1. Review of foreign literature

In foreign countries, the first brand to appear was the Spanish nomadic tribes, who put their own brands on all their livestock to facilitate bartering with others. Livestock is different.

The English bomd still means mark and brand.

Brands appeared in Europe in the 13th century AD. At that time, European guilds were prevalent. Jewelry and jade merchants, woolen weavers, leather merchants, etc. formed their own guilds, requiring members to use certain brands on their products. Individual craftsmen and merchants must also sign and engrave their own marks on the products. The purpose is to supervise the quality of the products and to maintain the guild's external monopoly. Shoddy manufacturing and counterfeiting of other people's products must be investigated.

In the 14th century Europe, there were laws that punished those who forged wine labels by hanging.

Legend has it that a king once promulgated a law that punished those who forged other people's marks by cutting off their right hands.

By the 16th and 17th centuries, guilds had become the backbone of the European economy, and the use of guild marks, responsibility marks, and personal marks was very common.

For producers, these marks are to facilitate the sale of their own goods to distinguish them from the same goods of other producers, and buyers have gradually developed the habit of recognizing the brands when shopping.

In this way, the medieval period brought this mark into the scope of national legal control.

Modern brands emerged after the establishment of the capitalist system in the 19th century.

The development of the capitalist economy, the expansion of production scale, and the growth of commodity trade require a mark that can be universally used to identify commodities, that is, a name needs to be given in addition to the natural name of the commodity. The brand is composed of This is widely popular.

The most important difference between modern brands and early brand marks is that it is no longer a simple mark, but has become an industrial property that can be transferred and bought and sold, and is an intangible property protected by law.

Since the mid-19th century, Western European countries have included brands within the scope of law to protect them.

The study of brands began in 1955, by Burleigh B. Gardner

and Sidney J. Levy (stdncy·J·Le Dong officially started when he published the article "Products and Brands" in the "Harvard Business Review".

Since then, the number of literature on brand research has increased sharply, mainly involving the following aspects: 1. The nature of the brand: 2. Research on the reasons why consumers choose brands: 3. Brand creation and management: 4. Brand equity

1. The nature of the brand

Bo. The article "Products and Brands" by Burleigh B. Gardner and Sidney J. Levy in the Harvard Business Review is innovative .

In this paper written in 1955, they emphasized the need to understand the nature of brands, that is, brands not only have functional value, but also have emotional value.

Gardner. He Levy pointed out: The creation of a brand should transcend difference and functionalism, and it should focus on developing a personal value (personality).

This personality is carefully defined and respected by your target customers.

Brand personality should be clear and intimate to target customers, especially when other competitors' products have similar functions, which will help the brand's products to succeed.

Therefore, one of the tasks of brand management is to establish the brand's personality and creatively use advertising resources to invest in the long-term benefits of the

enterprise.

2. Research on the reasons why consumers choose brands

Many foreign scholars have conducted research on the reasons why consumers choose brands.

Sheth, Newlnan and Gros (1991) studied consumer behavior in choosing products and proposed T theory of consumption values ??(Theory of Consumption values) ), pointing out the five consumption values ????that influence consumers to choose products.

They are: (l) functional value (unctionalvalue), (2) conditional value (ConditionalValue), (3) social value (soeialValue), (4) emotional value (Emotional, value), (5) intellectual value. They believe that: (l) consumer choice is a function of multiple consumption

values; (2) in a given choice environment, five consumption values The effects are different;

(3) The five consumption values ??are independent.

They found through surveys and research that consumers mostly give up

less important values ??in exchange for more critical values ??①.

One of the contributions of this paper is to introduce conditional value and knowledge value into the components of consumption value, explaining why some consumers retain the right to choose all brand products, and The phenomenon of being unwilling to continue purchasing the same brand of products.

An important factor affecting brand choice is consumer needs.

Since consumers' pursuit of brand value

will change over time, the brand's image must also be constantly adjusted accordingly.

Park, Jaworski, and MacNeice (Park, Jaworski, and Maclenny 51986) proposed an image management model guided by the concept of strategic brand (strategic brand coneept-image management) .

, helping managers not only choose the ideal brand image, but also continuously adjust and manage the brand image as time changes.

They believe that a brand is a comprehensive association and feeling that provides functional, symbolic and experiential benefits.

Many foreign scholars have conducted research on this. Consumers’ functional needs are defined as the motivation to find products

in order to obtain the utility of the product. The functional benefits of the brand are Used to solve the problem of externally generated consumer demand

.

The symbolic needs of products are to achieve internally generated psychological needs such as self-improvement and role status.

Consumer behavior theory can be used to clarify the relationship between symbolic needs and consumption. The important relationship between brands and

adapt the brand's symbolic benefit design to the psychological needs of consumers.

Experiential needs refer to the need

The product is to provide sensory pleasure.

Use diverse theories and experiential consumption theory to clarify the importance of experiential needs in consumption, and enable brand experiential benefit design to meet these internally generated needs of consumers. Required

Required.

