In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is perceived as planned and secures its objectives. Developing a good relationship with target markets is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; its look, price, and packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the target markets share with the brand, and also the relationships they have with the brand. A brand manager would oversee all aspects of the consumer's brand association as well as relationships with members of the supply chain.
Definitions
In 2001, Hislop defined branding as "the process of creating a relationship or a connection between a company's product and emotional perception of the customer for the purpose of generating segregation among competition and building loyalty among customers". In 2004 and 2008, Kapferer and Keller respectively defined it as a fulfillment in customer expectations and consistent customer satisfaction.
Brand management uses an array of marketing tools and techniques in order to increase the perceived value of a product (see: Brand equity). Based on the aims of the established marketing strategy, brand management enables the price of products to grow and builds loyal customers through positive associations and images or a strong awareness of the brand.
Brand management is the process of identifying the core value of a particular brand and reflecting the core value among the targeted customers. In modern terms, a brand could be corporate, product, service, or person. Brand management builds brand credibility and credible brands only, can build brand loyalty, bounce back from circumstantial crisis, and can benefit from price-sensitive customers.
History
The earliest origins of branding can be traced to pre-historic times. The practice may have first begun with the branding of farm animals in the middle East in the neolithic period. Stone Age and Bronze Age cave paintings depict images of branded cattle. Egyptian funerary artwork also depicts branded animals. Over time, the practice was extended to marking personal property such as pottery or tools, and eventually some type of brand or insignia was attached to goods intended for trade.
Around 4,000 years ago, producers began by attaching simple stone seals to products which, over time, were transformed into clay seals bearing impressed images, often associated with the producer's personal identity thus giving the product a personality. Bevan and Wengrow have argued that branding became necessary following the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE, when large-scale economies started mass-producing commodities such as alcoholic drinks, cosmetics and textiles. These ancient societies imposed strict forms of quality control over commodities, and also needed to convey value to the consumer through branding. Diana Twede has argued that the "consumer packaging functions of protection, utility and communication have been necessary whenever packages were the object of transactions" (p. 107). She has shown that amphorae used in Mediterranean trade between 1500 and 500 BCE exhibited a wide variety of shapes and markings, which provided information for purchasers during exchange. Systematic use of stamped labels dates appears to date from around the fourth century BCE. In a largely pre-literate society, the shape of the amphora and its pictorial markings functioned as a brand, conveying information about the contents, region of origin and even the identity of the producer which were understood to convey information about product quality.
A number of archaeological research studies have found extensive evidence of branding, packaging and labelling in antiquity. Archaeologists have identified some 1,000 different Roman potters' marks of the early Roman Empire, suggesting that branding was a relatively widespread practice.