Marketing

Advertising professionals realize that the heart of any campaign is the product and the position it holds in people's minds. Products and their brand names are newsmakers themselves. Wendy'shamburgers and California raisins (particularly when they sing and dance) are objects of our attention and interest.
Understanding the complexities of a brand identity and its position is no easy task. Agood case in point is the activities of Coca-Cola in the last few years. After a $4 million research project, Coca-Cola brought out a new Coke formula in May 1985 with the intention of retiring the oldformula. To everyone's surprise, the intense feelings of American consumers toward old Coke were such that the old formula had to be kept on the market, renamed Coke Classic.
When they first appeared,generics were seen as threats to brand products, particularly for products for which lower price might be a primary criterion for purchase. Although generics enjoyed growth during the recession ofthe early 1980s, they have now dropped back to their selling level at introduction. In their growth stage, however, the threat they posed to brands stimulated major manufacturers to bring out lower-costbrands that were more competitive with the generics.
One of the most controversial areas of product concepts is the brand extension. A new product gets to share the name of an older, establishedbrand. Today brand extensions occur not only within the company, but companies are licensing their brandnames to all kinds of products in the hope of increasing brand awareness. Department stores havewhole sections devoted to Coca-Cola clothing.
Market segmentation is the selection of groups of people who will be most receptive to a product. The most frequent methods of segmenting includedemographic variables such as age, sex, race, income, occupation, education, household status, and geographic location; psychographic variables such as life-style, activities, interests, and opinions;...