Retail Branding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Retail Branding - Essay Example The current interest in retail branding is scarcely to be wondered at, given that, as Ailawadi and Keller acknowledged, ‘’With the growing realization that brands are one of a firm’s most intangible assets, branding has emerged as a top management priority in the last decade’ (p.1). If one looks at a breakdown of the revenue of a major retailer, one will usually find that a large proportion of that revenue comes from the sale of manufacturer’s goods. However, this poses problems for retailers given the incredibly competitive nature of the marketplace – many stores might stock exactly the same goods, and quite probably at similar prices. They thus have to focus on developing marketing strategies which will encourage consumers, when faced with a choice of stores, all of which sell what they want, to choose one over another. As Ailawadi and Keller note, ‘building their [retailers] own equity is a particularly challenging problem, but one wi th big potential rewards. Such equity insulates them from competing retailers’ (p.1). The definition of retail branding offered by the Canadian Marketing Blog supports this, stating that it ‘is about differentiating, a unique personality, a true point of difference’. ... n incredibly wide range of factors, from the assortment of goods on offer in the store, to the level of customer service and comfort they experienced while shopping there, to their pricing and credit policies, and of course the quality of the goods sold. This stands in contrast to a consumer’s opinion of a product brand, which is more likely to have been constructed mostly from their opinions on that product’s marketing campaigns, and any experiences they’ve had of that brand’s goods. Identifying the manifold elements that strongly influence the construction and perception of a retailers’ brand image, we might conclude that the general atmosphere in the store, the prices and presence or absence of attractive promotions or reductions, and the range of products are perhaps the most important. One might think that price is always the most important factor in decisions made by consumers, but Brown highlighted long ago that price perception is more impor tant that actual prices. In short, if a retailer intends to market its brand based principally on its price, Brown found that for consumers, what was important was that they believed a store’s prices to be low, rather than whether they actually were. Therefore, a retailer has to work on getting all of these elements right in order to create the best possible experience for consumers frequenting their stores, in order to build up networks of loyalty and patronage among consumers. The key is winning over large numbers of consumers who believe that a particular retailer offers a superior shopping experience, and will recommend that retailer to their friend and family networks, as well a visiting it again themselves. Of course, manufacturer brands, as Ailawadi and Keller acknowledge, can be useful in creating a