Do not underestimate Market Research

Often we see a product that is thrown into the market does not respond well by the community. There are also products that have led the market, but because it was too late to anticipate the changes, the company eroded by new competitors. This is because many of our entrepreneurs are generally still rarely do market research.

Core concept of marketing is actually the identification of consumer needs, which in turn created and developed a product / service and then are matched with customer needs appropriately. This process must take place continuously, because the consumer market and it continues to beruabah and growing. This is what underlies the importance of the Research and Development.

How does the R & D understand consumers' needs appropriately? Obviously necessary scientific analysis tools, which can be accounted for both phases, methodology, data acquisition, and the results are scientifically as well. One area of applied science that combines marketing knowledge with the methodology of this research is market research.

Marketing Research is not a monopoly of market participants alone, currently the market research also needs to spread to non-profit organization also even political parties. As in the elections, several candidates for local leaders and political parties grabbed victory through market information. So that personal branding is built, the theme is removed, and the approach undertaken appropriate campaign.

In the business world itself we can take the example of successful motor matic. Why matic motor so booming in Indonesia? Because research shows that many of the women who toil and lazy ride motorcycles with a troublesome tooth gears. Even after product launch, it turns out the man-too much like him.

Try to compare it with our entrepreneurs. Moreover, who still lay with the world of research-research or marketing world. Once they find the 'bright idea', without doing their market research directly realize their ideas. Problems appropriate or not in accordance with the needs of the consumer's case nantilah.

What's worse, it did not use research, directly produced on a large scale without testing it first. The reason is very classic, so cepet profit. Consequently no profit in the can but instead received stump. If this is so important, why many employers are reluctant to do market research? The answer is simple, lazy and complicated to be done.

Because make no mistake, not just new products that you need to research. Determining the right price, choose where your product will be on display, advertising media that is relevant, until the color of packaging products also need to be researched. So, do not be surprised if the process of launching a new product can take a very long time. Here are 3 methods of marketing research are wont to do:

1. Questionnaire.

Marketing research questionnaire method can be done with paper surveys (interviews) or online. In general, the questionnaire is more likely to be answered if there is incentive (ie reward). Suppose that when McDonald's wanted to launch the 'ice cream cone', after the interview, the respondents are given rewards for 20ribu and given gifts.

2. Survey.

Shorter than the questionnaire survey. Surveys online will get a tremendous response if your method of marketing research in an interesting suguhkan. Through your website, you can enter a few questions (which is simple and easy to answer) to obtain comments and suggestions from web site visitors, especially shoppers. However, keep in mind! marketing research method using a telephone survey could be a terror for those who were eating quietly or nap.

3. FGD (Focus Group Discussion)

Focus group is a method of marketing research by using a small group of consumers is collected under the direction of a moderator, while the researchers recorded and record their observations on the response, reaction, and customer comments. Participants are usually paid for their time.

In the past I've FGD about Pantene products, ten respondents with one moderator and three researchers quite effective for this market research methods. But be careful if using this method of marketing research, the answers obtained from respondents are often biased and less representative.

So, before you create and launch the product, use market research methods to prevent failures. Once you have obtained the conclusion of the research, test and measurement used in small scale. The goal is that you know that the product is really ready to be thrown into the market. And no less important to monitor the market's progress is not too late for you to anticipate changes.

MARKET

A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby businesses sell their goods, services and labor to people in exchange for money. Goods and services are sold using a legal tender such as fiat money. This activity forms part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange items. Competition is essential in markets, and separates market from trade. Two persons may trade, but it takes at least three persons to have a market, so that there is competition on at least one of its two sides.^[1] Markets vary in size, range, geographic scale, location, types and variety of human communities, as well as the types of goods and services traded. Some examples include local farmers' markets held in town squares or parking lots, shopping centers and shopping malls, international currency and commodity markets, legally created markets such as for pollution permits, and illegal markets such as the market for illicit drugs.

In mainstream economics, the concept of a market is any structure that allows buyers and sellers to exchange any type of goods, services and information. The exchange of goods or services for money is a transaction. Market participants consist of all the buyers and sellers of a good who influence its price. This influence is a major study of economics and has given rise to several theories and models concerning the basic market forces of supply and demand. There are two roles in markets, buyers and sellers. The market facilitates trade and enables the distribution and allocation of resources in a society. Markets allow any tradable item to be evaluated and priced. A market emerges more or less spontaneously or is constructed deliberately by human interaction in order to enable the exchange of rights (cf. ownership) of services and goods.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which is a French word meaning "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in response to a perceived opportunity. The most obvious form of entrepreneurship is that of starting new businesses (referred as Startup Company); however, in recent years, the term has been extended to include social and political forms of entrepreneurial activity. When entrepreneurship is describing activities within a firm or large organization it is referred to as intra-preneurship and may include corporate venturing, when large entities spin-off organizations.

