BRANDING DECISIONSAND

WARRANTY STATEMENT

BY: YUVRAJ MAHESHWARI

BRANDING• The topic of branding has been attracting increasing

attention and interest in the hypercompetitive marketplace.

• Increasing competitive pressures have made loyalty and thus, profitability important goals for practitioners.

• Branding is the personality endorsement of a Brand that identifies a product, service or company.

• Branding lets the people to distinguish the products on psychological aspect, brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, attitudes, and so on that people become linked to the brand.

WHY BRANDING

• Deliver Your Message Clearly• Helps the companies to charge more for the services

provided.• Proper branding can result in higher sales.• Create Business Credibility.• Connect the Customer to the Product.• Motivate the Buyer.• Concretes User Loyalty.

Service Branding

As well said by certain researchers the service branding is more critical than the goods branding.

IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING IN CASE OF SERVICES

• It relates to ``Tangibilizing the Intangible’’ & hold the key to Services Marketing.

• Branding a service can help consumers by helping to assure them of a uniform level of service quality.

• The characteristics that consumers can determine and evaluate prior to purchase. Due to the unique characteristics of services, consumers have a difficult time evaluating the content and quality of a service prior to, during, and after the consumption of the service.

• The relative lack of search attributes in the vast majority of services makes the purchase task more complex and riskier than for goods.

• Consumers typically use a risk-reduction technique in purchasing products.

• Branding aids the service provider by elevating the service above the commodity level to differentiate the service relative to competing brands.

• Consumers rely heavily on extrinsic cues, such as brand names, in their evaluation of products prior to purchase.

The Four I’s of Services

Intangibility They cannot be held, touched, or seen before

the purchase decision.Difficult for consumers to evaluate as they

tend to be a performance rather than an object.

Marketers need to make services tangible or show their benefits.

The Four I’s of Services

Inconsistency Services depend on the people who provide them – their quality varies with each person's capabilities and day-to-day performance.

More of a problem with services than with tangible goods – problems can be reduced through standardization and training.

The Four I’s of Services

Inseparability Consumers cannot (and do not) separate the

deliverer of the service from the service itself.The amount of interaction between the consumer and

the service provider depends on the extent to which the consumer must be present to receive the service.

Some services, such as banking, can now be delivered electronically, often requiring no face-to-face consumer interaction and therefore a more consistent experience.

The Four I’s of Services

Inventory Inventory problems exist with goods because many

items are perishable and there are costs associated with its handling.

With services, inventory costs are more subjective and are related to idle production capacity (the service provider is available but there is no demand).

The inventory cost of a service is the cost of the person used to provide the service along with any needed equipment.

IMPACT OF SERVICE BRANDING ON FOUR I’s OF SERVICES

• Quality Assurance• Inventory Management

Service Quality Assurance

• Service quality is a comparison of expectations with performance.

High service quality will meet customer needs whilst remaining economically competitive.

• Improved service quality may increase economic competitiveness.

• Service quality is an achievement in customer service.• Customers form service expectations from past

experiences, word of mouth and advertisement.• Customers compare perceived service with expected

service in which if the former falls short of the latter the customers are disappointed.

For example:- in the case of TAJ Hotels, Resorts and Palaces, wherein TAJ remaining the old world, luxury brand in the five-star category, the umbrella branding was diluting the image of the TAJ brand because although the different hotels such as Vivanta by Taj- the four star category, Gateway in the three star category and Ginger the two star economy brand, were positioned and categorised differently, customers still expected the high quality of TAJ from all their properties.

WARRANTY

• A warranty is your promise, as a manufacturer or seller, to stand behind your product. It is a statement about the integrity of your product and about your commitment to correct problems when your product fails.

• There are two types of warranties:-> Implied warranty> Express Warranty

Implied Warranties

Implied warranties are unspoken, unwritten promises, created by state law, that go from you, as a seller or merchant, to your customers. Implied warranties are based upon the common law principle of "fair value for money spent," There are two types of implied warranties that occur in consumer product transactions. They are the implied warranty of merchantability and the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.

Express Warranties

Express warranties can take a variety of forms, ranging from advertising claims to formal certificates. An express warranty can be made either orally or in writing. While oral warranties are important, only written warranties on consumer products are covered by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. (The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is the federal law that governs consumer product warranties).

What Your Warranty Should Include

A written warranty must contain certain basic information about its coverage. Your warranty must include information about:

• What parts of the product or what types of problems the warranty covers (and, if necessary for clarity, what parts or problems it does not cover);

• What the period of coverage is;• What you will do to correct problems (and, if necessary for

clarity, what you will not do);• How the customer can get warranty service; and• How state law may affect certain provisions of the warranty

What Your Warranty Should Not Include

• Promotional statements, instructions to service agents.

• Extraneous material in a warranty may confuse customers about the purpose of the document.

How to Determine Whether Your Warranty is "Full" or "Limited”

• Determining whether your warranty is a "full" or "limited" warranty is not difficult. Basically, if  each of the following five statements is true about your warrant's terms and conditions, your warranty is a full one:

• You will provide warranty service to anyone who owns your product during the warranty period.

• You will provide warranty service free of any charge, including such costs as returning the product or removing or reinstalling the product when necessary.

• You will provide, at the consumer's choice, either a replacement or a full refund if you are unable, after a reasonable number of tries, to repair your product.

• You will provide warranty service without requiring that consumer return a warranty registration card.

• You will not limit the duration of implied warranties.

If any of these statements Is not true, then your warranty is limited.

• Why the product will not fail.• The actions taken by the customer if the

products fails:1.Repair2.Replace3.Compensate