Meeting The Challenge Of Brand Management In India

By Author: Sushant Sharma
Total Articles: 8
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With the ever increasing purchasing power of Indian consumers, the country is a coveted market for businesses across the globe. Efficient brand management is not only a corporate dream here but actually a basic necessity.

In a culturally diverse and geographically large country like India, where consumer preferences change every few hundred kilometres, it is indeed a challenge to establish a business and then sustain it. To not just sustain but to succeed here, every business needs to build its brand recall value.

Building a brand and then managing it well in India calls upon all corporate resources for tapping the country’s large consumer base. It is definitely a crowded market space out there and attention spans are becoming shorter with so many consumer distractions all around. So how do you grab eyeballs and pockets for your business? First grab the eyeballs and forget about the pockets!

A good brand and market reputation attracts more consumers and builds stakeholder confidence in your business. The initial balance sheets may not appear to be in favour but patience pays in brand building. It ...
... takes a little while for consumers to become familiar with your product and/or services. It takes time for them to be weaned away from an existing habit of consumption and lured into experiencing your service and/or product.

Old habits, as they say, die hard. If your product or service is new for Indians it will require old habits to be broken. If yours is a brand that Indian consumers are familiar with but are losing interest in, as the market is offering more options, then you will need to fight off the competition. Whatever the situation, brand management is required.

Brand management builds and sustains a brand image of your business with a high recall value amongst consumers, clients and all stakeholders. Your brand image identifies and defines you in the mind of the consumer and stakeholder. Your brand creates a market niche for your business and positions the services or products you deliver.

Brand management is about creating a differentiating factor for you amongst intense competition. It refers to the quality of product or service you deliver and defines your target consumer base. You become recognised as a preferred solution provider in your particular business.

You may either be a company that targets a niche or privileged consumer or you may be a company that provides goods or services for mass consumption; you may be a high-end-product manufacturer or a provider for middle-class folks; whatever your niche, efficient brand management puts you a few notches above the competition.

Branding uses various tools for this purpose such as the most appropriate pricing, packaging and marketing of a product or service; then focusing on a brand’s market perception, its emotional connection, the level of customer satisfaction and outwitting market competition. Traditionally, media campaigns and advertising techniques have involved platforms like television, radio, bill-boards, outdoor events and news coverage, but in the last two decades the corporate world has also woken up to the power of the internet. Online campaigns on social networking sites, blogs and forums are also being factored in majorly in all brand management campaigns now.

For effective brand management India you will need a multi-pronged approach through which your targeted consumer not only recognises you amongst the various options available but actually prefers you over others and even comes to eventually regard you as indispensible to his/her lifestyle. This will require the building of an emotional connect with the consumer so that brand loyalty can be created.

The author of this article is associated with India InfoMedia, reputed for providing strategic communication support to clients for brand building and Corporate Communication India InfoMedia has been consistently assisting its clients reach out to their stakeholders through focused communication strategies.