According to Paul Reynolds, entrepreneurship scholar and creator of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, "by the time they reach their retirement years, half of all working men in the United States probably have a period of self-employment of one or more years; one in four may have engaged in self-employment for six or more years. Participating in a new business creation is a common activity among U.S. workers over their course of their careers." And in recent years has been documented by scholars such as David Audretsch to be a major driver of economic growth in both the United States and Western Europe.

Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high value" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding (seed money) in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek annualized returns of 20-30% and more, as well as extensive involvement in the business. Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs. In more recent times, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to include elements not related necessarily to business formation activity such as conceptualizations of entrepreneurship as a specific mindset (see also entrepreneurial mindset) resulting in entrepreneurial initiatives e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge entrepreneurship have emerged.

SEGMENTATION, TARGETTING and POSITIONING

Companies offering their products to the general public. However, to gain maximum benefit market companies must choose what they want to serve.

A market consist of large indentifiable froup Within a market, with similar wants, purchasing power, geographical location, buying Attitudes, or buying habbits. Once the firm has Identified its market segment opportunities, is is ready to initiate market targeting. Here, marketers ecaluate EACH segment to determint how many and the which ones to target and enter.

Segmenting the market is the process of classifying certain categories bedasarkan. By segmenting your market you cans better match supply and demand. Segmenting based on geography, demographics, income level, psychographic, behavioral, user stats, levels of consumer, and customer loyalty status.
Targeting is the process of evaluating each segments attractiveness and selecting one or more characteristics to be served. In this process, companies considering whether to choose the mass segment, several segments, small segments, and segments are very small. Factors to consider in choosing a segment of the company's resources, variations in the company's products, product life cycle stage, market and strategy variations pesai.

After selecting a market segment, the next step should be done by the company is positioning. Positioning is how marketers influence customer's perceptions of a product on the service. The purpose of positioning that can be selected by the company, namely to strengthen and expand the company's current position, create a new position that has not been made by other companies, repositioned in the competition, and create exclusivity.

Decision theory

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Decision theory in economics, philosophy, mathematics and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision. It is very closely related to the field of game theory.

Normative and descriptive decision theory

Most of decision theory is normative or prescriptive, i.e., it is concerned with identifying the best decision to take, assuming an ideal decision maker who is fully informed, able to compute with perfect accuracy, and fully rational. The practical application of this prescriptive approach (how people actually make decisions) is called decision analysis, and aimed at finding tools, methodologies and software to help people make better decisions. The most systematic and comprehensive software tools developed in this way are called decision support systems.

Since people usually do not behave in ways consistent with axiomatic rules, often their own, leading to violations of optimality, there is a related area of study, called a positive or descriptive discipline, attempting to describe what people will actually do. Since the normative, optimal decision often creates hypotheses for testing against actual behaviour, the two fields are closely linked. Furthermore it is possible to relax the assumptions of perfect information, rationality and so forth in various ways, and produce a series of different prescriptions or predictions about behaviour, allowing for further tests of the kind of decision-making that occurs in practice.

What kinds of decisions need a theory?

Choice under uncertainty

This area represents the heart of decision theory. The procedure now referred to as expected value was known from the 17th century. Blaise Pascal invoked it in his famous wager (see below), which is contained in his Pensées, published in 1670. The idea of expected value is that, when faced with a number of actions, each of which could give rise to more than one possible outcome with different probabilities, the rational procedure is to identify all possible outcomes, determine their values (positive or negative) and the probabilities that will result from each course of action, and multiply the two to give an expected value. The action to be chosen should be the one that gives rise to the highest total expected value. In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli published an influential paper entitled Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk, in which he uses the St. Petersburg paradox to show that expected value theory must be normatively wrong. He also gives an example in which a Dutch merchant is trying to decide whether to insure a cargo being sent from Amsterdam to St Petersburg in winter, when it is known that there is a 5% chance that the ship and cargo will be lost. In his solution, he defines a utility function and computes expected utility rather than expected financial value.

