Discuss About The Creating Sustaining Brand Equity Long Term?
A brand is a service, product or concept that is distinguished from other products by the public so that it could be easily marketed or communicated. In this report, Sharp Corporation, a famous Japanese multinational company has been chosen to analyse its brand awareness.
Sharp Corporation is a Japanese company that manufactures and designs electronic products. This organisation is a subsidiary of Foxconn Group, a Taiwan based organisation. Sharp Corporation works in the consumer electronics industry and this organisation was founded by 1912 in Japan. Headquarter of the organisation is in Sakai, Japan (Sharp-world.com, 2017). Sharp Corporation provides products like televisions, home appliances, audiovisual goods, solar cells, fax machines, mobile phones and electronic components. Currently, Sharp Corporation is serving the worldwide basis. In Japan market, Sharp Corporation is one of the reputed brands in mobile phone market. Revenue of Sharp in the year 2016 was 2.050 trillion yen. Sharp Corporation has 42,860 employees in overall basis and only in Japan, it has 18,400 employees. The philosophy of Sharp Corporation is to dedicate the business to use of innovative technology to contribute to the benefits, culture and welfare throughout the world.
Taiwan based Foxconn Group took over Sharp Corporation is aiming to use Huawei to make its global brand. Moreover, Sharp Corporation is the 10th largest television manufacturers in the world in market share wise (En.yibada.com, 2017). However, in recent time, Sharp Group is facing issue from Hisense Ltd as competition and it has been going through low margin and limited potential in the world market. Foxconn spent $3.3 billion to buy Sharp and of late Sharp Corporation is facing the issue of brand management worldwide. Once, Sharp Corporation was the innovator of various high-tech consumer electronic goods, however, for the low spending of brand management, the revenue and net income of the organisation is getting low. Sharp Corporation is facing the issue of treating Sharp brand as an asset in gaining a short-term financial result. Sharp is getting out of focus on measuring the neglected brand image to build the brand loyalty in the industry. Sharp is facing the issue of making new subcategories of products in the market as creating innovative products leads to inhibit rivals in the market. Sharp Corporation lacks the brand vision in working in the dynamic marketplace. Most importantly, Sharp Corporation does not use social media pages effectively, it does not have Instagram pages, though Sharp has a Facebook team in most of the countries it is working. However, it lacks Integrated Marketing Communication to compete with competitors. Recently, Japan’s two major banks Mitsubishi and Mizhuo gave loans (approx 84 trillion yen) to Sharp in order to keep the brand afloat in the market and the organisation lost 150 billion yen in fiscal 2016 (En.yibada.com, 2017). Sharp is going to take the strategy of lower cost and competitive pricing in the global market.
In this report, the analysis will be based entirely on information from public secondary sources, company websites, as well as your own personal or professional experiences and insights. Brand positioning and identity of the brand will be discussed in regard of Sharp Corporation. Consumer based-brand identity will be explained with brand resonance. In the last section, managerial recommendations will be given in order to improve the brand management on a long-term basis.
Brand positioning is about fitting the product to one or more segments of the market to make the organisation must apart itself from the competition. The positioning of the brand gives the benefits to the organisation that it can get the products when the consumers think of the brand. As stated by DuBois Gelb & Rangarajan (2014), strong brand position gives the brand a unique, sustainable and credible position in the mind of the customers.
Relevance: Brand positioning must focus on advantages that are significant for the consumers and the features of the products must reflect through it.
Clarity: Positioning of the brand should be made in a way that it could communicate with customers.
Distinctiveness: In each of the market, there are some competitors with whom organisations must compete based on promotions and prices. Companies need to offer distinctiveness to the products or services. As stated by Kapferer (2012), cross-cultural and moral issues are there in product positioning.
Sharp Corporation focuses mainly on five basic factors of product positioning or placement; brand identification, image, character, awareness and interaction. The products positioning across Sharp is to include personal communications between Frontline workers and clients to increase customer-based product value. Outcomes indicate that staff’s brand-aligned actions are most important in forming different brands’ value when these manufacturers execute efficiently, and on the other hand, most significant in forming acquainted brands’ value when these manufacturers don’t succeed customers. This has effects for the hiring of employees who credibly fit with the product character, as considerably as the purpose of inner marketing applications that can help product supervisors tactically place service manufacturers from the inside out.
