Marketing Aesthetics: The Strategic Management of Branding, Identity and Image: Amazon.co.uk: Bernd H. Schmitt, Alex Simonson: Books

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David A. Aaker"author of "Managing Brand Equity" and "Building Strong Brands"Visual imagery has been the neglected element of branding, usually treated in an ad hoc manner. Thanks to this pathbreaking book, we now have a more scientific knowledge of how visual imagery works to build strong brands and how it can be actively managed.

Product Description

There is no way to mistake the ubiquitous trademarked Coca-Cola bottle, or the stylish ads for Absolut Vodka with any of their competitors. How have these companies created this irresistible appeal for their brands? How have they sustained a competitive edge through aesthetics?

Bernd Schmitt and Alex Simonson, two leading experts in the emerging field of identity management, offer clear guidelines for harnessing a company's total aesthetic output-- its "look and feel"-- to provide a vital competitive advantage. Going beyond standard traditional approaches on branding, this fascinating book is the first to combine branding, identity, and image and to show how aesthetics can be managed through logos, brochures, packages, and advertisements, as well as sounds, scents, and lighting, to sell "the memorable experience." The authors explore what makes a corporate or brand identity irresistible, what styles and themes are crucial for different contexts, and what meanings certain visual symbols convey. Any person in any organization in any industry can benefit from employing the tools of "marketing aesthetics".

Schmitt and Simonson describe how a firm can use these tools strategically to create a variety of sensory experiences that will (1) ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty; (2) sustain lasting customer impressions about a brand's or organization's special personality; (3) permit premium pricing; (4) provide legal "trade dress" protection from competitive attacks; (5) lower costs and raise productivity; and (6) most importantly, create irresistible appeal. The authors show how to manage identity globally and how to develop aesthetically pleasing retail spaces and environments. They also address the newly emergent topic of how to manage corporate and brand identity on the Internet. Supporting their thesis with numerous real-world success stories such as Absolut Vodka, Nike, the Gap, Cathay Pacific Airlines, Starbucks, the New Beetle Website, and Lego, the authors explain how actual companies have developed, refined, and maintained distinct corporate identities that set them apart from competitors.

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Demystifying the '90s consumer culture 3 Jan 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Schmitt and Simonson have accomplished quite a feat--demystifying the dominant visual culture of the 1990s. Their book, Marketing Aesthetics, is the first scholarly text to introduce this topic as one that is to be seriously considered by anyone in business today. This book is written for the entrepreneur who wishes to understand what often separates companies with success and status from those ill-defined in their market. The authors show how aesthetics fit in the well established models of consumer behavior, market research, and communications with customers. Marketing Aesthetics' encompassing sensory considerations are to the turn of the millennium what In Search of Excellence's customer service was to the early 1980s. This book, however, should be of interest to more people than marketing majors. Sociologists, art historians, and cultural critics need this book because it gives a language to define the 1990s, and especially to explain megamalls, Disneyfication, and personal identity achieved through consumption. Schmitt and Simonson elucidate the corporate strategies that have come to define consumer experience at the end of the century. The mall culture of Victoria's Secret, The Body Shop, and Starbuck's Coffee are analyzed to show how the shops, spaces, architecture, packaging, and products, come together to create a total sensory experience for the customer and ultimately result in a purchase. Their examination of internet pages formulate how virtually anybody can create a positive presence in this medium that "levels the field" for small business.

Ultimately, this book indicates why post-modernism, simularcum, and the society of the spectacle work. As goods and services like coffee, luxury automobiles, and air travel are relatively the same in and of themselves, it has become necessary to move beyond the utility of the product, and to create meanings and associations that differentiate the company and its offerings. The examples in Marketing Aesthetics are the practical application of displaced meanings that have come to define entities, objects, and consumers.

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Value for Money 13 Mar 2012

By Filipe Rodrigues

I bought a second hand book, and considering the price, the content and the overall aspect of it... Excellent!
It's almost cheaper than going to a library :)