The use of brands has been central to marketing for more than a century. The dominant logic has been “Build a brand, and the world will beat a path to its door.” Long-standing brands such as Marlboro, Coca-Cola, Xerox, IBM, and Intel are considered to be among the world’s most valuable assets. This precedent spurs diverse firms to base their strategies almost entirely on building brands. Car manufacturers, insurance companies, banks, and even industrial chemical producers are structuring themselves along brand and product lines, making brand managers responsible for the success of single brands or categories of products.1
Recently, many have questioned the wisdom of the brand management approach and the value of brands.2 In this article, we address the following issues:
- What is the point of marketing without brands?
- If brand managers are no longer responsible for brands, who is responsible?
- Is the brand-manager concept dead or merely ailing?
- Will brand management rise again, phoenix-like, in modified form?
We begin with the simple question: “What does a brand do?” That is, which functions do brands perform for the participants in a marketing relationship? We then identify the pressures that are influencing the evolution of brands and brand management and are leading to reappraisal of the brand-manager system. Finally, we identify three possible scenarios for brand... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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