a) Sharp’s core competence is in delivering the experiences in electronic products through exceptional users’ interfaces. Sharp Corporation is a more than 100 years old company and it knows the taste of the consumers. The distinctive characteristics of Sharp’s products retain their ease of elegantly simple utilization. Since the beginning of the time, Sharp Corporation has been focusing mainly the originality. This organisation is driven by innovative technologies that amaze the consumers. Inspiring innovations which support the needs and experiences of customers is the main branding motto of Sharp Corporation (Sharp-world.com, 2017).
b) Starting the revitalization of Sharp Corporation in the last year, when it was taken over by Foxconn, Sharp is trying to migrate its product strategy and branding. Sharp is mainly famous for Television manufacturing, however, it produces home appliances, audiovisual systems and many other electronic items.
All the elements related to the products, company and service is brand identity and some of the other elements are tone, logo, typeface and tagline that can create an appeal to the customers. As stated by Batra & Keller (2016), brand identity is another category of brand image and brand identity can send a message of about product recognition. The purpose of brand identity is the setting a guideline of company’s consistency that can exhibit leadership, support, marketing and image of the company. In case of Sharp, corporate identity presents the concept of ‘be sharp’ that represents company’s evolutionary step that can change the perception of the company on consumers’ end. The sharp brand also represents electronic manufacturer about consumer-oriented that wants to unlock the innovations and it wants to inspire people (Founier, 1998). Sharp brand believes in surprising innovation and it highlights attractive lifestyle. Sharp provides headline about ‘be inspired’, ‘be spirited’ and ‘be passionate’. Sharp uses the tagline ‘be sharp’ that reinforces local level and product level of the organisation. This tagline is used as communication materials and it is used in both horizontal and vertical ways. The Sharp logo can be utilised on grey and white (40% of black or less). This tagline conveys the idea of ‘unlock the inspiration in you’ and ‘be’ word is associated with the concept of describing the feeling.
Brand elements are associated with various components. Brand image is one of them, brand image is about the people develop an image about the brand in their minds. It is the expectation from the brand. In case of Sharp, people can expect about innovation and lower budget. Another element is brand personality and it is about emotional qualities that are associated with the brand. Sharp can be associated with the idea of innovation and creativeness. Brand personality can be identified with logo colour. The white, grey, black and red colours are associated with brand names and personality. In addition, the brand experience is about customers’ feelings about purchasing decision and overall feelings of the brand. Since Sharp has outlets in various places, people can experience uniform standards. As stated by Fetscherin & Heinrich (2015), brand differentiation suggests about the strategies for a brand takes in making it stand out from the crowd. Sharp’s television sets making them class apart from other television manufacturers as Sharp produces everything in their own system. Brand communication is about delivering the right message through correct sources like a brochure, adverts, hoardings and social media platforms. Sharp uses mainly internet system to communicate about the brand. Domain Name System (DNS) translates the Sharp’s site address and when people type the domain name, it automatically sends this to right IP address. Sharp Corporation uses specified colour for making the logo of the brand with value of 25-bit (RGB value) (Sharp-global.com, 2017)
According to Zarantonello et al. (2016), communication happens if the customer meets the brand and this meeting can happen through advertising, sponsorship, editorial mention, supermarket shelves and point of purchase sale. Communication is important for the organisation as it impacts on the positive experience and that can affect the behaviour of the customers. Communication in the brand is not one-way as it is now an interactive dialogue between customers and company. Sharp uses media advertising that can promote the products and Sharp uses simplistic approach. Sharp uses sales promotions strategy through free gifts and loyalty programmes to the customers. Sharp has many outlets and it gives seasonal sales promotions to the customers. Of late, Sharp has media station in most of the countries in which it operates to communicate with customers in real time basis.
Marketers have options to facilitate the process of leveraging and these options are associated with the distribution channel, countries and companies. The secondary brand association is important in case customers are not aware of the facts. This process leads to the approach to set a brand image on the customer. The secondary association helps the brand in using the brand knowledge of another brand to reproduce the name to be ascertained (Brakus et al. 2009). Sharp Corporation chose Foxconn as preferred bidder over Japan fund. Sharp is focusing to manufacture 10M+ unit per year and they are going to produce the LCD panel for major countries and use the supply chain of Foxconn.
