Symbolic use of brands

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing grade: 2 University of Vienna (Marketing ) course: Special Topics in Fashion and Brand Marketing language: English abstract: Increasingly brands are seen as important in creating individual identity a sense ofachievement and individuality for consumers. It is clear that positioning a brandtrough a clear and consistent image building campaign is a cornerstone of brandmarketing.It is also evident that certain brand dimensions and associations lead to increasedmarketplace recognition and economic success for brand owners as a result thevalue consumers place on them. Marketers spend millions of dollars each year toidentify well defined strong brand images and to support them.A company's economic superiority is frequently implied by the strength of its brandname giving it the ability to differentiate itself and improve its competitiveness.(Nykiel 1997) Park Jaworski and MacInnis (1986) noted that consumer needs could be classifiedin functional or symbolic needs. The functional needs are related to specific andpractical consumption problems whereas symbolic needs are related to self imageand social identification. (Subodh Bhat 1998)Therefore they mentioned that all brand should have a brand concept which is anoverall abstract meaning that identifies a brand.Also there are different types of motivations among each individual and thesemotivations drives their needs either to be functional or symbolic in nature. Thusfunctional needs of consumers could be exploited with a functional brand onepositioned with a functional brand concept. A brand could be also positioned as asymbolic brand for consumers who whish to enhance their self image or their socialimage. (Park 1991)