Brand Identity and Positioning

Question: Discuss about the Brand Identity and Positioning. Answer: Introduction: The success of any business depends on the brand identity and the positioning of the company in the market. Brand identity can be defined as the ways in which the company represents themselves in front of the consumers to help them get an perceived value about the company (Kavaratzis and Hatch 2013). The ways in which the product of any company is strategically placed in the market to remain distinguishable from similar products within that market is known as brand positioning (MacInnis, Park and Priester 2014). Through this report, one strong and one weak brand have been chosen. The globally acknowledged chocolate company Cadbury has been chosen as the strong brand. On other hand, the chocolate brand from Australia named Havenhand represents the weaker brand in our report. The first part in this report gives a brief description about the background of the two companies. In the second part the report speaks about the CBBE model and the brand identity and positioning system of both the companies. Then the report tries to highlight the things that should be changed within the weaker organization to help it gain access to a wide range of markets. In other words, this part discusses about the repositioning strategy. The report is then summarized in the conclusion paragraph. Background of the companies: Cadbury: The John Cadbury in United Kingdom has founded the company Cadbury 193 years ago. Mondelez International now owns the multinational company since 2010. After Wrigleys it is the most famous brand in the world and operates in more than 50 nations (www.cadbury.co 2017). Cadbury has been head-quartered in Uxbridge region in U.K. The company has earned revenues of around $4 billion during the year 2015 (www.telegraph.co.uk 2012). The first store started by selling drinking chocolates and cocoa and the globally loved chocolate named Dairy Milk was launched in the year 1905. U.K, China, Australia and India provides the biggest market of this company for this company. On other hand, Argentina, Thailand, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf markets are the potential growing market for this company. The company had recently launched its products in three countries namely Philippines, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. At present the company has been providing employment to over 71657 people. During 2010, Kraft Foods took over the ownership of the company and after that in 2012, they successfully increased their profit by 1.8% from their previous years (www.cadbury.co 2017). Havenhand: Havenhand is amongst the well-known chocolate company existing in Australia. It specializes in producing fruit chocolates. The company has been catering only to Australian customers with their wide range of chocolate products. It also has their own chocolate caf where people can go have breakfast, lunch and even afternoon snacks while enjoying the scenic beauty of the Murray river (www.havenhandchocolates.com 2017). They are well-known for using the best quality sun-dried fruits from Riverland. They use premium quality Belgium chocolate for preparing their unique combination of more than 300 varieties of chocolates, truffles and novelties (www.havenhandchocolates.com 2017). The reason behind choosing this company in our report is that in spite of being such a well acknowledged brand in Australia, the company still does not cater to global customers. Hence, there must be some issues that have been drawing back the company from expanding globally. Through this report, some repositionin g strategies is going to be identified which might help this company to flourish in their business. Brand identity and Positioning Strategies: CBBE Model: Professor Kevin Lane Keller formulated a model through which any company, organization or business might shape their presence in the market (Sirianni et al. 2013). His famous model has been termed as Consumer-Based Brand Equity model (CBBE). According to Prof. Kevin, the success of any brand does not take place overnight. The company needs to pass through several stages creating a positive image of their products in peoples eyes (Keller 2016). There are four major steps through which any company must pass before getting globally acknowledged. These steps have been highlighted in the diagram below. Figure 1: CBBE MODEL by Kevin Lane Keller Source: Cadbury based on CBBE Model: Figure 2: CBBE of Cadbury Source: Created by Author From the figure above it can be easily said that Cadbury has been successful in moving up the pyramid of CBBE by creating brand recognition, giving people a feel good factor and remaining affordable by almost all those who loves chocolate. The company has a wide range of product portfolio customized in accordance with the taste and preference of the nations where it operates (Gupta 2014). Out of all its products, Dairy Milk has been the most famous one which has been attracting global consumers since 1905. Havenhand based on CBBE Model: Figure 3: CBBE of Havenhand Source: Created by the Author The figure above clearly indicates that the chocolates of Havenhand are recognized and used by Australians only. There has been lack of brand recognition outside the country (Trott and Sople 2016). In spite of the fact that this company also provides a wide variety of products in different stylized packages, the company still lacks in creating a successful brand image which would help it penetrate the foreign market. Positioning of the brands: Now, with the help of positioning map the existing condition of both the company has been shown below. Through this mapping, peoples perception about different brands and its competitors are highlighted for the ease of comparison (Singh, kalafatis and Ledden 2014) Figure 4: Positioning Map Source: Created by the Author In this positioning map, the violet star indicates the position of Cadbury Products whereas the red star indicates the positioning of Havenhand chocolates. It has been observed that Cadbury has kept a wide range in its product prices. It falls under the category where it provides high quality products at low prices. This has been possible as the company caters to a large basket of consumers and production in bulk amount reduces per unit cost involved in productivity (MacInnis, Park and Priester 2014). On other hand, company Haverhand positions itself where the price of its products are higher than that of Cadbury but at the same time there has been compromise with the quality of the products. This compromise has not been done purposely on companys behalf but it occurred as a result of small scale operation dealing with chocolates and fresh fruits. Repositioning Strategy: The way in which Cadbury became globally acknowledged has been seen in the above section. Now, for Havenhand to become a stronger brand than it is, it must re-position itself in the market creating a higher brand value. The strategies that Cadbury has taken up in its long journey but Havenhand still do not use are given below: Spreading their products amongst customers through several channels like local stores, retailer, supermarkets and even chocolate vending machines Keeping a wide range of prices keeping in mind the affordability of different customer segment Advertising their products through both print and online media and attracting customers Adapting cultural diversity of the nations where it operates Targeting different segment of customers like kids, younger generation, adults and even old people through value-oriented advertisement Conclusion: The entire report can be summarized by stating that the success of any company, organization or brand depends upon several factors. Through our report it has been observed that Cadbury has been able to establish its brand identity in the global market. It has successfully followed the four step pyramid of the CBBE model. On other hand, Havenhand being a reputed chocolate brand has not been able to open itself up in the global market. By comparing the strategies of these two brands it can be said that Havenhand has some flaws in their strategy. They are not targeting their customer properly and keeping the price of their product on the higher side of the market segment. In addition they do not have a large number of stores in the market and hence distribution of their products remains constricted. Hence, it can be concluded by stating that if it can gradually adopt the above mentioned re-positioning strategy it would be able to reach out to more customers and thereby climb up in creat ing a high brand identity. References: Gupta, R.K., 2014. Secrets of Building a World Class Brand.Siddhant-A Journal of Decision Making,14(4), pp.344-356. Havenhandchocolates.com. (2017).Havenhand Chocolates. [online] Available at: https://www.havenhandchocolates.com/ [Accessed 5 Feb. 2017]. 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