Brand equity is about building the commercial value that can be derived from customer perception of the name of the brand and product. Keller’s brand equity model talks about a brand that can build the right type of experiences. As stated by Zarantonello & Pauwels (2015), the performance of brand is about meeting the customers’ desires and imagery is about products of the brand must meet customers’ desires in psychological and social levels. Sharp is tenth largest manufacturers of electronic goods for consumers. In the second step, the brand meaning is about making a communication to the target customer. Brand meaning is related to the imagery and performance. Sharp’s products meet the needs of the customers and their green level technique informs the customers that organisation is aware of CSR. Next step is about the brand response, it is related to the quality, credibility, consideration and superiority. Next step is about the brand response, it is related to the quality, credibility, consideration and superiority. Sharp always goes for quality through innovation. In addition, brand resonance is related to the behaviour loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community and active engagement. The brand equity of a brand can be calculated through adding brand awareness, loyalty, association, quality and propriety services (Aaker, 2014). Brand loyalty can be increased through marketing costs, trade leverage and attract new customers.
Brand strategy is a planning of development of successful brand that can achieve the specific goal of the organisation. As pointed out by Pine & Gilmore (1998), the brand is not just the product, logo, website or the name of the brand, it is more than that and it can be a combination of all. The brand is intangible and while making the brand strategy, it is needed to be clear about the purpose of the brand. Sharp Corporation makes distinguish between corporate brand message and brand platform. Sharp uses the strategic brand platform to deliver the consistent message and these are communications materials. In a previous time, Sharp believes in innovation, inspiration and communication. However, in recent time, Foxconn Group finished the acquisition of Sharp. Sharp gave the license to UMC and Hisense. In the North America section, Sharp provided a license to Hisense and in case of Europe, it gave license to UMC. Foxconn set the brand strategy of Sharp to build again the Sharp brand with using vertical supply chain. Sharp’s main purpose is not just to sell the electronics product, but to create a better life for customers. Sharp puts effort to use the brand platform and put the message of the brand in a cohesive way. Customers are not always rational and they have emotion too, Sharp categorised product and style guideline.
One of the elements of brand strategy is the target audience of the organisation, in B2C, target audiences are the customers who can buy the products (Schmitt, 1999). Another element is a brand promise and it is the message that speaks to target audiences. Brand perception, brand values, brand voice and brand positioning are some of the other elements of brand strategy.
In case of brand identity, Sharp uses this to create brand salience in order to make a perception that the brand must be stand out. PR team of Sharp finds out the customers of the organisation and researches about them. In order to sell the product, Sharp tries to create USP as the innovation and creativeness. Sharp management segments the market according to the target customers and makes a different relationship with the brand. Sharp always goes for quality through innovation.
In increasing the brand meaning, Sharp has to increase the performance of the product and it must exceed the desires and expectations of the brand. The brand personality of Sharp has increased with imagery and performance.
ustomers of sharp judge the product based on perceived quality and the products must be relevant to the needs of the customers (Heslop et al. 2013). Lower prices, innovation and research always increase the brand credibility. Sharp’s communication to the customers in assessing competitors as well.
In addition, brand resonance is related to the behaviour loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community and active engagement. Sharp gives behavioural loyalty of brand through gifts, purchase and loyalty programmes. Sharp engages the consumers and representatives effectively.
Understanding the target market and the needs of the customers are very important as it is a highly competitive marketplace. Sharp is in consumer electronic goods industry, growing sale is required with achieving success. As stated by Huang & Sarigollu (2014), brand awareness is about recognising and recall the brand from the perspectives of the customers. The main considerations are the consumer behaviour, managing the advertisements and strategy development. Sharp uses the social media communication and print media both to communicate with the customers. Brand recall of Sharp is weak as it indicates a strong link between brand and customers. Brand recognition is about customers’ recognition in identifying the point-of-sale in visual packaging. Sharp Corporation needs to increase the brand awareness through social media strategy as it is ranked 50 in 100-top most powerful brand in 2016 (Rankingthebrands.com, 2017). In Singapore, Sharp stood first in the most trusted brand in 2016.
The brand feeling is about emotional response of the customers in respect to the brand. It is somewhat connected to the brand resonance and relationship between organisation and customers. Customers’ relationship can be judged through the ‘in sync’ relationship with the brand. The brand judgement of the customers is depended on behaviour loyalty that comes from repeat purchase or regular visit of outlets. Sharp has an online presence and this can be judged through attitudinal attachment of the love for the brand. Quality of the products and credibility can come three dimensions with trust, innovation and likability of the organisation. However, Sharp Corporation was ranked 92 in Global CSR rank in 2016 (Rankingthebrands.com, 2017). Active engagement of Sharp is done through membership card, discount programme and social media engagement. In addition, the performance of the brand is about meeting the needs of the customers through reliability of products, durability, efficiency, style, design and empathy (Hutter et al. 2013). In Television manufacturing and home appliances, Sharp performs very well in the global market and It ranked 19 in Japan’s Best Global Brand in 2016.