In the 20th century, interest was reignited by Abraham Wald's 1939 paper^[1] pointing out that the two central concerns of orthodox statistical theory at that time, namely statistical hypothesis testing and statistical estimation theory, could both be regarded as particular special cases of the more general decision problem. This paper introduced much of the mental landscape of modern decision theory, including loss functions, risk functions, admissible decision rules, a priori distributions, Bayes decision rules, and minimax decision rules. The phrase "decision theory" itself was first used in 1950 by E. L. Lehmann.^{[citation needed]}

The rise of subjective probability theory, from the work of Frank Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti, Leonard Savage and others, extended the scope of expected utility theory to situations where only subjective probabilities are available. At this time it was generally assumed in economics that people behave as rational agents and thus expected utility theory also provided a theory of actual human decision-making behaviour under risk. The work of Maurice Allais and Daniel Ellsberg showed that this was clearly not so. The prospect theory of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky placed behavioural economics on a more evidence-based footing. It emphasized that in actual human (as opposed to normatively correct) decision-making "losses loom larger than gains", people are more focused on changes in their utility states than the states themselves and estimation of subjective probabilities is severely biased by anchoring.

Castagnoli and LiCalzi (1996),^{[citation needed]} Bordley and LiCalzi (2000)^{[citation needed]} recently showed that maximizing expected utility is mathematically equivalent to maximizing the probability that the uncertain consequences of a decision are preferable to an uncertain benchmark (e.g., the probability that a mutual fund strategy outperforms the S&P 500 or that a firm outperforms the uncertain future performance of a major competitor.). This reinterpretation relates to psychological work suggesting that individuals have fuzzy aspiration levels (Lopes & Oden),^{[citation needed]} which may vary from choice context to choice context. Hence it shifts the focus from utility to the individual's uncertain reference point.

Pascal's Wager is a classic example of a choice under uncertainty. The uncertainty, according to Pascal, is whether or not God exists. Belief or non-belief in God is the choice to be made. However, the reward for belief in God if God actually does exist is infinite. Therefore, however small the probability of God's existence, the expected value of belief exceeds that of non-belief, so it is better to believe in God. (There are several criticisms of the argument.)

Intertemporal choice

This area is concerned with the kind of choice where different actions lead to outcomes that are realised at different points in time. If someone received a windfall of several thousand dollars, they could spend it on an expensive holiday, giving them immediate pleasure, or they could invest it in a pension scheme, giving them an income at some time in the future. What is the optimal thing to do? The answer depends partly on factors such as the expected rates of interest and inflation, the person's life expectancy, and their confidence in the pensions industry. However even with all those factors taken into account, human behavior again deviates greatly from the predictions of prescriptive decision theory, leading to alternative models in which, for example, objective interest rates are replaced by subjective discount rates.

[edit] Competing decision makers

Some decisions are difficult because of the need to take into account how other people in the situation will respond to the decision that is taken. The analysis of such social decisions is more often treated under the label of game theory, rather than decision theory, though it involves the same mathematical methods. From the standpoint of game theory most of the problems treated in decision theory are one-player games (or the one player is viewed as playing against an impersonal background situation). In the emerging socio-cognitive engineering the research is especially focused on the different types of distributed decision-making in human organizations, in normal and abnormal/emergency/crisis situations.

The signal detection theory is based on the Decision theory.

Complex decisions

Other areas of decision theory are concerned with decisions that are difficult simply because of their complexity, or the complexity of the organization that has to make them. In such cases the issue is not the deviation between real and optimal behaviour, but the difficulty of determining the optimal behaviour in the first place. The Club of Rome, for example, developed a model of economic growth and resource usage that helps politicians make real-life decisions in complex situations^{[citation needed]}.

Paradox of choice

Observed in many cases is the paradox that more choices may lead to a poorer decision or a failure to make a decision at all. It is sometimes theorized to be caused by analysis paralysis, real or perceived, or perhaps from rational ignorance. A number of researchers including Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper have published studies on this phenomenon.^[2] This analysis was popularized by Barry Schwartz in his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice.

Statistical decision theory

Several statistical tools and methods are available to organize evidence, evaluate risks, and aid in decision making. The risks of Type I and type II errors can be quantified (estimated probability, cost, expected value, etc.) and rational decision making is improved.

One example shows a structure for deciding guilt in a criminal trial:

		Actual condition
		Guilty	Not guilty
Decision	Verdict of 'guilty'	True Positive	False Positive (i.e. guilt reported unfairly) Type I error
	Verdict of 'not guilty'	False Negative (i.e. guilt not detected) Type II error	True Negative

Corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also known as corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, responsible business, sustainable responsible business (SRB), or corporate social performance, is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its support to law, ethical standards, and international norms. Consequently, business would embrace responsibility for the impact of its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. Essentially, CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.

The practice of CSR is much debated and criticized. Proponents argue that there is a strong business case for CSR, in that corporations benefit in multiple ways by operating with a perspective broader and longer than their own immediate, short-term profits. Critics argue that CSR distracts from the fundamental economic role of businesses; others argue that it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing; others yet argue that it is an attempt to pre-empt the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational corporations. Corporate Social Responsibility has been redefined throughout the years. However, it essentially is titled to aid to an organization's mission as well as a guide to what the company stands for and will uphold to its consumers.

