my little joys

Brand Management is driving me NUTS...

Questions for my Take Home Exam:

(CAUTION: u can get a headache from reading this)

"Brand Management Exam

Question 1 (25 points)

Many companies want to capitalize on the health trend in society. Brands in the fast food restaurant category and brands in fast moving consumer goods categories are adding health associations to their brands by offering healthy alternatives in their assortment and reducing fat and sugar content in their products (e.g. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Kellogg’s, Danone, Coca-Cola/Pepsi). Furthermore, other brands such as Weight Watchers are promoting food products as a complement to their health concept. Your task is to launch new brands in the health food category.

Your experience in brand management tells you that you can speed up the consumers’ learning process by simultaneously introducing several brands in the category. Therefore, you decide to establish at least two new brands with the goal of being strong brands in the health category. The only restriction you have is that the brands should centre on healthy food. The formats and brands concepts are totally free within these limitations.

No brands can be totally evaluated if you do not present concrete solutions on brand elements and marketing programs. You will therefore also work on the central brand elements for brand identification and on communication. In addition to building each brand, you need of course to decide how the brands should relate to each other (e.g., same target segment or different segments, competing brands or complementary brands). Finally, how do you ensure that consumers understand your brand portfolio in the way you have intended?

Question 2 (25 points)

British investors want to establish a strong international retail chain in the fashion clothing category. Building on recent success in the domestic market with their brand Vera, they want to expand geographically and go internationally. They see H&M, Zara and Gap as some of the most important competitors worldwide. The investors want to know what positions are open to them and how they best should enter the international market. They have suggested using Vera also in the international launch but they will only stick with that name if you recommend it to them in your analysis and conclusions.

The investors have heard that modern brands can benefit from a clear positioning strategy. They want to learn more about the different concepts and want to know the consequences for Vera when using the strategies.

Your assignment is specified in the following brief from Vera investors:

Discuss alternative positioning strategies for a brand.
Clarify how Vera (or another brand name) can work with alternative positioning strategies in the fashion clothing category
Recommend one of the strategies for Vera (or another brand name). Argue for your recommendation.
For your chosen strategy, show how you tactically manifest the brand’s positioning with the brand elements that you perceive as most suitable for the task.

(Teacher’s note: Vera is of course a mock brand name)

Question 3 (20 points)

There is ample evidence in syndicated market data that consumers are very interested in hedonic purchases for the home. Many companies are nowadays trying to target these consumers and build strong brands for such products. One of these brands is Saeco, an Italian producer of exclusive coffee (espresso) machines.

Demonstrate in four different ways how the Saeco can use other brands, not owned by the Saeco International Group, to get positive effects for their brand of espresso machines/espresso makers. Make sure that you are concrete when you specify what Saeco needs to do and also what the expected effects are for the brands in each case."

posted by tauhuay_02 @ 3:03 PM