The Power Of Mother Brands
The article hovers around the power of ‘Mother-Brands’ in the Indian market while also emphasizing on the cases where ‘sub-brands’ played a huge rule in changing the image of mother-brand. Mother-brands like Tata, Dabur, Hero Honda, Maruti, Bajaj and Godrej invariably serve as a hallmark of quality, reliability and leadership to consumers, and the transfer of trust onto products that bear one or the other of these names is relatively easy. These mother-brands impart confidence to consumers and create comfort in buying a product. They also create instant recognition for the corresponding sub-brands thereby reassuring indecisive customers about the choice they made. The article also talks about the survey which study consumer behaviour vis-a-vis confidence in a sub-brand, and concludes that sub-brands that consumers strongly associate with the mother brand have done well in the survey. For instance, Dabur Amla, Vatika and Hajmola, which are traditionally been sold as ‘Dabur products’, have debuted in the survey in Top 100. At the same time the company's juice brand, Real, has consciously been built as a standalone, de-linked from the mother brand. Real hasn't even managed breaking into the Top 200 list, despite being in the survey for three years. Explaining on the same line Six Tata brands figure in this year's Top 100 list, with Tata Salt at No 3 and Tata Tea at No 15. This all explains why even mother-brands go for charging brand royalty from their sub-group companies. The article at the same time talks about the role of ‘flagship’ sub-brand that imbues values to the mother brand, which then gets passed on to other sub-brands, examples being ‘Maruti 800’, ‘Splendour’ and ‘Pulsar’. The article ends with Godrej example which shows how a symbiotic system of equity transfer is developed between the mother brand and its portfolio of brands. For Godrej Industries, while some categories such as appliances and hair colours draw on the power of...
View Full Essay