Development business ethics is one of the forms of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment.

In the increasingly conscience-focused marketplaces of the 21st century, the demand for more ethical business processes and actions (known as ethicism) is increasing. Simultaneously, pressure is applied on industry to improve business ethics through new public initiatives and laws (e.g. higher UK road tax for higher-emission vehicles).

Business ethics can be both a normative and a descriptive discipline. As a corporate practice and a career specialization, the field is primarily normative. In academia, descriptive approaches are also taken. The range and quantity of business ethical issues reflects the degree to which business is perceived to be at odds with non-economic social values. Historically, interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s, both within major corporations and within academia. For example, today most major corporate websites lay emphasis on commitment to promoting non-economic social values under a variety of headings (e.g. ethics codes, social responsibility charters). In some cases, corporations have re-branded their core values in the light of business ethical considerations (e.g. BP's "beyond petroleum" environmental tilt).

The term "CSR" came in to common use in the early 1970s, after many multinational corporations formed, although it was seldom abbreviated. The term stakeholder, meaning those on whom an organization's activities have an impact, was used to describe corporate owners beyond shareholders as a result of an influential book by R Freeman in 1984.

ISO 26000 is the recognized international standard for CSR (currently a Draft International Standard). Public sector organizations (the United Nations for example) adhere to the triple bottom line (TBL). It is widely accepted that CSR adheres to similar principles but with no formal act of legislation. The UN has developed the Principles for Responsible Investment as guidelines for investing entities.

Decision Making

Nugroho J. Setiadi said that decision making is the process of integration which combines the knowledge to evaluate two or more alternative behaviors, and select one of them. The result of this integration process is an option, which is presented as a desire to behave cognitively. According to Schiffman and Kanuk Meanwhile, the decision is selecting an action from two or more alternative choice.
there are four points of view in analyzing consumer decision making, namely:
1. Economic Perspective
This view is to see consumers as people who make decisions rationally. This means that consumers should know all the alternative products available and should be able to make ratings of each alternative is specified, the views of the usefulness and disadvantages and should be able to identify the best alternative.

2. Passive Viewpoint
This view says that consumers are basically resigned to its own interests and passively accept the promotional efforts of marketers.

3. Cognitive Perspective
According to this view the consumer is always looking for information processing and evaluate information about products and outlets.

4. Emotional Perspective
This view emphasizes emotion as the main driver so that consumers buy a product.


Consumer Decision Making Model :
1. Input
Component inputs are external influences as a source of information about particular products and affect the value associated with the product., Attitudes and consumer behavior. The main input is the marketing mix activities and socio-cultural influences.

2. Process
Components of the process of how consumers make decisions. In order to understand the process, must be understood some concepts related to psychology. Araea psychology is the internal influences that affect consumer decision-making process. Internal influences are motivation, perception, learning, personality and attitude. The decision making process by a consumerism consists of three stages namely the introduction of requirements, pre-purchase search and evaluation of alternatives.

3. Output
Component output refers to two kinds of post-decision activities closely related to each other, namely:
• purchasing behavior: that makes two types of purchases that is, try and repeat purchases.
• post-purchase evaluation: the most important component of post-purchase made is a reduction in the uncertainty of the selection done.

Brand Equity

Brand equity is a set of brand assets and liabilities associated with a brand, name, and symbol that add or subtract the value provided by a goods or services to the company or enterprise customers. Strong brand can already be certain to dominate the market, because the brand is the most valuable corporate asset, which can be used to predict survival.
According to David A. Aaker, there are four main elements of brand equity, namely:

Brand Awareness (brand awareness)
Brand awareness is the ability of a potential buyer to recognize, to recall a brand as part of a particular product category.

a. Top of Mind
Top of Mind describes the first brand that respondents remembered the first time called in question when asked about a product category.

b. Brand Recall
Brand Recall or admonishment back brand brands reflect what the respondent remembered after mentioning the brand was first mentioned.

c. Brand Recognition
Is the minimum level of brand awareness. This is important when a buyer choose a brand when purchasing.

d. Brand Unaware
Brand Unaware is the lowest level of brand awareness pyramid, where consumers are not aware of the existence of a brand.

