Brand image

American Marketing Association (AMA) defined a brand as "a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors". Brand image is the perception of the brand held by the market – what is thought and felt about the brand real and imagined.

The product brand may be linked to the corporate brand as it is for many companies such as Coca-Cola, Virgin, IBM, Cadbury, MacDonald, Microsoft, and Marks and Spencer.

Brand image plays an important role in the development of a brand because the brand image associated with the reputation and credibility of the brand which later become the ‘guideline’ for the consumer audience to try and use a product or service then creating a particular experience that will determine whether the consumer will be into brand loyalist, or simply an opportunist.

European countries such as Italy, Spain, and France dictate the fashion trends of the European footwear market thus creating specific shoe brand image for consumers. It is the key of how consumers maketheir choices after gathering information about the particular brand and the alternatives. The main buyers in the European footwear market are the teens, young people and young professionals/graduates both men and women.
Brand image

Product poisoning

How customers perceive the relative value of a product in comparison by using important product differentiation criteria is referred to as the product position.

Product positioning shall be defined as the decisions and activities intended to create and maintain a certain concept of the firm’s product relative to competitive brands in customers’ minds.

The ultimate aim of positioning is to secure sales figures or in more precise terms, the right product positioning helps consumers to make their purchase decision in favor of a certain product.

When marketers introduce a product, they try to position it so that it appears to have the characteristics that the target market most desires.

The simplest way to understand product positioning is by using a grid called a perceptual map that illustrate the relative position of competing products as perceived by customers.
Product poisoning