Branding Strategies in the Hair Dressing Sector (Essay Sample)

Branding Strategies in the Hair Dressing Sector
Branding Strategies in the Hair Dressing Sector
1.Introduction
One important marketing strategy to achieve sustained competitive advantage for the firms is to build their brand identity in the minds of the customers. It is shown in studies that the brand building is very essential for building customer relationships with the firms, which in turn, helps to make the businesses profitable (Alexander et al, 2002). Thus, the business strategy and the willingness of the firms to invest in the programs, which are required for the customers' needs to be reflected in the brand identity of the firms (Alexander et al, 2002).
The main elements of building brand identity are brand positioning, brand message communication, brand performance delivery and the brand equity leveraging (Keller, 2000). In the brand positioning, the focus is on the value building related to the features, tangible and intangible attributes, the benefits and operations of the products. In the brand message communication, the focus is on advertising campaigns, themes, celebrities, events, shows and customers. In the brand performance delivery, the focus is on the product and service performance, customer satisfaction, customer care and customer delight. In the brand equity leveraging, the focus is on the brand awareness, perceived loyalty, brand awareness and the brand association (Kotler and Keller, 2006). In this paper, the branding strategies in the hairdressing sector are discussed.
2. 2.Branding Strategies -The Case of Hair Dressing Sector
One main brand positioning strategy used by the firms in the hairdressing sector to achieve sustained competitive advantage include the line brand strategy which consists of the offer extended to the products of different categories under one brand name synergy( Dahlen and Lange, 2008). For example, the hair treatment variations can be extended offers for the purpose of brand positioning in the minds of the customers ( Dahlen and Lange, 2008) . The main brand positioning strategies used in the hair dressing sector include logo and slogan creation, style guide creation , attractive signage installation and website creation ( salonbuilder.com, 2014 ).These are helpful in making the customers understand the psychological values of the services and their features, tangible and intangible attributes, the benefits and operations of the services.
The brand positioning needs to done in such a way that it needs to be relative to the other competitors in the area. Moreover, the brand positioning needs to be based on the requirements of the customer base. These requirements can be identified through methods like direct conversations with the customers, observations or surveys. Whatever be the method, the requirements of the customer need to be clearly reflected in the brand positioning strategy.
The main brand message communication strategies include the email marketing of the website of hair salon, registering the business with saloonseeker.com, website promotion through organic search engine optimization and the client base enhancement through regular advertising methods ( salonbuilder.com, 2014). The main advertising methods for enhancing the client base include the pay per click regional web advertising, direct mail advertising, yellow page advertising, advertising through radio, television, magazines and newspapers and advertising through the social media. The other online advertising methods include creating a blog for the salon and advertising through you tube regarding the salon.
In addition to the regular advertising methods, there are creative advertising methods, which include the incentive system development for the customers to refer about the saloon services to the friends and relatives as well as the gift certificates or donations to a charity organization (salonbuilder.com, 2014). This in turn, helps to motivate the customers themselves as the brand ambassadors of the hair salons, which helps to grow the business profitably. Across all these marketing communication channels, there needs to be consistency in the message delivered to the customers and needs to be consistent with the overall band image of the saloon.
The brand performance delivery techniques in the hair dressing sector include the creation of the main attributes, qualities and beliefs of the businesses in the minds of customers through the better quality of services provided at an affordable cost or the high quality services that are matching with the high costs( salonbuilder.com, 2014 ).
In the brand equity techniques, the main strategy is to create the brand awareness and perceived loyalty in the minds of customers . This is possible only through offering high quality products. For example, the study by Quentin (2014) showed that the hair salon market in China, especially the chair stores faced many survival challenges. Due to the absence of regulations for the hair salons in China, there were many common features for the hair salons resulting in the poor performance of these stores. These include the following. Most stores avoided the aspect of brand awareness creation in the minds of customers and focused only on the promotion strategies of the businesses. Thus, the services offered were of poor quality resulting in the low customer base to most hair salons. This affected the chain stores particularly since the message of the poor quality services of one store was easily spreaded through word of mouth communication by the customers themselves resulting in the closure of the rem...