Brand Association (brand association)
Brand Association is any impression that comes to mind someone related to her memory about a brand. Associations related to a brand is generally associated with a variety of the following:
a. Product attributes (product attribute)
b. Intangibles attributes (attributes intangible)
c. Customer's benefits (benefits to the customer)
d. Relative price (relative price)
e. Application (use)
f. User / customer (user / customer)
g. Celebrity / person (famous people / audience)
h. Life style / personality (lifestyle / personality)
i. Product class (class of products)
j. Competitors (competitors)
k. Country / geographic area (country / geographical area)

Perceived Brand Quality (impression of quality brand)
Perceived Brand Quality is the customer perception of quality or excellence of a product or service related to what is expected by the customer. Referring to the opinion of David A. Garvin, Perceived Quality dimension is divided into seven, namely:
a. Performance: involvement of the main operational characteristics.
b. Services: reflects the ability to provide service on these products.
c. Resilience: reflect the economic element of the product.
d. Reliability: consistency of performance that generated a product from one purchase to the next purchase.
e. Product Characteristics: additional parts of the product (feature).
f. Compliance with the specification: a view of the manufacturing process quality (no defects) in accordance with predetermined specifications and tested.
g. Results: The lead to the perceived quality involving six dimensions previously.

Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is a measure of the customer relationship to a brand. A customer who is loyal to a brand will not easily move their purchases to other brands, no matter what happens with the brand.
The level of brand loyalty are as follows:
a. price-sensitive buyers (switcher)
b. buyers who are habits (habitual buyer)
c. buyers are satisfied (satisfied buyer)
d. buyers who love the brand (the brand liking)
e. buyers who commit (Committed buyer)

human's tooth in wild fish

VIVAnews - An angler in the United States absurdly surprised when the fish caught, even biting hard. He, of course, scream and after reviewed these fish-like teeth to bite humans.

As reported by web.orange.co.uk edition dated September 24, 2010, Frank Yarborough was fishing on Lake Wylie, South Carolina. Not long ago threw the hook, a fish bite the bait and get caught.

Frank absurdly excited because the fish are caught is really great. The color is dark and weighs about 5 pounds with nearly half a meter long. Yarborough suspect it is a catfish.

He also put his hand into the water to take fish. However, he felt shocked and screamed as loud as didigit human bite. After review it rada rare fish. Diamemiliki teeth such as incisors, molars, and fangs like a human. Unlike the fish in the lake in general.

Rare fish caught and taken home. Yarborough did not think to fry. Until now still stored in the refrigerator.

Biologists believe the fish can be raised in the exotic pools. Robert Stroud, a freshwater fishery biologist Department of Natural Resources in South Carolina, has confirmed the existence of the fish samples. Fish samples were sent to determine the type of fish species mysteriously.

WBTV Stroud said: "Maybe this fish is a species with pomfret, which allegedly originated from the Amazon River basin of South America is a very common type of fish in the ornamental fish .."

Pomfret is still a close relative with ferocious fish in the Amazon River, Piranha. Piranha is a fish species and non-native warm water of Lake Wylie.

Social Responsibility in Marketing

Most marketing organizations do not intentionally work in isolation from the rest of society. Instead they find that greater opportunity exists if the organization is visibly accessible and involved with the public. As we’ve seen, because marketing often operates as the “public face” of an organization, when issues arise between the public and the organization marketing is often at the center. In recent years the number and variety of issues raised by the public has increased. One reason for the increase is the growing perception that marketing organizations are not just sellers of product but also have an inherent responsibility to be more socially responsible, including being more responsible for its actions and more responsive in addressing social concerns.

Being socially responsible means an organization shows concern for the people and environment in which it transacts business. It also means that these values are communicated and enforced by everyone in the organization and, in some cases, with business partners, such as those who sell products to the company (e.g., supplier of raw material for product production) and those who help the company distribute and sell to other customers (e.g., retail stores).

In addition to insuring these values exist within the organization and its business partners, social responsibility may also manifest itself in the support of social causes that help society. For instance, marketers may sponsor charity events or produce cause-related advertising.

Marketers who are pursuing a socially responsible agenda should bear in mind that such efforts do not automatically translate into increased revenue or even an improved public image. However, organizations that consistently exhibit socially responsible tendencies may eventually gain a strong reputation that could pay dividends in the form of increased customer loyalty.

Social responsibility

Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that business should not function amorally but instead should contribute to the welfare of their communities and an entity whether it is a government, corporation, organization or individual has a big responsibility to society at large. This responsibility can be "negative", meaning there is exemption from blame or liability, or it can be "positive," meaning there is a responsibility to act beneficently (proactive stance).

