Brand Equity and Customer Based Brand Equity

Brand equity

In marketing, is the worth of a brand in and of itself — i.e., the social value of a well-known brand name. The owner of a well-known brand name can generate more revenue simply from brand recognition, as consumers perceive the products of well-known brands as better than those of lesser-known.

Classmate became the largest Notebook brand in the country. Together, Classmate and Paperkraft offer a range of products in the Education & Stationery space to the discerning consumer, providing unrivalled value in terms of product & price.

Classmate and Paper kraft have become a natural extension of the consumer. Meticulous understanding of consumer needs helped creating a relevant and comprehensive portfolio satisfying the needs of different sets of consumers.

 At present, the stationery business in India is worth over Rs 15,500 crore, with notebook as the largest segment estimated to be worth over Rs 7,500 crore.  In the past few years, the industry has seen a growth of 4.5- 5% and Classmate  has clocked revenues of Rs 1,000 crore in terms of consumer spends.

It has developed a portfolio of world-class products through sustained investments in brand building. Going forward, it will leverage their competencies, expertise, innovations and brand communication strategies to stay ahead in the market.

 Classmate has always catered to the requirements of the target group by introducing variants. This helped classmate to strengthen the loyalty factor and this helped in establishing the emotional connect with the brand

Customer Based Brand Equity:

Classmate’s aim was to complete the basket of stationery for a child who uses notebooks. It also gave more touch points to interact with consumers; so they got into pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners and geometry boxes. In the last 2 year-and-a-half, they have got into art stationery. Success with notebooks and brand strength empowered classmate to get into other segments along with their established distribution strength. Geometry boxes are a segment where they have about 20% market share of the industry; this has been an extremely successful product for them. At the same time, there are categories like pens and pencils where they are trying to make our mark out of the competitors such as Apsara and Natraj. These categories have been dominated by extremely strong and now legacy brands that have a great foothold and deep penetration in the market as these players have been around for about 30-40 years. For these offerings, they use the strategy of market share acquisition with a product and brand proposition mix which is superior and resonates better.

Classmate created customer based brand equity by getting the entire product proposition right in terms of need gap, consumption, usage and behavior in the category, research on whether the current products in the category are failing consumers or fulfilling their needs and demands. As simple as it sounds, all of these entail a lot of hard work with attention to minute details, for example, paper quality and binding quality; responsible marketing to children – ensuring that the brand proposition resonates with children and is important for their future.

Classmate wanted to keep the consumer trends in mind for building the customer based brand equity:

•   There is more information available for a child or an adult to process
•   Greater platforms for purchase
•   People talk among themselves, sharing experiences on products and services
•   Consumers are becoming less defensive on consuming. It is more about desires and wants and then needs, which is great for consumerism
•   Kids have strong opinions about what their parents should buy

Classmate has developed a portfolio of world-class products through sustained investments in brand building. Going forward, they will have to leverage their competencies, expertise, innovations and brand communication strategies to stay ahead in the market