Brand Equity Has Been Defined

Brand equity has been defined as the power generated by a given brand in the market over the years. A product, which has a powerful brand name, normally experiences higher sales and profit margins than other players in the market. Brand equity can also be defined as the impact a brand has or the perception it has on its customers that make it sell more. Brand equity is built on the foundation of customer attraction and retention. Many companies are very keen on maintaining their brand equity; they would go to greater extent to make sure that their brand retains its value in the market share Chen, Chen, & Huang, 2012()

When a company wants to value its brand equity, it will focus on the following elements, they include; profit margin, brand language known to customers, changing market share, consumer recognition of logos, consumer perception of quality, visual elements and other important brand values. Most companies with higher brand equity would want to improve the status of their brand and those that have low brand equity will try to improve the brand by changing certain aspects that are not appealing to the customers Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008.

Therefore, for companies who would want to maintain their brand equity, they would have to first measure the level of their brand equity. The brand is measured into three main levels. These are; at the firm level, at the product level, and lastly consumer level. At the firm's level, brand equity is measured through assessment of the brand as a financial asset. At the product level, the brand equity is measured by comparing the brand's price with another equivalent private labeled brand. Lastly the brand equity can be measured by seeking the views of the customers about the brand, how well they recall and associate with it Chen et al., 2012()

After knowing where the brand stands in the market share, the company can, therefore, come up with ways which can assist it to retain its brand name. The company can do the following to retain their brand equity. First they should embrace advertisement, this is because, many consumers relate well to what they see or hear from other. Very, few of them would want to try something, they have neither seen nor heard about Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008.

Therefore, consumers associate well with visibility and so, they should be persuaded to continue using the product. Before a brand is advertised, the company's marketing department should consider the message the advertisement will have on the consumers, the quality of the advertisement and the impact the advertisement is to have on the consumers.

There is a saying that goes, "The person who saves money by not advertising is like the man who stops the clock to save time" Chen et al., 2012.

For advertisement to have the impact, it should bare the right information and be presented to customers in various forms according to the needs and the availability of the target audience.

Secondly, companies should renovate and update their brand equity. Before renovating and upgrading, companies should do their market research so as to determine the current prevailing trends. They should also consider their competitive niche so as not to be left out by the other competitors. Since branding is an ongoing process, and a company should endeavor to conduct surveys or focus groups to determine how people perceive their brands Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008()

Thirdly, the company should ensure they are consistent because, consistency counts. In as much as branding evolves, companies should be careful not to lose their touch with their customers. Customers have a tendency of not following products that keep on changing, they like to take in the marketing message and contemplate over it so that they may decide to use the product or not. Consistency comes in two parts; the first part is that the company must operate within the known brand messaging, and this has some influence on the everyday brand management activities. Consistency should be reflected in the entire organization, from the employees, to the facility, to the marketing collateral. Everybody working for the company should conduct all their official duties with the brand in mind; they should be ambassadors of the brand. Secondly, the organization's marketing message should be on point. Brand names should be maintained at all cost no-matter how they will have become boring to you after many years of associating with them Chen et al., 2012()

The forth way is though having brand loyalists. These are a loyal customer who assists the company to sell their brand just by being loyal Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008.

Brand loyalists are known to spread the message about the brand to other customers and so, they contribute tremendously towards having new customers and retaining the existing ones. Brand loyalist can be welcomed, rewarded and maintained by; giving them promotional product after a purchase, anniversary celebration and issuing of free coupons among others.

An example of a company which has endeavored to maintain their brand equity is the Coca-Cola Company. Since its formation, it has retained its product quality, maintained the customer's loyalty, and they have been consistent in their operation and product.

Product Life Cycle Concept

Product life cycle is termed as the stages through which a product passes after having been sold. Unlike human life cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and death, products too goes through a life cycle which requires many tools, skills, processes and involves many professional discipline. There are four main stages in a product life cycle and in each stage, there are the relative amount of sales and profits experienced at each stage. These stages of a product cycle are as follows;

First, there is the market introduction stage. At this stage, the products are known to be of high value since they are still new and freshly introduced into the markets. Since the products are newly introduced, their sales volume is still slow; the volume will be low because very few may take the risk of trying the product at its initial launch. Some will wait to see how those who bought it at the first instance are adapting to it, hence from there the volume will be increasing as those who have tried the product will pass information to others new customer. With the introduction of a new product into the market, there is the possibility of there being little competition from other competitors since most of them will not have produced similar product Calantone, Yeniyurt, Townsend, & Schmidt, 2010.

At this stage, the profits will hardly be realized since, the volume sold will be low, and at the same time, more customers will be prompted to use the product through, various promotional strategies such as issuing of free samples, coupons for free samples, after sales service and vigorous advertisement.

The second stage in the cycle is Growth stage. At this stage, the product will have gained popularity thus increasing its sales volumes significantly. Due to the large volume of products manufactured, the company will be at this time enjoying economies of scale because; most of its raw products will have to be acquired in large numbers hence lowering the cost as compared to acquiring them in small quantities or numbers. Therefore, the economies of scale would give room for profits to be realized. At this stage, the public awareness had risen as compared to when it was launched; therefore, the marketing strategies will have to be reduced hence saving the company some money, allowing them to realize profits. As the products gains popularity, emergence of other competitors with similar products is noticed hence leading to a price decrease because of forces of demand and supply Christiansen, Varnes, Gasparin, Storm-Nielsen, & Vinther, 2010()

The third stage is the maturity stage; here the costs are further lowered due to the increased volume of similar products in the market. At this time, the sales volume is at its peak and also the market will have been saturated by the invasion of the other competitors into the market. The introduction of other cheaper products into the market will at this point leads to a drop in the product price and for the market share to be increased; most companies will go for brand differentiation and diversification of the features. At the maturity stage, the general industrial profits will decline tremendously due to saturation of the market surpassing the consumer demand Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008()

The forth and the last stage is the saturation and decline stage. At this stage, the sales volume decreases because there will be the introduction of new almost similar products. Also, the profitability of the product will have diminished since the sales volume will be low. The production and distribution efficiencies greatly interfere with the profits realized from the salesWiktorsson, 2012.