Businesses can use ethical decision making to secure their businesses by making decisions that allow for government agencies to minimize their involvement with the corporation. (Kaliski, 2001) For instance if a company is proactive and follows the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) guidelines for emissions on dangerous pollutants and even goes an extra step to get involved in the community and address those concerns that the public might have; they would be less likely to have the EPA investigate them for environmental concerns. “A significant element of current thinking about privacy, however, stresses "self-regulation" rather than market or government mechanisms for protecting personal information” (Swire , 1997) Most rules and regulations are formed due to public outcry, if there is not outcry there often will be limited regulation.

Critics argue that Corporate social responsibility (CSR) distracts from the fundamental economic role of businesses; others argue that it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing; others argue that it is an attempt to pre-empt the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational corporations (Carpenter, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2009).
Contents

* 1 Socially responsible
* 2 Emerging Normative Status of Social Responsibility
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links
* 6 Further reading

Socially responsible

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also known as corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, responsible business, sustainable responsible (SRB), or corporate social performance,[1] is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure their adherence to law, ethical standards, and international norms. Business would embrace responsibility for the impact of their activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stockholders and all other members of the public sphere

For each business, different measures are taken in consideration to classify a business as "socially responsible". Each business attempts to reach different goals. There are four areas that should be measured regardless of the outcome needed: Economic function, Quality of life, Social investment and Problem solving.[1] that are trying to be achieved should be measured to see if it meets with the cost guidelines that the business is willing to contribute.

Emerging Normative Status of Social Responsibility

Social responsibility as a non-binding, or soft law principle has received some normative status in relation to private and public corporations in the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Universal Declation on Bioethics and Human Rights developed by the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee particularly in relation to child and maternal welfare.(Faunce and Nasu 2009) The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is developing an international standard to provide guidelines for adopting and disseminating social responsibility: ISO 26000 - Social Responsibility. Due for publication in 2010, this standard will "encourage voluntary commitment to social responsibility and will lead to common guidance on concepts, definitions and methods of evaluation." (ISO, 2009) The standard describes itself as a guide for dialogue and action, not a constraining or certifiable management standard.

Brand Concept part II

Brand identity

A product identity, or brand image are typically the attributes one associates with a brand, how the brand owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand - and by extension the branded company, organization, product or service. The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and the brand identity. Effective brand names build a connection between the brand personality as it is perceived by the target audience and the actual product/service. The brand name should be conceptually on target with the product/service (what the company stands for). Furthermore, the brand name should be on target with the brand demographic.^[6] Typically, sustainable brand names are easy to remember, transcend trends and have positive connotations. Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand's differentiation from competitors.

Brand identity is what the owner wants to communicate to its potential consumers. However, over time, a product's brand identity may acquire (evolve), gaining new attributes from consumer perspective but not necessarily from the marketing communications an owner percolates to targeted consumers. Therefore, brand associations become handy to check the consumer's perception of the brand.^[7]

Brand identity needs to focus on authentic qualities - real characteristics of the value and brand promise being provided and sustained by organisational and/or production characteristics.^[8][9]

Visual Brand Identity

The visual brand identity manual for Mobil Oil (developed by Chermayeff & Geismar), one of the first visual identities to integrate logotype, icon, alphabet, color palette, and station architecture to create a comprehensive consumer brand experience.

The recognition and perception of a brand is highly influenced by its visual presentation. A brand’s visual identity is the overall look of its communications. Effective visual brand identity is achieved by the consistent use of particular visual elements to create distinction, such as specific fonts, colors, and graphic elements. At the core of every brand identity is a brand mark, or logo. In the United States, brand identity and logo design naturally grew out of the Modernist movement in the 1950’s and greatly drew on the principles of that movement – simplicity (Mies van der Rohe’s principle of "Less is more") and geometric abstraction. These principles can be observed in the work of the pioneers of the practice of visual brand identity design, such as Paul Rand, Chermayeff & Geismar and Saul Bass.

Brand parity

Brand parity is the perception of the customers that all brands are equivalent.^[10]

Brand Concept

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness refers to customers' ability to recall and recognize the brand under different conditions and link to the brand name, logo, jingles and so on to certain associations in memory. It helps the customers to understand to which product or service category the particular brand belongs to and what products and services are sold under the brand name. It also ensures that customers know which of their needs are satisfied by the brand through its products.(Keller) 'Brand love', or love of a brand, is an emerging term encompassing the perceived value of the brand image. Brand love levels are measured through social media posts about a brand, or tweets of a brand on sites such as Twitter. Becoming a Facebook fan of a particular brand is also a measurement of the level of 'brand love'.

Brand Promise

The marketer and owner of the brand has a vision of what the brand must be and do for the consumers^[2].

Global Brand

A global brand is one which is perceived to reflect the same set of values around the world. Global brands transcend their origins and creates strong, enduring relationships with consumers across countries and cultures.