The impression in the mind of the consumers’ about the total personality of the brand is called brand imagery. Brand image can be formed through communication and advertisements and it can be authenticated through direct experiences of the customers. Sharp tries to meet the customers’ need in psychological level. The target market of Sharp communicates the name of the brand in word-of-mouth publicity. Sharp’s brand imagery has been enhanced through community engagement and its green vision about environment safety programmes. In the year 1973, Sharp set the business philosophy of mutual prosperity with stakeholders and the business. The tagline ‘Sincerity and Creativity’ holds the business philosophy (Sharp-global.com, 2017). Sharp wants to contribute the culture that must welfare the people. Feelings about Sharp can come from relevant products that the customers’ want. Superiority comes when a brand overshadows the others in the same industry and Sharp is the real market players in home appliances and television since long. Sharp brand evokes the feeling of trust and it exerts warmth, security, social approval and self-respect.
Brand resonance means the relationship between products and customers and the way the customer can relate to the product. Brand resonance starts with brand identification and it is the first step to ensure the customers to create awareness. The brand establishment is for creating an image of the products in the minds of the customers. The relationship can be built by converting relationship into purchase (Dinnie, 2015). In case of consumer electronics industry, it is important to have a clear marketing strategy of the organisation and company needs to create a stylish image of the brand. Sharp needs to increase marketing spend and they are hoping that these strategies can increase high-profile market share in UK market. Reaching to the resonance level is tough for the brand as it is associated with community sense, active engagement, attitudinal attachment and loyalty of the customers. Sharp Corporation is going to sponsor the football and cycling teams.
Brand positioning of an organisation sets the brand strength with reputation. Sharp Corporation has been going through the tough time as profitability and market share of the organisation has been decreased. Brand strength can be measured by multiplying reputation and visibility. The managerial body of Sharp Corporation first understands that brand strategy is right and this brand strategy must align with objectives. In order to develop the brand positioning, the communication tools like Facebook, Twitter, website, logo and print media should be work correct and effective way. Finally, managers of Sharp need to identify the target market and research about target clients to ho they position the brand.
Sharp Corporation has a global website with a domain name and they need to align with a mobile app and desktop version as well. The increase of visibility of brand enhances the awareness. Social media pages of the brand can increase the visibility and consumers can discuss the brand and its products. PR team of Sharp needs to advertise with traditional and electronic communication as well. Awareness in the minds of the consumers can be increased with the sponsorship of events, like Football or Golf events. Moreover, charitable events can increase CSR for Sharp.
Managers of Sharp Corporation need to identify the target segments of the organisation. The organisation needs to increase the brand view towards this particular segment. Determining the key target markets and audiences like (partners, groups and industry analysts) can help to craft the strategy of brand imagery. Managers should find out the critical business objectives for the brand in long-term in order to define the brand persona. Brand imagery can be increased through key messages that increase the interaction about the brand. PR team of Sharp can engage the customers on social media through content, search and images. Sharp can publish blog, news articles and trade publications that will increase transparency of brand.
Sharp is now handled by Foxconn, a Taiwan based organisation and Sharp wants to develop the relationship between customers and organisation. Relationship with customers, suppliers and employees is the main thing in increasing brand resonance. Sharp can drop the price that will increase repeat purchase. In addition, quality of the products should be better than competitors that will increase the attitudinal attachment. Strong personal attachment with a brand can come from readily accessible products, imagery and pleasures from products. In purchasing of products, consumers spend their time, invest, money and energy. In return, the customers desire to have membership, discounts and visibility of the brand.
Conclusion
It has been observed that Sharp Corporation has been facing the issues of low profitability and decrease of brand imagery. In this regard, the customer-based brand equity of the organisation is severely hampered. The managers of Sharp are following the logical steps to improve the brand equity through establishing the proper brand identity and appropriate of brand meaning. Sharp has website, logo and social media pages to communicate with the customers. In order to increase the response, the organisation can increase visibility through creating a favourable brand association.
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Development of awareness
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