumers wants to use or to gift his/her friends a best quality and expensive product. If one customer likes one product, first they look on the product brand and the price level. If the seller change the quality of the same product but the price level is same the customer doesn’t understand this matter, because customer always looks on the product brand, price and the packaging style, not the inside quality of product. According to Kotler & Armstrong (2008) “manufacturers often find it easier and less expensive to simply make the product and let others do the branding building. Taiwanese manufacturers took this course. They make a large amount of the world’s clothing, consumer electronics, and computers, but these products are sold under non-Taiwanese brand names.”

”Organizations are using branding as a strategy tool in today’s business environment with increasing regularity. Although brands and branding are not new ideas, firms are applying them to more diverse settings where the role of branding is becoming increasingly important” (Wentz and Suchard, 1993).

The traditional role for brands is also experiencing rejuvenated interest. Market analysts generally agree that this trend will continue and be part of a formula for successful firms in the future (Norris, 1992).

Customer satisfaction, on the other hand, is the vital aspect to evaluate a products quality and attached attributes in a product (Fornell et al., 1997).

A number of study proved that customer satisfaction has a significant relationship with customer satisfaction or loyalty thus regarded key component for profitability and the absent of satisfying ingredients certainly are the reason for firms’ failure (Boulding et al., 1993).

Research Objectives

The broad objective of this research is to fulfill the partial requirement of the MBA course of Research Methodology (RM), School of Technology & Management and under the University of Wales, Cardiff.

The specific objectives aimed for this research would be finding out the prospect and to conceptualize on ‘What is the impact of branding in customers satisfaction and loyalty?

A case study on ‘ZARA’ oxford circus, London, UK. The aims of the research project are to locate and watch the essential consumer substance ingredients to attain customer’s satisfaction and loyalty.

Research key aims:

This dissertation research seeks to:

Classify and review the force of branding in customers satisfaction and loyalty upon access in the fashion trend ware-house in UK.

Explore the potential contribution of branding to the service sector.

Discuss the importance, and advantage of customer’s satisfaction and loyalty will eventually be assessed on the base of brand.

Literature Review

Definition of Branding:

Branding is something that has been around for centuries as a means to differentiate the goods of one manufacturer from those of another. In reality, the word brand is derived from the Old Norse word brandr, meaning ”to burn,” as brands were and still are the means by which owners of farm animals to identify them. An identifying mark burnt on farm animals, a type of goods manufactured by a particular company under a particular name is called branding. This definition certainly tallies with what is thought to be world’s first brand. In c. 200 BC a Syrian sandal maker marked his sandals with his name and opened up a whole kettle of fish. The first brand was marked only with the maker’s name (Sonic Branding, Daniel M. Jackson, 2003, p.37).

Definition for a brand has been offered in the “Journal of Marketing Management” by Professor Peter Doyle of Warwick University: “A name, symbol, design, or some combination which identifies the product of a particular organization as having a substantial, differentiated advantage” (O’Malley, 1991, p. 107 cited in Rooney, 1995). Despite the formal definition, the purpose of branding is essentially to build the product’s image (Cleary, 1981). This image will influence the perceived worth of the product and will increase the brand’s value to the customer, leading to brand loyalty (The Economist, 1988). Organizations develop brands as a way to attract and keep customers by promoting value, image, prestige, or lifestyle. By using a particular brand, a consumer can cement a positive image (Ginden, 1993). Brands can also reduce the risk consumer’s face when buying something that they know little about (Montgomery and Werner felt, 1992). Branding is a technique to build a sustainable, differential advantage by playing on the nature of human beings. Only humans can attach meaning and feeling to inanimate objects and a random collection of symbols, which suggests the appeal of branding, is not entirely rational. Once consumers become accustomed to a certain brand, they do not readily accept substitutes (Ginden, 1993).

Importance of Branding:

The new focus of branding is to create mutually beneficial situations. Creating these situations is difficult. Finding the right brand mix for the consumer, while generating adequate sales is a challenge for marketers in the 1990s. As consumers become more price sensitive, the brand itself loses some importance (Allen, 1993). During the last decade, companies were concerned primarily with financial considerations. They wanted brands that would make their businesses more valuable. Today, however, the issues are more practical, such as focusing on sales and profits. Berry (1993) suggests that companies are concerned with what the customer is willing to pay for their product, not with Wall Street.

