Brand management
[4] Over time, the practice was extended to marking personal property such as pottery or tools, and eventually some type of brand or insignia was attached to goods intended for trade.
[5] Bevan and Wengrow have argued that branding became necessary following the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE, when large-scale economies started mass-producing commodities such as alcoholic drinks, cosmetics and textiles.
These ancient societies imposed strict forms of quality control over commodities, and also needed to convey value to the consumer through branding.
She has shown that amphorae used in Mediterranean trade between 1500 and 500 BCE exhibited a wide variety of shapes and markings, which provided information for purchasers during exchange.
[10] In Pompeii (circa 35 CE), Umbricius Scauras, a manufacturer of fish sauce (also known as garum) was branding his amphora which travelled across the entire Mediterranean.
Mosaic patterns in the atrium of his house were decorated with images of amphora bearing his personal brand and quality claims.
The mosaic comprises four different amphora, one at each corner of the atrium, and bearing labels as follows:[11] Scauras' fish sauce was known to be of very high quality across the Mediterranean and its reputation travelled as far away as modern France.
Recent research suggests that Chinese merchants made extensive use of branding, packaging, advertising and retail signage.
[16] Eckhart and Bengtsson have argued that during the Song dynasty (960–1127), Chinese society developed a consumerist culture, where a high level of consumption was attainable for a wide variety of ordinary consumers rather than just the elite (p. 212).
The rise of a consumer culture led to the commercial investment in carefully managed company image, retail signage, symbolic brands, trademark protection and the brand concepts of baoji, hao, lei, gongpin, piazi and pinpai, which roughly equate with Western concepts of family status, quality grading, and upholding traditional Chinese values (p. 219).
[19] Hundreds of silver objects, including chalices, cups, plates, rings and bullion, all bearing hallmarks from the early Byzantine period, have been found and documented.
Craft guilds, which sprang up across Europe around this time, codified and reinforced systems of marking products to ensure quality and standards.
Bricui et al. have argued that the number of different forms of brands blossomed from the 14th century following the period of European discovery and expansion.
[25] By the 18th century, mass-market manufacturers such as Josiah Wedgewood and Matthew Boulton recognized the value of supplying royalty, often at prices well below cost, for the sake of the publicity and kudos it generated.
[25] By the eighteenth century, as standards of living improved and an emerging middle class began to demand more luxury goods and services, the retail landscape underwent major changes.
Retailers were tending to specialize in specific goods or services and began to exhibit a variety of modern marketing techniques.
[31] Before long, radio station owners realized they could increase advertising revenue by selling 'air-time' in small time allocations which could be sold to multiple businesses.
Cano has argued that the positioning strategy JWT used for Lux exhibited an insightful understanding of the way that consumers mentally construct brand images.
[37] Interbrand's 2020 top-10 global brands are Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, McDonald's, and Disney.
For this reason, industries such as agricultural (which sells to other companies in the food sector), student loans (which have a relationship with universities/schools rather than the individual loan-taker), and electricity (which is generally a controlled monopoly) have less prominent and less recognized branding.
Despite numerous blind tests indicating that Coke's flavor is not preferred, Coca-Cola continues to enjoy a dominant share of the cola market.
[40] Brand management science is replete with such stories, including the Chevrolet 'Nova' or "it doesn't go" in Spanish, and proper cultural translation is useful to companies entering new markets.
'[41] Should usage of 'xerox' be accepted as the standard American English term for 'photocopy,' then Xerox's competitors could successfully argue in court that they are permitted to create 'xerox' machines as well.
The fast pace of technological development and the increased speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles.
[2] On the other end of the extreme, luxury and high-end premium brands may create advertisements or sponsor teams merely for the "overall feeling" or goodwill generated.
A typical "no-brand" advertisement might simply put up the price (and indeed, brand managers may patrol retail outlets for using their name in discount/clearance sales), whereas on the other end of the extreme a perfume brand might be created that does not show the actual use of the perfume or Breitling may sponsor an aerobatics team purely for the "image" created by such sponsorship.
Even though social media has changed the tactics of marketing brands, its primary goals remain the same; to attract and retain customers.
This change is finding the right balance between empowering customers to spread the word about the brand through viral platforms, while still controlling the company's own core strategic marketing goals.
[62] Brands offer multiple benefits to organizations at various market levels, reflecting the entire experiential process afforded to consumers.
[66] Heritage brands are characterized by their distinctive capacity to seamlessly integrate past, present, and future temporal dimensions.
