Branding and Communication Strategies in Healthcare Organizations

The Indian healthcare industry is third largest economy in the world. India's competitive advantage also lies in the increased success rate of Indian healthcare sectors. All organizations benefit from great branding, but it is more important in healthcare than any other industry. Creating brand is an important object in marketing in order to reach to maximum customers. Organizations across the world and in India are constantly striving to achieve excellent branding to attain top recall value of healthcare. Physicians, dentists, physiotherapist, nurses, nursing home owners, hospital administrators have many challenges regarding branding and communications of healthcare. It is an ideal for energizing their healthcare organization and sustain financially and operationally. This chapter explains what is brand, its strategies, how to develop branding of healthcare organization and how to manage brands. Many illustrations and case studies are described in this chapter.

Observational Research in Advertising, Marketing, and Branding

In Indian market research industry, historically qualitative techniques are less prominently used as a measure of marketing decisions as compared to their quantitative counterparts. This is attributed to a multitude of reasons – sample sizes and representation being two of the more prominent ones. However, qualitative research is rapidly gaining popularity and relevance as the consumer turns more evolved and media literate. Thus, observational research has slowly started to gain acceptance as a reliable methodology, however, sparse its adoption may be in the current scenario. There is a little work that collates the advantages of observation and prescribes ways in which new technology can be embedded for better elicitation and actionable insight especially when it concerns the Indian market. This chapter explores the existing academic and theoretical constructs, real life experiences of industry experts and attempts to elucidate the various advantages of the observational approach, the limitations and explore possible ways the entire market research experience can be enhanced.

Impact of Digital Communication on Consumer Behaviour Processes in Luxury Branding Segment

With a boom in digital marketing and the luxury sector in India, research in both the segments have become crucial for mining insights that guide consumer buying behaviour. However, both these constructs are comparatively new and have not been researched much. Hence, research in this field will help marketers across the corporate and academic sectors to understand deeper insights about consumer decision making process. This research will help in understanding how different vehicles of digital communication impact consumer behavior processes in the luxury brand apparel segment. The data for this research has been collected using an online questionnaire from respondents across India. Hence, this chapter will enable the readers in identifying which digital vehicles are most suitable for the different stages of the consumer behaviour process when marketing to luxury consumers; identifying the ranking of digital vehicles during consumer buying behaviour process; and analyzing the impact of various digital communications at different stages of the consumer behaviour process.

Studying Celebrity Engagement on Social Media

Leveraging a celebrity for instant recognition and visibility or building significant brand credibility and driving sales has been a long-established recipe for success over the years. Engaging a reputed face for brand promotion has ever been an exorbitant investment. Digital or social media as a communication platform has not only driven brands to create a desired recall without the burden of unreasonable spends, but has also strengthened and empowered celebrity engagement like never before by throwing a versatile array of options for individual branding and visibility. This chapter aims to explore and analyse the engagement of celebrity on different social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter etc. with special reference to Bollywood. It delves into understanding the engagement patterns; aspects of celebrity evoked; brand impact; media celebrity brand fit, and intended target audience whether it leads to action or Influences perceptions.

Exploring Gratification Factors in Visual Food Communication

This chapter throws light on the impact of gratification factors in visual food communication on consumer decision making. This research has been done with special reference to ‘South Indian Cuisine'. It will be evident that if an eatery promotes and presents these regional foods with a specific strategy, it will attract more consumers than it had expected. People basically relate well to the pictures of food, specifically because in countries like India, emotion is one majorly used appeal by brands to lure their customers. Hence, even in food industry, a person before ordering a particular dish relates to its pictures in the menu or anywhere else because there are certain gratification factors in visual communication of food that connects the consumer with the reason as to why they want to eat a particular dish. The aim of this research is to understand that which particular gratification factor will highly influence which particular south-Indian food item.

The Impact of Brand Variance on Gender in FMCG Sector

With the rapidly changing times and technology, more and more companies are moving towards brand extensions to acquire a competitive advantage. There are various factors enhancing brand equity while extending the brand into new categories like brand awareness, personality, lifestyle, relationship with the consumers, cultural differences among consumers and demographics. Demographic of a brand is the most important personality characteristic which leads to most easily extractable variables like gender, age and class. Gender plays a significant role in shaping the brand personality of a brand and its subsequent variants. (Levy, 1959). This chapter relies on the relationship between gender based brand personality and brand equity drawn from the study titled “The effect of Brand Gender on Brand Equity”. (Lieven, 2014). This research paper concludes that brand androgyny(masculinity or feminity of the brand) was negatively related to brand associations i.e., brand equity is not influenced by gender associations related to the brand or the product category.. So, this chapter explores whether there is a relationship between gender and different variants of the brand. Also, should advertisers design gender focused messages for the different brand variants. The methodology chosen for this research is quantitative in nature. The independent variable in this research is gender and the dependent variable is brand variance. This research paper shows that there is no impact of brand variants on gender. Advertisements need to be designed in a manner that target both males and females psychologically rather that demographically especially gender based.

Branding Culture

Telugu film industry, known as Tollywood is gaining popularity in the domain of regional film industry in India. Over the years, the industry through its actors, remaking and dubbing to various languages films; a tendency of culture and brand has emerged. Sometimes celebrated artists brand the films and vice versa. Brand endorsements and in film advertisements have become the order of the day. The current chapter attempts to explore Telugu cinema as culture and brand by analyzing the cases of the films like Pokiri, Magadheera, Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. In addition, the study tries to understand the timeline of Telugu cinema, keeping the culture and branding in mind.

The Impact of Digital Word-of-Mouth Communication on Consumer Decision-Making Processes

This chapter throws light on the impact of digital word-of-mouth on consumer decision making process. The background review for this study elaborates on the growing popularity of social networking sites among users and the necessity for a brand to connect to its existing as well as prospective customers via fashion bloggers and not just through brand owned pages and posts or online ads. Users trust and rely on these fashion bloggers and influencers for their day-to-day intake latest trends, upcoming styles, new brands, and new product offerings. The aim of this research is to find out which is most popular online platform for browsing fashion apparel content and to what extent does digital word-of-mouth impact consumer decision making.

Understanding Urban Millennial Consumer Gratification for Branded Indian Web Series

The Indian millennial generation is increasingly demanding and consuming online video contents which form a considerable percentage of digital content. The current chapter sheds light on the factors which play a key role in the growing popularity of the Indian web series, a recent addition to the online video content, among the millennial generation. A study of the past literature draws a picture of the millennial generation, their inclination towards the Internet and their preferred form of content including the web series. It also, elaborates on the nine clusters identified by Rubin as a part of uses and gratification theory to understand the factors which draw the millennial to these web series. By the end of the chapter, the readers will have a deep understanding of the following - the gratification received by the millennial generation under the nine clusters identified by Rubin in reference to the Indian web series and the top four motivating factors behind the consumption of the Indian web series.

Evolution of Brand Culture

This chapter is the result of a deep-seated question in the mind of the authors- What is the essence of a business firm? The search of answer led the authors from insight to insight and at one point it became clear that roots of business success are deep into the world history. Related to realization above and based on the wider knowledge about business was the second question: What single attribute of a business entity contained most of its essence? In other words, when a business is born, what factors impart its unique identity? These questions appeared significant and set the authors to explore title theme, that is, the story of journey through centuries of history. The focus was on two separate forces which become infinitely intriguing when brought together: brand and culture. This chapter is a brief story of the antecedents and consequences of (both qualitative and quantitative) differences in brand culture and its ability to shape the life cycle of specific organization.