304MKT: The Kevin Keller Model is a Pyramid Framework and shows the business how to build from a strong foundation of brand Identity: Contemporary Marketing Issues Assignment, CU, Singapore

Answer any THREE of the FOUR questions

Question One

The key building block of brand culture is how well the values that an organization embodies match what its customers are seeking. Brands must be seen to share, rather than manipulate, consumer’s passions and emotions (Parsons and Maclaran, 2009).

Based on Kevin Keller’s Customer-Based Brand Equity model (2001), critically discuss how and why consumers’ resonance to a brand can often be explained by the model. Real brand examples must be used to support your answer.

Question Two

Disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value new network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market-leading firms, products, and alliances (Rahman, 2017).

A. Critically discuss how disruptive innovation can disrupt an existing market and the value network. Real examples must be used to support your answer.

B. Use evidence from two real examples of disruptive innovation, explain how these innovations have created new value for the market.

Question Three

Many companies are now moving towards corporate reputation in a move to instill a clearer sense of corporate identity and trustworthiness among their employees, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders (Balmer, 2006).

Based on a relevant theoretical framework, critically discuss how a company’s reputation and trustworthiness can lead to stakeholders’ trust and loyalty. Relevant examples must be used to support your answer

question Four

Green marketing refers to the practice of developing and advertising products based on their real or perceived environmental sustainability. (Fernando, Feb. 2020)

A. Discuss the arguments for and against green marketing.

B. Using the environment sustainability portfolio model (Hart, 1997), critically evaluate four key strategies that companies can adopt in green marketing.

Both answers must be supported with relevant examples.

Question One

The Kevin Keller model is a pyramid framework and shows the business how to build from a strong foundation of brand identity to achieve brand resonance. Here, customers are in a positive relationship enough to defend the brand. The way to resonance level provides brand opportunities to recognize and utilize customer loyalty and attitude, positive or negative. By sharing CBBE into Keller’s four stages, the marketing manager can understand what the customer wants and needs before the customer buys the product or knows what he wants.

The first level of brand identity explores the words and images that the buyer associates with when they name a particular brand. It is the most important level and must be strong to support the rest of the pyramids above it; the brand identity quantifies the width and depth of customer awareness of the brand. When the customer doesn’t know the nature of a product and its value, companies have to start building and attract customers through advertising campaigns and targeted marketing. An example for how brand identity underpins advocacy would be that of how luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz is recognized through its identity as a status symbol and a manufacturer of high quality cars, which underpins the demand by affluent buyers for its products, and in turn, the advocacy of these buyers to others in their network for Mercedes vehicles.

The next step is brand meaning that covers both brand performance and brand image; brand performance includes product functionality, reliability, durability and price as well as customer service and satisfaction. Brand image, meanwhile, indicates how the product meets the customer’s social and psychological needs.

With regards to brand performance, a given product must function up to the customer’s expectations in order for customers to be sufficiently satisfied to move on to identifying with the brand in the level of brand response, and subsequently moving towards brand resonance. For example, in the same case of Mercedes, the product would be expected to have high build quality, high performance and reliability in order to satisfy consumer expectations of a luxury vehicle.

Furthermore, with regards to Brand Image, using the example of a luxury vehicle, the vehicle must also deliver perceived quality through design, look and feel, so that the customer’s need for a status symbol may be satisfied.

Step 3 is a brand response that deals with customer feelings for a particular brand; judgment and emotion can be difficult to separate and are very personal for each customer.

For example, one customer may judge that the brand is not related to him, while the other customer is completely related. Another product can compare its value to another product harshly or fairly. So when a company finds out what a brand response is, it needs to respond to judgment and build positive feelings about the brand.

For example, Apple typically has positive brand response towards its products, with it being perceived as an innovator, however, with each release of new devices such as iPhones, it is aware that some may view new devices as lacking in new innovation. As a result, Apple organizes lengthy and well-designed press events and marketing materials in order to keep up consumer sentiment about the product being ‘innovative’ and class-leading.

The last step is Brand Resonance, the objective for many brands. This is achieved when customers are loyal to the brand, think it is superior, do not buy other brands, and advocate the merits of other brands. Lifetime experience, customer service, product and value, and many others sympathize with customers; for example, customers recommend products to friends, bringing more business to their brands.

Question Two

A.Disruptive Innovation refers to a process in which small companies with fewer resources can successfully challenge existing businesses. In particular, incumbents focus on improving products and services for the most demanding and typically the most profitable customers, so they exceed the needs of some sectors and ignore the needs of others.

Entrants who have proven disruptive in relation to the impact on the value network start by successfully targeting overlooked segments and providing a platform by offering more suitable features at a low price frequently. Existing companies that seek higher profitability in more demanding sectors tend not to actively respond.

For example, disruptive telecommunications firms such as Circles.Life entered the Singapore market by working from a lower cost based by being completely online, and then first targeting the lower end of the market, which preferred more data and no contracts in their telecommunications bundles.

They removed the frills such as subsidised handset upgrades, which were in all likelihood more profitable for incumbents such as Singtel due to the higher monthly fees and contracts that they were able to charge.

Disruptors then move to the high-end market, maintaining the advantages that led to initial success while providing the performance that existing mainstream customers need.

A disruption occurred when mainstream customers began to adopt a large number of participants’ products. This is seen in the same example above, where disruptor telcos soon move upmarket and provide higher end mobile plans to compete with incumbents, while ensuring that they address the needs of the lower-end.

Disruption occurred following this as incumbents scrambled to release contract-free, no-frills plans to compete with Circles.Life, completing the disruption of the market as these new plans now tend to be more commonplace than the original product of mobile contract bundles.

