Identifying products

Developing a product's features is only part of a marketer's job. Marketers must also identify products so that consumers recognize them. Three important tools for this task are branding, packaging and labeling.

Branding Products

Coca-Cola is the best-known brand in the world. Indeed, some Coke executives claim that if all the company's other assets were obliterated, they could go to the bank and borrow $100 billion on the strength of the brand name alone. Brand names such as Coca-Cola and emblems such as the McDonald's golden arches are symbols that characterize products and distinguish them from one another. Branding is a process of using symbols to communicate the qualities of a particular product made by a particular producer. Brands are designed to signal uniform quality: Customers who try and like a product can return to it by remembering its name.

Adding Value through Brand Equity

Many companies that once measured assets in terms of cash, buildings, equipment, and inventories now realize that a strong brand is an equally important asset. Widely known and admired brands are va­luable because of their power to attract customers. Those with higher brand equity have greater brand awareness and loyalty on the part of consumers and larger market shares than competing brands (and are perceived to have greater quality). Because a brand adds value to a product, marketers manage brands to increase that value. In other words, they build equity in a brand by maintaining or improving brand awareness—the brand name that first comes to mind when you consider a particular product category—and perceived quality in much the same manner that you build up ownership equity in your house by maintaining or improving its condition and features. What company, for example, comes to mind when you need to ship a document a long way on short notice. For many people FedEx has the necessary brand awareness and, accordingly, high brand equity.

Practice 1. Read the text and answer the questions.

1. What is one of the main tasks of a marketer?

2. What are the ways of carrying out this task?

3. What s branding?

4. Why is the brand name so important for a company?

5. How do companies improve their brand awareness?

Practice 2. Give the Russian equivalents to the words and word-combinations from the text:

- develop a product’s features

- labeling

- brand names

- distinguish from one another

- attract customers

- loyalty on the part of consumers

- in other words

- brand awareness

- ownership equity

Practice 3. Match up the words on the left with the definitions on the right.

1. asset A. a class of goods which is the product of a particular company/producer

2. brand B. an ordinary share on which no fixed amount of interest is paid

3. tool C. the worth of something in money

4. in terms of D. not a long time in advance

5. equity E. the property of a person/company that has value and may be sold to pay a debt

6. on short notice F. destroy; remove from one’s mind

7. loyalty G. from the point of view

8. value H. the quality of being faithful to smb./sth., always giving support

9. obliterate I. something necessary for doing a job

Practice 4. Complete the sentences using the words from the table:

packaging distinguish obliterate attract

brand name assets tool

1. The ...... of this soap is “Flower”.

2. Complicated … increases the price of food.

3. The company’s liquid … are really enormous.

4. It’s important to … between tax avoidance and tax evasion.

5. The company is trying to… overseas investors.

6. Nothing could … the memory of those tragic events.

7. Rob didn’t have the right … to repair the engine.

Practice 5. Complete the table:

noun verb adjective

market

loyal

notice

identify

valuable

borrow

Text 4

Pre-reading tasks:

1. What electronics is considered the best in quality?

2. Are you a regular user of PC?