Advantage of Branding:

The advantages of branding for marketers are given below:

Brands give several sensory stimuli to improve the customer appreciation.

Consumers who are common and excited purchases of an exacting brand are choosing to turn out to be brand faithful.

Strong and promoted brands create goods setting is too much helpful.

Organization that set up a booming brand to make bigger the brand by adding up the new goods below the similar ”relative” brand.

Brand can guide to economical benefits from side to side the theory of brand fairness.

Branding Challenges and Opportunities:

In reality, brandings is a vital issue as ever to consumers. If appear a few current developments, considerably the complex marketing practices and some brand managers challenges are most important for product.

Confidence Customers

Brand Proliferation

Media Fragmentation

Cost

Clutter

Fragmentation

Technology

Increased Competition

Globalization

Low-price Competitors

Brand extensions

Deregulation

Increased Costs

Greater Accountability

According to a recent survey, the number one brand in a line enjoys a 20% return while the number two brand earns a 5% return and all the rest lose money Effective and efficient brand building activities are crucial with this information in mind (Rooney, 1995).

Customer Satisfaction:

In marketing thoughts ‘customer satisfaction’ has a long recognition and practice as a core concept and also as one of the major goals of all business activities (Anderson et al., 1994; Yi, 1990). In a normal sense, satisfaction produces from the consumption of a product or receives any service (Wang and Lo, 2002). At least two different kinds of conceptualizations of customer attracting or satisfaction are visible-

In marketing research, one is cumulative and the other one is transaction-specific (Andreassen, 2000). Customer satisfaction viewed as an evaluative judgment after choice of a specific purchase, from a transaction-specific viewpoint (Oliver, 1993). On the hand, cumulative customer satisfaction refer to an overall assessment based on the experience of total purchase and consumption of a product or service over time (Anderson et al., 1994), which sounds more practical and functional than the transaction-specific satisfaction in forecasting a customer’s consequent behavior and a firms overall performance over time. Cumulative customer satisfaction inspires a company’s investment in customer satisfaction. Therefore, the theoretical framework of the study indicates the ‘customer satisfaction’ as cumulative.

Customer

Attitude

High sales and profit margins

Customer

Loyalty

Service Quality

Customer

Value

Customer

Satisfaction

Figure: Customer Satisfaction (Adapted from: Wang and Lo, (2002);

Oliver (1993) first suggested that service quality is the main predecessor to customer satisfaction; later on a number of researchers have supported the statement (Wang and Lo, 2002, Fornell et al., 1996). Spreading satisfaction in customer base of a product or service help to make loyal customers (Bowen and Chen, 2001). It is a common known that a positive relationship between customer loyalty and profitability is quite evident. When a company retains just 5% more customers, profits increase by 25% to 125% (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).

Customer Loyalty:

Loyalty is presumably a consequence of satisfaction and brand attitudes (Oliver, 1999). Dick and Basu (1994) defined loyalty as a behavioral response that is expressed over time through the decisions that are made among alternatives. Oliver (1997) defined loyalty as a deeply held commitment to re-buy or re-patronize a preferred product or service in the future. Other researchers consider loyalty on a multidimensional basis by adding an attitudinal or co-native (intention or commitment to consume) component to a behavioral loyalty concept (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). In our research, similar to Oliver’s (1997, 1999), loyalty is inferred from repurchase intentions. Although brand attitudes may influence repurchase intentions through their impact on attitudes toward the behavior of repurchasing, the magnitude of this influence may be affected by social norms, budget, high search and evaluation costs, inconvenience, inaccessibility, and lack of choice (e.g., a woman may have a very favorable attitude toward Tiffany’s jewelry, but may not repurchase it because her spouse disapproves of expensive luxurious goods).

