External scholarly sources required: 3

Word count requirement for initial discussion board post: 250

Word count requirement for each response to classmate: 100

Ideal Employers International Paper or St. Jude

In this unit, you are learning about branding strategies organizations use to differentiate products and services from those offered by the competition.

• Using the brand concepts from the unit and information on strategies used for brand positioning, share your company’s brand (current employer or ideal employer) and position.
• What recommendations would you make based on the topics and concepts in this unit?

Student 1 Vu, Sandy,

A company’s brand plays an essential role in a business success. “A brand is a combination of name, symbol, term, or design that identifies a specific product,” (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014). Strategizing a brand for a company is important so that people can recognize the brand and companies would want to purchase their products over another company. Companies like Toyota, Nike, or Walmart have strategized their brand so that many know their brand mark. Any consumers that travel around the U.S. recognize these companies especially Walmart. There are many consumers who are probably dissatisfied with Walmart services. However, they are one of the most known stores and have been successful over the years.

Walmart’s brand is known to be more affordable than its competitors and providing a good value for their customers. According the Ettenson (2008), a strong brand helps communicate the company and its offerings are relevant and uniquely able to meet customer needs. There are a few things that attributes to brand such as people, place, and things. Walmart has over 3,500 supercenters in the United States. This provides an easy access for consumers to go to a physical location to purchase their items and they also offer delivery for those who order online. Walmart provides a variety of products to meet all of their demographics. They offer various brands of groceries, clothing, electronics, and home goods for consumers to have a selective option to choose from. On the other hand, there are certain small towns that appreciate business like Walmart opening in their area. The reason is because they attract customers who are willing to drive thirty minutes or more in order to save money. Walmart impacted small town tremendously, as Walmart impacted sales tax. (McCuine, 1994).

Student2 Rubert, Christine,

“A brand is a combination of name, symbol, term, or design that identifies a specific product” (Ferrell & Hartline, 2014, p. 203). They have to come up with a brand strategy that keeps them going and a good brand strategy has certain components that they should have. There are seven components to a powerful brand strategy, which are resonance, resilience, results, resolution, radiation, redefinition, and recognition (Somma, 2019). When I think of brand for Carhartt, I think of the name that they have made for themselves with their bibs and jackets as well as the big yellow “C” that is on their products. The company has been around for 130 years which shows that they have made a big enough name for themselves to continue to be successful. An organization’s brand isn’t just about their name and symbols that go along with them, but it is also about the value that it brings to consumers (Grubor & Milovanov, 2017). Carhartt isn’t just about the symbol and name but it is about their products that are made to last. The company isn’t focused on just a few certain products, instead they have a huge list of products to meet the need of everyone in different climate areas. I believe that their brand has impacted people that work in the environment more than anything because that is what most of their clothes are focused on. Carhartt has to keep their brand alive and growing. They have plenty of competition out there that can make similar items.