Most products introduced into the market has to go through this stage, a good example being Coca-Cola, when it was rolled out, it had difficulties penetrating the market, but after various promotional strategies and sales, it's started experiencing growth in both the sales volume and in profits gained. Then soon other players came such as Pepsi who also tried to penetrate the market. With the introduction of Pepsi into the market, the market share was divided, sales volume for both commodities went low and the prices also lowered. The product life cycle of some of these products may go far beyond the expected limit, and this is attributed to the brand equity they have.

Use of Interactive television and online services in marketing

Marketers have nowadays ventured more into interactive television and online services to improve on advertising their products because through such innovations they can easily reach their targeted groups. For instance, product manufacturers have found ways to advertise their products in video games especially for this product highly consumed by children.

Through online services, marketers have the opportunity to conduct surveys which will enable them to know how their products are competing and are being perceived in the market. Manufacturers are using more of e-commerce to pass most of their goods to customers, through electronic sales in websites such as ebay, amazon and CNET among others. They have reduced part of the expense while they would have incurred if they were to follow the normal sales and supply chain.

Innovations in interactive televisions have assisted marketers to improve their product promotion techniques because, through the various interactive services such as that with TV set, with TV program content, TV related content an TV services, the manufacturers can avail some of their products and their usage instruction at the TV user's reach. Through the various features available on interactivity with a TV-related content, this type of interactive TV helps the viewers to acquire more product information from the TV about advertised products and to make it better for marketers; the TV users can buy the product through a feature known as "t-commerce" Boone & Kurtz, 2011()

This high technology improvement has made it easier for marketers to reach a broader group of their targeted population because most of these technologies are interrelated and some of the information can be accessed from most devices people have Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008.

For instance, interactive TV can be synchronized to various devices such as mobile devices and computers with internet, therefore, some of this information aired on TV can be passed across. Many marketers rely on digital TV to advertise their products as compared to the common use of the internet because a recent survey done on the adoption rate of both Digital TV, and the Internet is that, the Internet's adoption rate greatly varies with the social groups as compared to the Digital TV which is adopted in great numbers across social groups. An example being the Pizza companies who have been using interactive TV advertising for quite some time now. The interactive TV gives them the opportunity to show the customers the current menu they have and at the same time the customers can order the pizza from there.

One of the advantages Interactive TV ads have is that they can be aired beyond the maximum 30 seconds linear TV ads, therefore, giving them more time to expand their brand messages. On the internet, marketing has been made even more possible through the use of small widgets (small software applications like games), which can be passes from one person to another, one friend to another via websites like tweeter and Facebook. Cell phones are also used to pass information concerning certain products, with the high cell phone users; cell phone advertising has become one of the leading ways in which manufacturers can pass information Boone & Kurtz, 2011()

Telecom providers have made it easier for marketers because with the amount of personal information they have on their cell phone users such as credit card information, personal information and the user's current location has made it easy for advertising agents to give the cell phone user just the right information he/she needs on a given product Davis & Yung, 2005.

The telecom companies can work together with marketers to lure the customer to buy certain products by sending coupons to customers as they are passing through a place where that the product is sold Boone & Kurtz, 2011()

Personal and business-related privacy issues

With the increased use of the internet to conduct various transactions, most personal information from the consumers is being captured by the companies. This information includes; social security numbers, home address, names, credit and debit card details among others. These are sensitive information and must be stored securely in a company's databases. Although this information helps companies to predict market trends and budget for its consumers, it is still necessary for companies to keep such information away from the public's view because some people may use them for illegal gains Robert C. Blattberg, Kim, & Neslin, 2008(; Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008)

The growth of database marketing is not receiving support from the public since some of the information has found its way into the hands of wrong people. The lack of trust the public has on this system has made it difficult for companies to continue gathering consumer information. There have been cases of the public worrying of how some unrelated consumer providers or scammers got their names and personal details. In addition, many consumers find themselves profiled and grouped into various specialized list without their consent Milne & Rohm, 2000.

This classification or profiling is against the consumers' constitutional rights, and this forms part of the issues that discourage the growth of database profiling.

Consumers are also reluctant towards issuing of personal information to some of the transactions that require them because over the years, this information has been used by malicious people like the ones who send people junk mail, viruses through the mail and spam mail. The consumers and businesses are concerned with third party access. Customers are complaining that some of the companies they conduct business with end up selling their personal information to the third party whom they do not know. On the other hand, customers feel it is not in the interest of these companies to inquire about their personal information and so they feel, such information are private and should remain private Ashworth & Clinton, 2006()

Most customers are reluctant to give the companies their personal information because, they feel that they are sacrificing their privacy over the better services promised which do not bare equal benefit to their sacrifice. They also have issues with some the information they give may have errors caused by computers and so the company may in-return have a bad image on them without either their knowledge or the firm's knowledge. Hence, this gives them the fear of promoting the growth of database marketing.

How privacy issues can be addressed

Business and privacy issues can be addressed through training of the company's sales employees to know how to gather and store only useful information in the customer's file. Privacy issues can also be addressed by having separate databases for all the collected data. Data such as those for employees, services, distributors, suppliers and that for customers should be handled separately to avoid exposure of such vital information to anyone Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller, 2008.