BRAND MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

BRAND MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH - Essay Example This allows the company to cater to demands of all type customers. In this essay an attempt will be made to highlight the strengths and weaknesses on the brand of Toyota. The assessment of brand will be done with respect to the concepts of value, image and position of the brand. In the end recommendations will also be made on how brand can improve its performance. Strengths of Toyota Value of a brand can be explained as the net trade off received by the customer from all benefits and costs delivered by the product (Snoj, Korda, &, Mumel, 2004). In simpler words brand value is the utility (benefits minus costs) that a consumer derives from a product. Brand image can be defined as perceptions people have about a certain brand name (Rotfeld, H. 2008). The first thing that comes to peoples mind when seeing a brand is called the image of a brand. Positioning of a brand is the place of a brand in the market with respect to other products. Four components of brand positioning include brandà ¢â‚¬â„¢s overall reputation, product performance, customer portfolio, and networks (Knox, S. 2007). It usually is related to the target market of the brand. The value of Toyota brand is very high among the customers all over the world and this is evident from the sales of the company. The company is known for producing cars that provide comfort, and are at the same time affordable. The company has product line of Camry and Lexus that are aimed at higher target markets. The brand value of Toyota is high because it provides more benefits in less cost, thereby increasing the utility of the consumers. This is one of the most significant strengths of the brand. It can provide high quality of comfort, at a relatively lower cost. This is the reason why the brand is famous in both the developing and the developed world. Almost all consumers like to have luxury but most of them cannot afford Mercedes or Ferrari. They are cost effective and for them Toyota is the answer. It has toughness, and at the same time it does not burden the pockets of the consumer. Recently the company brand value has decreased due to massive recalls of vehicles (Kageyama, Y. 2011), but before that the company enjoyed a leading position in the automobile sector all over the world. This is because of the way Toyota caters to the demand of everyone. This loss in reputation is great but still chances are that Toyota will come out of this crisis. Still it is the world’s second largest automobile company according to the brand value (Cato, J. 2010). The global presence of the company also aids in its brand value because the brand is exposed to many people all over the world. Toyota innovates according to its customer demands and Toyota Hybrid is one of the examples in this regard. The recent focus of people on environment was accounted by the brand and a new product was introduced called Hybrid that was environmental friendly. In a line Toyota delivers to clientele according to their demand an d this is the reason of its high brand value. Brand image of Toyota has been positive for many years and only recently it was affected by the recall. Consumers regard the brand of Toyota not for luxury or style, but for reliability and predictability (Swanekamp, K. 2010). Toyota is a brand that is known for its affordable and tough cars. Affordability is also closely attached to the brand image of Toyota. The worldwide sales of Toyota would have been impossible if the company would not

Evaluating Assessment Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Evaluating Assessment - Research Proposal Example The person being assessed also needs to know how the scoring is done, with respect to the criteria chosen and the important of each criterion for the overall score. This is because "learning increaseswhen learners have a sense of what they are setting out to learn, a statement of explicit standards they must meet and a way of seeing what they have learned" (Loacker, Cromwell & O'Brien, 1986) The assessment will be done as part of the ongoing daily work of the person concerned. We will select a meeting that the person is to lead, for a nominal period of 45 - 60 minutes. We will evaluate the person's performance in speaking confidently to others on the following basis: What external signs of confidence does the person show (rated on a level from one to five, where one is none and five is excellent - if however the person overdoes it, then assessors should subtract points accordingly) These points carry equal weight as each one is important to convey confidence while talking to other people. The assessment will be shared with the person concerned afterwards. Knowledge of the assessors' view point will help the person understand the relationship between the way he/she thinks that he/she replies to these criteria and the way that his/her performance is assessed by others. Assessing effective working in a team requires a longer term approach for the assessment. An attempt to measure this by an assessment of very short duration would run the risk of being unrepresentative of the person's performance. For these reasons we chose the portfolio assessment which has the characteristic of being an ongoing, rather than an episodic assessment (AAHE, 1996). In addition to this, completing the portfolio assessment becomes part of the learning process for the person concerned where the goal is as much to affect the learner's growth, instead of just passively measuring it (Courts & McInerney, 1993). The portfolio assessment will be done over a period of time (2 months) and will correspond to stated criteria against which the person being assessed and the assessors have agreed. The person puts together the portfolio with information that demonstrates how he or she works effectively within a team. The portfolio is shown regularly to the assessors as well. At the end of the 2 months, the assessors will review the portfolio with the person to assess the performance of the person concerned on the following basis: evidence of a particular role or function taken on by the person within the context