Global brands are brands sold to international markets. Examples of global brands include Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Marlboro, Levi's etc.. These brands are used to sell the same product across multiple markets, and could be considered successful to the extent that the associated products are easily recognizable by the diverse set of consumers.

Benefits of Global Branding

In addition to taking advantage of the outstanding growth opportunities, the following drives the increasing interest in taking brands global:

• Economies of scale (production and distribution)
• Lower marketing costs
• Laying the groundwork for future extensions worldwide
• Maintaining consistent brand imagery
• Quicker identification and integration of innovations (discovered worldwide)
• Preempting international competitors from entering domestic markets or locking you out of other geographic markets
• Increasing international media reach (especially with the explosion of the Internet) is an enabler
• Increases in international business and tourism are also enablers

Global Brand Variables

The following elements may differ from country to country:

• Corporate slogan
• Products and services
• Product names
• Product features
• Positionings
• Marketing mixes (including pricing, distribution, media and advertising execution)

These differences will depend upon:

• Language differences
• Different styles of communication
• Other cultural differences
• Differences in category and brand development
• Different consumption patterns
• Different competitive sets and marketplace conditions
• Different legal and regulatory environments
• Different national approaches to marketing (media, pricing, distribution, etc.)

Local Brand

A brand that is sold and marketed (distributed and promoted) in a relatively small and restricted geographical area. A local brand is a brand that can be found in only one country or region. It may be called a regional brand if the area encompasses more than one metropolitan market. It may also be a brand that is developed for a specific national market, however an interesting thing about local brand is that the local branding is mostly done by consumers then by the producers. Examples of Local Brands in Sweden are Stomatol, Mijerierna etc..^{[3] [4]}

Ambient Brand

An Ambient Brand is a virtual space, defined by social needs and values and occupied by a community of like minded people. Unlike a traditional brand, is entirely independent of products and their parent corporations. Instead it exists as a shared values space where consumers gather, converse and ultimately transact with organizations that are in alignment with the values associated with that community. Corporations do not create ambient brands. They must qualify for inclusion within them by demonstrating that they share the values and will service the interests of their associated communities. The brands develop organically as a result of emerging social and cultural codes and are materialized through peoples ability to organize around them through the use of mainly virtual communities on the web.

Brand name

Relationship between trade marks and brand

The brand name is quite often used interchangeably within "brand", although it is more correctly used to specifically denote written or spoken linguistic elements of any product. In this context a "brand name" constitutes a type of trademark, if the brand name exclusively identifies the brand owner as the commercial source of products or services. A brand owner may seek to protect proprietary rights in relation to a brand name through trademark registration. Advertising spokespersons have also become part of some brands, for example: Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet tissue and Tony the Tiger of Kellogg's. Local Branding is usually done by the consumers rather than the producers.

Types of brand names

Brand names come in many styles.^[5] A few include:
Acronym: A name made of initials such as UPS or IBM
Descriptive: Names that describe a product benefit or function like Whole Foods or Airbus
Alliteration and rhyme: Names that are fun to say and stick in the mind like Reese's Pieces or Dunkin' Donuts
Evocative: Names that evoke a relevant vivid image like Amazon or Crest
Neologisms: Completely made-up words like Wii or Kodak
Foreign word: Adoption of a word from another language like Volvo or Samsung
Founders' names: Using the names of real people like Hewlett-Packard or Disney
Geography: Many brands are named for regions and landmarks like Cisco and Fuji Film
Personification: Many brands take their names from myth like Nike or from the minds of ad execs like Betty Crocker

The act of associating a product or service with a brand has become part of pop culture. Most products have some kind of brand identity, from common table salt to designer jeans. A brandnomer is a brand name that has colloquially become a generic term for a product or service, such as Band-Aid or Kleenex, which are often used to describe any kind of adhesive bandage or any kind of facial tissue respectively.

BRAND

A brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.

Some people distinguish the psychological aspect, brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand, of a brand from the experiential aspect.

The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service.

People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. Orientation of the whole organization towards its brand is called brand orientation.

Careful brand management seeks to make the product or services relevant to the target audience. Brands should be seen as more than the difference between the actual cost of a product and its selling price - they represent the sum of all valuable qualities of a product to the consumer. There are many intangibles involved in business, intangibles left wholly from the income statement and balance sheet which determine how a business is perceived. The learned skill of a knowledge worker, the type of mental working, the type of stitch: all may be without an 'accounting cost' but for those who truly know the product, for it is these people the company should wish to find and keep, the difference is incomparable. the sucks and it influence the world and on the kids all over the world

A brand which is widely known in the marketplace acquires brand recognition. When brand recognition builds up to a point where a brand enjoys a critical mass of positive sentiment in the marketplace, it is said to have achieved brand franchise. One goal in brand recognition is the identification of a brand without the name of the company present. For example, Disney has been successful at branding with their particular script font (originally created for Walt Disney's "signature" logo), which it used in the logo for go.com.