The Relation between Customer Satisfaction &Loyalty:

Consumer satisfaction may be seen to represent the influence of past experience, because it is an overall evaluation of personal consumption experience. Prior research has suggested that customer satisfaction influences loyalty. The direct effect of consumer satisfaction on loyalty is consistent with the existing literature on attitude-behavior consistency. Evaluations based on direct experience are strong predictors of behavior (Fazio & Zanna, 1981). Because satisfaction is based on direct past experience, it is likely to be accessible and to affect behavioral intentions independent of other considerations.

Research Methodology and design

The meaning of research is a problem-solving incident and ‘methodology’ is a common approach to studying the research topic. Concentration and thinking have been in strength to establish the research methodology and design, many researcher use different methods for the research methodology and design. However, there are two most famous methods to conduct with most of the research work, one is qualitative and another one is quantitative method. The quantitative research method observe the preliminary work, content analysis, survey (ie fixed the questioner for random sampling) and interviewing. And the qualitative research methods observe the secondary method, to use the qualitative data on the basis for collecting and interpreting the primary data or quantitative data.

Source: www.mortonmail.com,2009

Data Collection

To start the data collection for research work there are two different way to collect the data, one is (i) Primary data collection method and another one is (ii) Secondary data collection method.

Primary Data Collection Method:

The approach of quantitative research method is primary data collection method. Primary data is use on the basis for collecting and interpreting the secondary data. In this part first need to prepared a questioner paper to survey for potential customers about the customer service department and the branding quality of ‘ZARA’, oxford circus, London, UK. Secondly need to make an appointment for face to face interview with the responsible person of ‘ZARA’, oxford circus branch and collect all the data about the current & future strategy of business and the policy of branding of ‘ZARA’ product.

Secondary Data Collection Method:

The approach of qualitative research method is secondary data collection method. Secondary data is use on the basis of collecting and interpreting of primary data. In this part first need to collect all the primary data on the basis questioner paper and also need to collect all the primary data on the basis of face to face interview. After that need to collect all related document with the help of newspaper, journal, internet etc. or previous research data about the similar topic of ‘ZARA’ to get the maximum out come about the problem of the research survey.

Data Analysis

In this area there are two essential thinks to do one is sorting and presentation of data and another one is interpretation and comparison of data. Most of the researcher are analyzing the data for research work same way. This part is the most important part for any research worker; because research outcome is depend on data analysis. Some times the silly mistake of researcher the data analysis result will be change. That’s why the data analytical part is very sensitive and most important part of research work.

Sorting and Presentation of Data:

In order to sorting and presentation of data, first need to observe the primary and secondary data is it collects properly or not. Its will be very important part of data analysis of research work. Next step will be distribution of all the data on the table on the basis questioner paper and face to face interview to get the maximum out come about the problem of the research. Finally, after getting the entire numeric table, need to structures the entire graph for interpretation and comparison of data.

Interpretation and comparison of data:

The next step will be the interpretation of the presented data. The excellent interpretation makes the data rewarding and comprehensible, and an assessment and relation between acquire position in this step for the additional finding of the composed.

Limitation of the Research:

This report suffered from several limitations:

The most important of them was ‘time constraint’. Time was not adequate to complete the study more perfectly.

This report also suffered from inadequate secondary information.

This report’s factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information.

Time Scale and Plan

To organize a research report time plan is very important to help maintain a discipline to come out with the proper findings in the given time frame. As far as we have already been informed the project program will take almost 4 months to be finished. The time table given below:

Time Table

Time

March,2010

April, 2010

May, 2010

June, 2010

Tasks

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

Research Proposal

Literature review

Methodology

Survey

Interview

Data collection

Data testing

Data analysis and discussion

First draft

Second Draft

Finalize the report

Conclusion

Submission

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to guarantee success with branding. Choosing the correct name, appropriate promotion, related strategy, and using the most related method techniques are some ingredients wanted to build a branding. Brand owners and marketers must deal with the changing environment and other factors that affect their ability to be effective. Branding is not a new idea, although the way companies use branding is evolving. The applications for branding strategy will continue to change. As the marketplace becomes more international, new branding opportunities will expand. Consumer’s tastes and preferences will also be altered with the values and norms of the time. Brand owners and marketers must continue to monitor these situations if they hope to be successful in the future.