Therefore, researchers usually attribute products to one of the above three types of needs. For example, lawn mowers are functional products, and cars are symbolic products. Food is an experiential product.

3. Brand creation and management

Nanneng and Kubo used the theories of anthropology and psychology to propose brand creation when studying advertising and culture. Emotional themes in.

They analyzed the different characteristics of American advertising methods and European advertising methods. American advertising is a tool for information dissemination, while European advertising is the embodiment of myths and rituals. They argued that: European advertising methods are colorful , it allows people to see how brands evolve as culture

changes.

Brown (1995) proposed: In the information society, because consumers are surrounded by too much information, the key to creating a brand image should be the quality rather than the quantity of information materials.

This requires companies to effectively communicate some key features of brand information and create very powerful associations, making the brand a set of shorthand symbols that convey product characteristics.

As more people enter the information society, people need more filtered information that is pleasant and exciting, rather than unattractive portrayals of reality.

Therefore, creating an attractive brand image and strengthening the mental and emotional relaxation and joy of short-term escapism are particularly important for brand building.

4. Brand Equity

Feldwiek (1996) gave a systematic analysis and research on the explanation of brand equity.

.

He believes that it is wrong to look for a single operational concept of brand equity, because brand equity is necessarily a very inclusive and vague concept.

These concepts include the following general questions: How well are we doing now? How well can we expect to do in the future? Such questions cannot be answered by any one

measurement method Give a complete answer.

Therefore, the concept of brand equity should have multiple meanings, or multiple brand

equity concepts to meet the needs of practical application.

The British Interbrand regards brand equity as brand value, that is, when a brand is sold

it should have a definite price: the brand As an intangible asset, the monetary value listed on the balance sheet.

They have designed a formula to measure brand value, which is widely used.

2. Domestic Literature Review

Since the 1990s, Chinese academic circles have begun to pay attention to the study of brands.

The research results can

be divided into the following categories:

1. The nature and characteristics of brands

Pioneer in Chinese brand research Ai Feng (1997) believes that brands have the following five characteristics:

(l) Brand is the unity of intangible and tangible.

Brands or famous brands often refer to famous brand products and famous brand enterprises.

In fact, they include tangible assets and intangible assets. Intangible and tangible are mutually transformed. , the intangible is initially formed by the tangible. But once it is formed, it has relative independence and can be transformed into something tangible.

We should pay attention to intangible assets and promote the transformation between intangible and tangible assets.

(2) Brand is the unity of finite and infinite.

Intangible assets do not mean unlimited assets.

The brand value under certain circumstances can be directly evaluated and can be traded.

The brand itself can

continuously increase in value. If your famous brand becomes better and better, and your famous brand enterprise becomes bigger and bigger, then you

The brand value will grow accordingly, and in principle it can grow indefinitely.

(3) Brand is the unity of simplicity and complexity.

Any complex brand is simple, because it is simple and clear.

Consumers can easily find a product they like in the vast ocean of commodities.

But this kind of

simplicity is also an advanced simplicity.

Its pattern already contains various indicators of the product and manufacturer.

Brand

It is by no means just a trademark graphic, although a brand is inseparable from a trademark.

(4) Brand is the unity of strength and vulnerability.

Once a brand is registered, it is protected by national law.

Brands cannot be blown away by wind, damaged by rain, destroyed by fire, or eaten by insects. But brands are also very fragile. What they are most afraid of are two things: one is to rebrand themselves; One is someone else's counterfeit.

(5) Brand is the unity of material and spirit. The formation of brand is the process of unification of material and spirit.

A famous brand product is both a material achievement and the crystallization of labor; It is a spiritual achievement, the crystallization of wisdom and kindness.

The spirit of famous brands

is a very valuable spirit. It actually represents and embodies the spirit of being fully and thoroughly responsible for consumers

and for products. The spirit of excellence and the spirit of continuous pursuit of progress in career.

2. Research on the role of brand development

This is in response to the large influx of foreign brands into the Chinese market in the early 1990s. This study was conducted under the background that Chinese enterprises have not yet fully understood

brands. Jiang Xiaojuan and Liu Shijin (1996) believe that China’s economy has bid farewell to the era of “comprehensive shortage” and has begun to enter the era of quality competition and brand In the competition stage, the famous brand strategy is a powerful lever to realize the transformation of the economic system and economic growth mode, because industrial restructuring with famous brand products and advantageous enterprises as the leader is conducive to the reform of state-owned enterprises and the strategic structural adjustment of the state-owned economy, thus promoting The transformation of the economic system; the essence of industrial reorganization driven by famous brand products and advantageous enterprises is survival of the fittest, which is conducive to the transformation of economic growth patterns.

3. Brand creation and protection

Brand creation is the implementation of the famous brand strategy. In the early and mid-1990s, foreign brands in China

market share The market share is constantly expanding, and Chinese famous brands have been bought out and swallowed up by foreign brands and have withdrawn from the market.