Consumers may look on branding as an important value added aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain attractive quality or characteristic (see also brand promise). From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services also command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic, store-branded product), people may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the quality of the brand or the reputation of the brand owner.

Brand Equity

A brand is a name or symbol used to identify the source of a product. When developing a new product, branding is an important decision. The brand can add significant value when it is well recognized and has positive associations in the mind of the consumer. This concept is referred to as brand equity.

What is Brand Equity?

Brand equity is an intangible asset that depends on associations made by the consumer. There are at least three perspectives from which to view brand equity:

• Financial - One way to measure brand equity is to determine the price premium that a brand commands over a generic product. For example, if consumers are willing to pay $100 more for a branded television over the same unbranded television, this premium provides important information about the value of the brand. However, expenses such as promotional costs must be taken into account when using this method to measure brand equity.

• Brand extensions - A successful brand can be used as a platform to launch related products. The benefits of brand extensions are the leveraging of existing brand awareness thus reducing advertising expenditures, and a lower risk from the perspective of the consumer. Furthermore, appropriate brand extensions can enhance the core brand. However, the value of brand extensions is more difficult to quantify than are direct financial measures of brand equity.

• Consumer-based - A strong brand increases the consumer's attitude strength toward the product associated with the brand. Attitude strength is built by experience with a product. This importance of actual experience by the customer implies that trial samples are more effective than advertising in the early stages of building a strong brand. The consumer's awareness and associations lead to perceived quality, inferred attributes, and eventually, brand loyalty.

Strong brand equity provides the following benefits:

• Facilitates a more predictable income stream.
• Increases cash flow by increasing market share, reducing promotional costs, and allowing premium pricing.
• Brand equity is an asset that can be sold or leased.

However, brand equity is not always positive in value. Some brands acquire a bad reputation that results in negative brand equity. Negative brand equity can be measured by surveys in which consumers indicate that a discount is needed to purchase the brand over a generic product.

Building and Managing Brand Equity

In his 1989 paper, Managing Brand Equity, Peter H. Farquhar outlined the following three stages that are required in order to build a strong brand:

1. Introduction - introduce a quality product with the strategy of using the brand as a platform from which to launch future products. A positive evaluation by the consumer is important.

2. Elaboration - make the brand easy to remember and develop repeat usage. There should be accessible brand attitude, that is, the consumer should easily remember his or her positive evaluation of the brand.

3. Fortification - the brand should carry a consistent image over time to reinforce its place in the consumer's mind and develop a special relationship with the consumer. Brand extensions can further fortify the brand, but only with related products having a perceived fit in the mind of the consumer.

Alternative Means to Brand Equity

Building brand equity requires a significant effort, and some companies use alternative means of achieving the benefits of a strong brand. For example, brand equity can be borrowed by extending the brand name to a line of products in the same product category or even to other categories. In some cases, especially when there is a perceptual connection between the products, such extensions are successful. In other cases, the extensions are unsuccessful and can dilute the original brand equity.

Brand equity also can be "bought" by licensing the use of a strong brand for a new product. As in line extensions by the same company, the success of brand licensing is not guaranteed and must be analyzed carefully for appropriateness.

Managing Multiple Brands

Different companies have opted for different brand strategies for multiple products. These strategies are:

• Single brand identity - a separate brand for each product. For example, in laundry detergents Procter & Gamble offers uniquely positioned brands such as Tide, Cheer, Bold, etc.

• Umbrella - all products under the same brand. For example, Sony offers many different product categories under its brand.

• Multi-brand categories - Different brands for different product categories. Campbell Soup Company uses Campbell's for soups, Pepperidge Farm for baked goods, and V8 for juices.

• Family of names - Different brands having a common name stem. Nestle uses Nescafe, Nesquik, and Nestea for beverages.

Brand equity is an important factor in multi-product branding strategies.

Protecting Brand Equity

The marketing mix should focus on building and protecting brand equity. For example, if the brand is positioned as a premium product, the product quality should be consistent with what consumers expect of the brand, low sale prices should not be used compete, the distribution channels should be consistent with what is expected of a premium brand, and the promotional campaign should build consistent associations.

Finally, potentially dilutive extensions that are inconsistent with the consumer's perception of the brand should be avoided. Extensions also should be avoided if the core brand is not yet sufficiently strong.