INTRODUCTION

Definitions
BRANDING: Branding is the process of giving a meaning to
specific organization, company, products or services by
creating and shaping a brand in consumers’ minds

Consumer: The consumer is a person who decides on the

purchase of a good or a service for personal use, based on
personal preferences, beliefs and needs or the influence of
advertising.

Consumer Behavior: Consumer behaviour in marketing refers

to the actions and decisions that people make when they are
purchasing or using products.

How Does Brand Impact

Consumer Behavior?
Since the remnant of the pandemic is still in action, the market conditions are changing accordingly. As a
result, brands focus more on brand management. It also made the businesses adapt to a holistic marketing
approach that became more important than ever to fulfill the desires of their customers.

If you are a brand owner, you need to make your brand competitive to pay attention to your customers.
Today’s retail environment, with numerous brands and products, confuses customers. The attributes
professed values and many other factors influence consumers. The brand is one such factor that affects
consumers’ purchase behavior.

What actually is a brand?

According to David Ogilvy, who is considered the father of advertising, “Brand is something which remains
with us when our factory is burned.” It is crucial for business owners for two purposes— the brand serves as
a point of focus for customer loyalty, and it develops assets to meet future demands and ensure cash flow.
 Hence brands introduce stability that helps businesses guard against competitive invasion. It also allows
investment and planning to be put in place with confidence. Brands also refer to the business assets protected
against duplication. A brand is not built overnight, but over the period when people experience the
company’s products or services.

In other words, a brand is the distinguishable sign of a business and its products to human senses, through
which customers can differentiate a business and its products from others. For example, when customers see
the logo design of various companies, they recall the brand name based on these brand marks like Apple,
Domino’s, McDonald is, and so on.

Branding
Branding works as an indicator. It helps customers quickly identify a product — one they like or the one they
are acquainted with. It works like a memory sign, allowing customers to retrieve related information from
memory.

It may be the brand’s previous experience, associations, and perceptions. The information that one has stored
about a particular brand is crucial in determining their decisions.

Branding has turned out to be a vital part of business strategy. It is essential to create customer value and
maintain a competitive advantage. It is the process of nurturing a relationship between your company’s
products and customers’ emotional perceptions to create segregation and build loyalty.

On the other hand, brand management is the implementation of special techniques to augment the perceived
value of that brand.

Brand and brand-based distinctions are powerful means for businesses to create and maintain a competitive
advantage. Customers evaluate brands by investigating brand personality, equity, and extensions.

According to researchers, customers differ not only in how they observe brands but also in how they relate to
them. Simply, people build relationships with the brand(s) the same way they build relationships with one
 another in a social context.

Word-of-mouth strategy
Illustration by Gyeonggi Balogh

Brands like Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, and Zara do not believe in advertising. Have you ever thought about
why? It’s because they don’t have to.

For these companies, advertising is an extra outflow. Their quality speaks volumes about their brand and sets
them apart from their competitors. People use their products and spread the word about them, which is a
beautiful example of a word-of-mouth strategy.

That is how brands build their image in customers’ minds and influence their buying behavior.

Continuous innovation

The next strategy that brands often count on is continuous innovation. Constant innovation is of utmost
importance in maintaining and improving brand image. It puts the brands ahead of the competition and
makes the audience believe that they are working hard to satiate their promises.

Take the example of brands like Facebook, Apple, and Google that always strive for innovation. These
companies keep heading for innovation to surprise their customers and simplify their lives. And their market
shares give the exact idea of their success.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty are significant indicators of customers’ behavioral intent. Customer
satisfaction in terms of marketing measures how certain products/services supplied by a brand meet or
exceed customers’ expectations.

Customer satisfaction is vital because it gives business owners and marketers a metric that they can
implement to improve their offerings or services. A satisfied customer will have a positive brand image in
terms of product use.

Customer loyalty, on the other hand, is both attitudinal and behavioral. It shows customers’ tendency to
prefer one brand over others. It could be due to the convenience, performance, familiarity, or satisfaction
with the product/service of the brand.

Once the positive image is built, customer loyalty develops, and it encourages the customer to shop more,
spend more, and feel good about the experience. So, customer loyalty directly indicates that the brand has
built a positive image.

Brand equity
We talked about brand equity earlier, now let’s understand it here. The brand image works as a catalyst for
brand equity. It refers to a value that a business creates from a product with an identifiable name when

Now, let’s talk about Brand Equity and its relation to Brand Image. In simple terms, brand equity is the
commercial value that the company generates out of consumer perception from a particular product/service.
 There are three simple components of brand equity — customer perception, negative or positive effect, and
resulting value. It’s the perception of the customer that builds brand equity. The perception includes both
knowledge and experience gained from the brand and its products. The perception that customers make is
either negative or positive.

If the perception is positive, the physical value adds to the goodwill. But if the perceptions are negative, the
value is also negative. For example, if customers tend to pay more for a generic product than a branded one,
the brand equity will be zero.

Brand awareness

Activities within brand management help build a loyal customer base through positive associations or strong
brand awareness. It’s the brand image that drives brand equity. No matter what marketing activities a
company adopts, the primary purpose is to raise brand awareness and influence customers’ perceptions.

Such a strategy helps establish the brand’s image in customers’ minds and stimulates their purchasing
behavior, leading to increased sales, maximized market share, and brand equity development.

In this regard, brand awareness is considered a precondition of people’s buying decisions as it portrays the
main factor for considering the brand. It can also impact customers’ confidence in buying decisions and perceived
risk evaluation.
External and internal factors
Both external and internal factors also influence the decision-making process. Like a logo, color, and design,
emotional appeal also has a significant role in influencing shoppers’ buying behavior.

Nowadays, brands focus not only on their products but also on people. Marketing strategists are well
informed of people’s thought processes. That’s the reason they devise strategies that make customers
purchase.

There are many brands targeting people with specific discount codes or coupon codes. This may annoy some
people, but that’s the strategy. When people buy a specific product, they encounter everything a brand has to
offer. It’s called brand alignment.

This idea goes around us every day. Brands are now making personal connections with people based on their
experiences. This leads us to develop trust with many other brands.

In simple words, your world meets the advertising world. Corporate branding firms keep on navigating the
ways to empower their customers. It’s an enticing trap in which we fall every day.

That’s how brands target their audience, entice them, and influence their buying decisions for all positive
reasons. And, brands with the best strategies outshine their rivals.