Against this background, promoted by the central and local governments at all levels, ***, enterprises and scholars** *Study on how to create famous brands in China. Yang Baosan (1997) proposed that quality, advertising, scale and talents are the four strategic elements of the systematic project of cultivating famous brand products.

4. Brand management and brand design

Tan Xu and Lu Taihong (1998) summarized effective brand names as: developing a naming strategy; based on naming war

Briefly develop a brand name; list the compiled brand list and attach test results; conduct a fully detailed legal search

and other four steps.

Huang Shengbing and Lu Taihong (2000) studied the independent brand model (product brand) and the company brand model (enterprise brand), and analyzed the influencing factors of choosing these two models. , and pointed out that the independent brand model comes from differentiation, and the company brand model mainly comes from standardization. Enterprises must make effective choices based on the external environment and their own factors.

Zhang Weinian and Li Jichun (1999) pointed out that the market is changing rapidly, and successful business operations require more innovation

rather than simple repetition; companies should take the following points into account when formulating brand extensions Decision-making criteria: (l) Is the brand's positioning proposition still applicable? (2) Is it possible to transfer the brand's assets? (3) Can different types of products be adopted? Sales through the same channel and promotion together?

3. Several typical brand theories

(1) Brand image theory

The so-called brand image ① exists in people The cluster of images and concepts in the mind is the sum of knowledge about the brand and the main attitude towards the brand.

Brand image relies more on the interpretation in the minds of consumers than the product itself.

The brand image theory proposed by advertising guru Ogilvy once influenced the working strategies of the American advertising industry throughout the 1960s and still has a profound influence today.

Ogilvy The "brand image theory" mainly has the following points:

(l) Create differences.

The more similarities there are between brands, the less rational considerations there are in choosing a brand.

(2) Establish personality.

Ogilvy believed that image refers to personality, which can make products stand up in the market, but it can also make them untenable if used improperly.

It is the overall character of the brand that ultimately determines its market position, rather than the trivial differences between products.

(3) Reflect yourself.

Brand image reflects the buyer's self-image.

(4) Long-term contribution.

Every ad is a long-term investment in your brand.

Therefore, advertising must maintain a consistent style and image.

(5) Comprehensive factors.

There are many factors that affect brand image, such as its name, packaging, price, advertising style, sponsorship, length of time on the market, etc.

(6) Long-term goals.

Brand image is a long-term strategy and cannot be hastily rolled out.

At the same time, precisely because of its long-term nature, it is extremely difficult to change an old image that has been formed over many years.

(2) Brand Positioning Theory'

Positioning was first proposed by the famous American marketing experts A. Reese and J. Quotezi in the early 1970s.

After that, it was widely used in the sub-marketing field and became a specialized term that must be covered in marketing textbooks.

The concept of brand positioning began in the advertising industry in the 1970s. Its main idea is as follows: There is a vacancy in the human mind.

Let manufacturers fight for it. If consumers have vacancies in their minds, If the seat is vacant, positioning is easy; however, if it is already occupied by competitors, positioning will be difficult.

Therefore, in order to occupy a certain position in the minds of consumers, manufacturers must reposition themselves in the competitive market.

Regarding how to carry out brand positioning and the principles of positioning, He Jiaxun described it in detail in the book "Brand Image Planning". The main contents are as follows:

(l ) executes brand identity.

When a brand's positioning exists, the brand's identity and value proposition can be fully developed and have systematic context and depth.

(2) Target the target consumers.

Brand positioning must set a specific communication target, and these specific targets may be only a part of all the target targets of the brand.

(3) Actively spread the brand image.

Brand positioning can be seen as a bridge between brand identity and brand image, and can also be seen as a tool to adjust the relationship between brand identity and brand image.

(4) Create the differentiated advantage of the brand.

Brand positioning essentially demonstrates its advantages over competitors. By conveying differentiated information to consumers, the brand attracts consumers' attention and awareness, and occupies a unique and useful position in consumers' minds. value position.

(3) Brand property theory

David Icke’s brand property theory① believes that a brand is mainly composed of five asset elements, that is, brand reputation

degree, quality awareness, brand association, brand loyalty and other exclusive assets.

Brand equity is a part of value that goes beyond the tangible entity of the product. It is linked to the brand name, brand

logo, brand awareness, and brand loyalty, and can The value that brings benefits to the enterprise belongs to the type of intangible assets.

Brand assets are closely linked to brand name and brand identifiers. If the brand name and brand identifiers change, the brand assets will also change. The relevant items in the corporate balance sheet will also change. The content will also need to be adjusted accordingly.

Brand assets have three characteristics: monetary value, intangible assets, and perceptibility.

Brand equity is corporate capital that represents a specific brand symbol. It is a value that transcends production, the commodity itself and all tangible assets

Although brand assets are intangible, they can often bring and create value-added effects faster than tangible capital.

The task of brand operators is to establish and continuously enhance the five major assets of brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty.

Arranged according to the importance of each asset element in brand assets, they are brand loyalty, brand awareness, quality perception, brand association and other exclusive assets.

The highest level of brand management is trust and loyalty between producers and consumers.