Brand Management (GRAV022)

Few would deny the importance of brands as valuable assets and a potential source of sustainable competitive advantage. Nestlé bought Rowntree (KitKat, After Eight…) for almost three times its stock market value and 26 times its earnings. This value is created by the place occupied by the brands in the minds of customers:  brand awareness, image, trust and reputation – all built up over many years – are the best guarantee of future cash flows. As one commentator puts it: ‘products are created in the factory. Brands are created in the mind.’
Brands provide a short-cut for customers when making a purchasing decision, seeking to avoid risk and obtain value for money. Brands provide a relevant, exciting experience. Brands connote a certain lifestyle, set of values or attitude. Brands can become objects of affection or desire – ‘Lovemarks’, even. Buying a brand can be an integral part of an individual’s quest for identity and meaning.  It could be argued that brands create value by providing consumers with content, a form of belief system and powerful stories that embody these beliefs and values.

Students will learn how companies manage ‘brand equity’ – clearly a major strategic issue – but also reflect on how the use of different frameworks for understanding brands impacts the way they are managed.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to strategic brand management, covering such areas as the building of brand equity, the role of emotion and creativity in branding, the ways in which companies seek to give a ’human face’ to their brand and more.

More than that, however, the course explores the importance of sense and meaning in the creation of value as well as the degree to which this is rooted in a specific social and cultural context.  In doing so, it raises important questions about the role of marketing and consumption in modern society.

It is impossible to understand brands without ’getting out of the building’.  Students will be asked to do just that to explore brand experiences and consumers’ responses to branding.

• Increase understanding of the important issues in planning and evaluating brand strategies.
• Provide the appropriate theories, models and other tools to make better branding decisions.
• Provide a forum for students to apply branding principles in practice.
• Gain an in-depth knowledge on the planning and implementation of a branded product.
• Develop skills of brand analysis, draw reasonable interpretations and objective judgements.
• Develop skills of presenting research / field work findings.