In today’s increasingly competitive market and diverse consumer choices, a brand is no longer just a label or logo for a company’s products, but also a comprehensive reflection of its culture, value, and reputation. With the upgrading of consumer demand and the improvement of information transparency, brand has become the key for enterprises to stand out in the red ocean market.
A brand not only represents the corporate image, but also profoundly influences customer loyalty, product premium ability, and market expansion speed. From a strategic perspective, building and maintaining a brand is no longer the exclusive task of the marketing department, but an important lever for enterprises to build core competitiveness.
This article will focus on the relationship between brand building and core competitiveness, sort out the basic connotation of brand, analyze the constituent elements of core competitiveness, and analyze how brand can help enterprises build core advantages from multiple dimensions, and then propose feasible brand building strategies and development paths.
Brand is the overall perception and impression that consumers have of a company and its products or services. It includes both perceptible visual symbols such as names, logos, and packaging, as well as intangible assets such as culture, trust, and emotional connections that are difficult to quantify.
The role of a brand is mainly reflected in:
Improve customer recognition and reduce selection costs;
Convey emotional value and enhance customer stickiness;
Building trust mechanisms to reduce transaction risks;
Support premium capability and enhance profit margin.
(1) Brand positioning: Determine the unique position of the enterprise in the market, clarify the target audience and value proposition.
(2) Brand identity system: including corporate logo, slogan, visual identity system (VI), etc., it is the foundation for conveying a consistent image of the brand.
(3) Brand Communication and Management: Continuously convey brand value and establish brand awareness through advertising, public relations, social media, and other channels.
(4) Brand experience and customer relationship management: Customers form a comprehensive impression of the brand throughout the entire process of product, service, and after-sales. A good experience promotes brand loyalty and word-of-mouth communication.
Core competitiveness is the unique ability of an enterprise to distinguish itself from its competitors and maintain a dominant position in the market for a long time. It has the following characteristics:
Scarcity: difficult to replicate or replace in the short term;
Non imitability: involving unique resources, processes, culture, etc., difficult to learn externally;
Sustainability: The ability to create long-term value for the enterprise.
The core competitiveness of a company usually comes from the following dimensions:
Technological innovation: research and development capabilities and intellectual property rights;
Organizational capability: efficient internal operational mechanism;
Talent advantage: professional and high-quality team;
Cultural identity: forming internal cohesion and external attraction;
Brand influence: Forming consumer mental barriers and market dominance.
Strong brands can reduce consumers’ uncertainty, enhance their sense of security, and promote repeat purchases and the establishment of long-term relationships. For example, consumers choose Apple among numerous electronic products largely based on their trust in its brand quality and design philosophy, rather than just technical specifications.
Brands not only shape the sense of product value, but also have the ability to achieve premium pricing. For example, for clothing with the same function, Nike or Uniqlo can set prices several times higher than ordinary products based on their brand influence, which directly affects the profitability and cash flow health of the enterprise.
A brand is a soft moat that can help businesses achieve differentiated competition. It is not limited to the competition of product functions, but establishes a deep connection with consumers through concepts, stories, and emotional values, thus forming a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate.
Once a brand has formed influence, it can provide trust endorsement for cross-border expansion of enterprises. For example, Xiaomi started in the field of mobile phones and successfully extended its brand ecosystem to multiple categories such as smart homes, televisions, and wristbands with its positioning as a “cost-effective technology brand”.
To establish a brand, one must first stand accurately. Clear brand positioning is the starting point of market awareness. Enterprises should start from three aspects: target users, competitive landscape, and product characteristics, find differentiation opportunities, and continuously strengthen them.
Brand communication should form a unified voice and visual image, maintain consistency in different channels and scenarios, and ensure that the brand image is “stabilized” in the minds of customers. Fragmented expression can dilute brand value and even lead to misunderstandings.
A brand is not only an external image, but also an internal cohesion. Enterprise employees are the first disseminators of the brand, and the recognition and practice of the brand concept by internal employees directly affect the external performance of the brand.
The brand building in the new era emphasizes “interaction” and “co creation”. By involving users in brand stories, product design, word-of-mouth communication, and other aspects, enterprises can enhance user stickiness, form brand communities, and transform social power into competitiveness.
Digitization is an important means of contemporary brand building. Enterprises should leverage technologies such as social media, content marketing, and big data analysis to accurately understand user needs, optimize brand communication strategies, and achieve efficient linking and rapid response.
Brand should not be an accessory to enterprise development, but should be deeply integrated with enterprise strategy to form a two-way drive.
The integration of brand strategy and enterprise strategy: from product design to customer service, from sales channels to social responsibility, brand thinking should be embedded in all aspects of enterprise operation to serve the long-term goals of the enterprise.
Brand value evaluation and intangible asset management: Enterprises should establish a scientific brand value evaluation system, incorporate brand assets into financial and management decisions, and achieve measurable, operable, and growth of the brand.
The manifestation of brand influence in market expansion and capital level: Strong brands have important value in exploring new markets, obtaining investment, and enhancing valuation, and a large part of the market value of many enterprises comes from their brand assets.
A brand is not only an external symbol, but also a comprehensive expression of an enterprise’s internal capabilities, culture, and market trust. In the process of building a company’s core competitiveness, the role of brand runs through multiple levels, including customer perception, product premium, and strategic extension.
Building a strong brand is a systematic project that requires both precise strategic vision and sustained investment and operation. Only by treating the brand as the core asset of the enterprise and integrating it into every step of its development, can we truly use the power of the brand to create a sustainable core competitive advantage for the enterprise.
This article "How to build the core competitiveness of enterprises through brand building" by AcloudEAR. We focus on business applications such as cloud ERP.
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