How does a brand influence consumer choice?

Although a brand is an intangible asset, but it is the most valuable one in many businesses. Brand influences consumer choice, and in today's world with surplus of choices, this influence is critical to commercial success. Why, given equal marketing investments, do some have faster market share and more effective marketing campaigns than others? What's behind this?

Let’s consider the 5Ps of the brand. But not the classic marketing model Place, Price, Promotion, Product, People, but the modern one proposed by the marketing agency London Strategy Unit: Purpose, Penetration, Prominence, Participation, Portfolios, where there is:

• Purpose. What is the biggest goal of a business, besides the well-known commercial one, to make money? For example, Coca-Cola's goal is to refresh the world and inspire the moments of optimism. Starbucks' goal is to inspire and nurture the human spirit.
• Penetration. The success of a brand does not depend on fans - admirers of the brand, but on a wide range of casual buyers. Strong brands are working to get as many casual buyers as possible. Emotionally focused campaigns help them to do this. Functionally focused marketing activities such as price, size, product quality are much weaker.
• Prominence. The brand is easy to remember, choose, find. Both marketing campaigns aimed at popularizing the brand and representation in stores are used. For most brands, representation in offline stores is critically necessary, because a consumer wants to test and compare products before buying, and not one specific brand, but several at once. However, getting to store shelves is not an easy task, especially now, during the economic crisis, when the volume of the shelf declining.
• Participation. Strong brands create experiences that allow consumers to interact with the brand more often and more deeply. Consumers don't use brands they like, they like the brands they use. With creating valuable consumer experiences, brands are laying the foundation for consumer data that they willingly share (Big data).
• Portfolio. This is not only about the product portfolio, but about the use of various opportunities in general. For example, test, try, implement, come up with non-standard marketing activities, in this case, expanding the marketing tools portfolio.

Dr. Theodore Levitt from the Harvard Business School says that the company's most important asset is what customers think about it, what other people in the market think about it. In other words, your reputation, the words you are called with, are the most valuable thing you have.

You can pore over the classic or more modern version of 5Ps, launch super-campaigns, but if you make a misfire once, just in a second the information will spread all over the world: the Internet and social networks will do their work. Those who do nothing ever make mistakes, therefore everyone has the right to make a mistake. But everything will depend how correctly you can communicate about it to the consumer. The reputation of the brand will depend on this: it will recover or go downhill. You can come up with different stories, getting out of delicate situations, but it is worth remembering that in the past, marketing was necessary to create myths, now - to find the truth and actively share it with consumers.

Brian Tracy says that a brand is a guarantee: "If you work with me, buy from me, sell to me, meet with me, then the promises that I make are what I am myself!" Brand always starts with values ​​that are especially valuable to you. The most successful and well-known brands today are associated with such values ​​as quality, exclusivity, care for people, responsibility, innovation, leadership in their industry, technological excellence.

All marketing experts know that people make decisions about the purchase of goods or services emotionally but not based on logical judgments. But is it still 100% relevant today? More and more consumers are consciously approaching the choice of purchase both globally in the world and in Ukraine. In our country, this is also due to the economic situation: if a consumer buys a product, he wants to be sure that this is the best price-quality ratio, therefore, the reputation and reliability of the brand are very important.

In the past few years, brands have become concerned with such a concept as Customer Journey. If the purchase is not occurred spontaneously, then how does the buyer choose this or that product, where does he look for information, how does he decide to buy this exactly brand and not another one? Marketing experts draw complex schemes of this journey, from the moment of finding the right product to the long-term buyer relationship with the brand. Customer Journey displays the consumer's movement along the sales funnel, helping the brand to make successful marketing campaigns at every stage, influencing buyer mind that he decides to buy from you, not from a competitor.

Only a few years ago, if there was a strong enough brand, people were ready to buy something from you without asking about the price. If your brand was weak, people checked your quality, competence, argued with you about prices. Today, more and more consumers are testing for strength even strong brands. Doctors Scott and Caroline Bass in their book “Connect The Generations” write that Generations Z and Y do not have strong brand loyalty and easily switch from one brand to another. Moreover, generations Z and Y have developed immunity to traditional marketing, so they cannot be reached by the standard methods. A lot can be said about what a strong brand is based on. However, in the bottom line a strong brand is identical with the concept of integral brand. Integrity means you always tell the truth and always do what you say. Branding is a promise, and promise must always be honestly fulfilled.