Use of Internet as a Brand Building Tool

Table of Contents

Introduction

What is a Branding

Brand Value for Customers

Brand Value for Companies

Internet as a Brand Building Tool

Stages of Using the Internet for Brand Building
Attracting
Engaging
Retaining
Learning
Relating

The 7Cs Framework for Using the Internet as a Brand Building Tool

Conclusion

References

Introduction

The emergence of the Internet has provided a powerful marketing medium for all businesses, whether big or small, new or old. It has enabled all types of businesses to promote their brands easily. The Internet explosion in the past few years has changed the entire business processes and outlined the future business operations. The changes are visible in almost all business operations, and they have initiated rethinking of supply chain networks, reconfiguration of products and services or revamping of business models. The most significant change has been noticed in the promotional activities and in the use of the Internet as a brand building tool. The Internet has offered new opportunities, making traditional business practices outdated. It provided the opportunity to reach a wide range of audience and create never-before possible propositions. It also provided a new tool for promoting business, interacting with people and building relationships. It has also empowered customers with information and many options, and has changed the fundamental concepts of interaction between companies and customers. These tremendous changes in customer relationships, customer service and branding require new strategies and tools for brand building. The Internet has enabled new entrepreneurs to create new and strong brands, thus leaving established brands behind. Internet companies like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, and America Online (AOL) have established strong brands in a short span of time, whereas the traditional companies have taken decades for the same. Figure 1 below exhibits the time taken in years by the Internet companies in reaching $100 million mark.

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Fig 1: Source: Securities and Exchange Commission Filings; McKinsey Analysis (www.mckinseyquarterly.com)

What is Branding

The CEO of a reputed brand consultancy firm, Interbrand Newell and Sorrell, Rita Clifton said:

"A mixture of tangible and intangible attributes, symbolised in a trademark, which, if properly managed, creates influence and generates value" (Clifton & Maughan, 2000)

The definition above underlines the importance of branding, the essence of a brand and the need of brand management to create value for the company as well as for the customers. The value created by the company is related to the products and services offered by the company, but its impact extends to building relationship between the brand and the customer, and to exploit emotional and self-expressive benefits (Jones, 1986).

Brand Value for Customers

According to Kotler (1996), the functions performed by brands add value, and are beneficial to customers in many ways, such as in the identification of the product, practicality in saving time in repurchasing, guarantee of quality, optimisation of the product, characterisation of the product, continuity of satisfaction, hedonistic means satisfaction with attractiveness and ethical means satisfaction with brand’s responsible behaviour.

Brand Value for Companies

Brand building is crucial for companies also in many ways such as increasing market share and profits. It provides leverage benefits to the brand, helps in dominating the market, develops beliefs and loyalty for the brand among customers and investors. It prevents competitors from entering the market. It provides avenues for growth. It motivates stakeholders. Branding means to create value by providing consistent offer, based on customer experience, to the customer for their satisfaction so that they keep coming back. The customer loyalty and preference built by a company increases its market share, price levels and cash flows which are crucial for driving share price up and growth in the future (Grant, 1998).

Internet as a Brand Building Tool

A strong value proposition needs to be developed as the foundation of the brand building process. The next step is to encourage customers on trying the brand by giving them properly developed offering which also encourages them to buy the product or the service again. The process of trial to repurchasing is built in a mechanism based on product promotion, advertisement, public relations, direct marketing and sale. This mechanism is called brand building based on the communication of the company with its customers and the Internet has provided them an effective tool of efficient communication with customers and emerged as a strong tool of brand building (Berry & Parasuraman, 1991).

The Internet is the platform which allowed communication between communicating devices through a wide range of alternative channels. The three prime channels that enabled people as well as businesses to communicate are newsgroups and mailing lists, e-mail (the most popular) and the 'world wide web' (WWW). The constant increase in the number of the Internet users has encouraged businesses to use the Internet as a brand building tool. The reasons which make it an important tool of brand building are:

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