In sum, Disruptive innovation is possible because it starts in two types of markets that incumbents overlook: Existing companies typically have a low-cost base because they are trying to provide products and services that are consistently improving to the most profitable and demanding customers, and less interested in less demanding customers. In practice, existing products often exceed the latter performance requirements; this opens the door to the destroyer, who focuses on offering “enough good” products to low-cost customers.

B.One example of how disruptive innovation has created new value for the market would be that of the iPhone, and subsequent iPad that was derived from it. A typical example of using innovative business models to cause market disruption is Apple’s iPhone; Apple’s debut in 2007 was a constant innovation in the smartphone market. It targeted the same customers that were targeted by incumbents, and early success is likely to be explained by product superiority.

However, the subsequent growth of the iPhone ecosystem, and development of derivative products like the iPad, is better explained by the disruption of the consumer laptop industry, which was the default access point for the Internet at the time. This has been achieved not only by product improvements but also by introducing new business models. By building a network that connects application developers and mobile device users, Apple created a new market for Internet access, and eventually it was able to challenge the notebook with mainstream users’ devices such as iPhones and iPads that they chose to access online.

Eventually, Apple also created more powerful processors that enabled users to complete the same tasks on their mobile devices as on traditional computers, thus prompting consumers to question whether they actually needed a separate computing device for accessing the internet, such as a netbook or even a laptop. As this market for mobile devices and related software expanded, value was created not only for consumers, who gained an arguably better computing experience, but also for software developers, and Apple shareholders.

Another instance of disruptive innovation creating value would be that of Spotify. In particular, Spotify is disrupting the record labels industry due to the fact that independent artists can list their tracks directly on Spotify, without having to go through exclusive licensing deals with record producers.

People have thus not needed to purchase physical albums to listen to music, and are able to select tracks from a wide range of albums to listen to, rather than purchase entire CDs. Furthermore, the proposition of Spotify, which is focused on a relatively inexpensive music streaming service, not only adds value to the consumer in the form of convenience and variety of choice, but also adds further value to artists in the form of disrupting piracy such as illegal audio downloads.

Given that Spotify is relatively inexpensive and is an almost all-inclusive streaming service, the convenience of Spotify may be seen as worth the price for those who would have otherwise sought to download music via illegal channels. As such, by reducing incentives for piracy, Spotify ensures that more artists are paid their royalties due

Question Four

A. Green Marketing includes many elements of adopting environmentally-friendly measures in operations. These include energy efficiency, clean/renewable energy use, water saving, recycling and waste management, eco-friendly clothing, organic agricultural products, sustainable agriculture and more.The key to a successful green marketing strategy is to convey realistic and specific facts about corporate participation in social and environmental causes.

Some arguments for green marketing are as follows: First, companies can enter new markets when they have a positive impact on the environment; for example, companies can enter the ethical consumption market. These markets are typically willing to pay a higher amount for goods and services that are produced in an ethical or sustainable manner, and as such, green marketing could potentially enable a company to sell items at higher margins, leading to greater profitability.

Next, green marketing can also create a higher degree of loyalty among customers who are concerned with the environment, and create a position of competitive advantage for a brand, of being a leader in sustainable operations. An example of this would be that of Tesla, which positioned itself as the first mainstream, all-electric car manufacturer, with aims of eliminating carbon emissions.

On the other hand, green marketing may prove to be expensive, especially if the core product of the company is not environmentally friendly at its core. For example, it may take a considerable amount of research to determine what a company’s environmental impact is and how it can be corrected.

Furthermore, seeking changes with respect to green marketing may produce customer resistance if it involves eliminating certain features from products. This may be seen from the example of Apple’s iPhone 12 event, where the company received flak for not including a charger on environmental grounds, where people saw it as a ploy to sell chargers for an additional fee.

B.The four key strategies that companies may pursue would include Pollution prevention, product Stewardship, clean technology and targeting the base of the pyramid.

First, Pollution prevention pertains to the process of minimizing waste and emissions from current facilities and operations. One example would be how Apple has endeavoured to make sure that new devices are made from recycled aluminium, in order to prevent wastage of materials and pollution as a result of the extraction of new aluminium ore, and selecting sustainable suppliers.

This, however, is limited by the processes of suppliers, and switching to new, sustainable suppliers may incur high costs of production, outweighing any benefit from green marketing that may arise.

Next, Product Stewardship refers to a company’s strategy to participate with stakeholders and manage the overall life cycle of today’s products. This would include activities such as ensuring that products are not only manufactured in a sustainable way, but also recycled at the end of their life cycles, or given a longer life cycle to avoid over-manufacturing of goods at the expense of the environment.

This aspect also seeks to increase legitimacy by increasing the number of stakeholders involved in the product design and life cycle management phase. An example of this would be Samsung’s Re+ e-waste collection programme, which seeks to engage environmental activist groups and recyclers in the reduction of global e-waste.

Furthermore, Clean technology refers to “Next Generation” Clean technology development and distribution, such as divesting from oil and gas consumption, and instead sourcing energy from renewable sources, or ensuring that technology used in manufacturing and operations are seen as the most environmentally-friendly options available. An example of this would be the instance of Apple’s headquarters, which were mentioned in their press event to make significant use of solar power.

The Base of the Pyramid aspect focuses on co-creating new businesses to meet the unmet needs of the poor and the marginalized. Companies seeking to serve this space include disruptive microfinance FinTechs such as Momentum Credit. This last strategy, however, may be limited in scope due to the fact that it depends mainly on creation of new products suiting the ‘base of the pyramid’; something that could prove highly costly to the likes of technology firms.