# 3 Brand basics

Marketing requires an organisation to understand who is buying its products (customers, consumers or clients) and this is achieved through understanding customer motivations. Once customer needs are understood, the organisation will segment, target and position its products and itself in the market accordingly. Complementing this is the organisation’s need to achieve a competitive advantage and understand, predict and respond to environmental changes.

Once the organisation has achieved this, it then needs to consider how it applies its marketing strategy. One aspect of this is through branding.

The role and use of brands have been expanding over time. Initially brands were used to show ownership or the source of the product, as a guarantee of good quality and as a way to communicate with the marketplace. Today, brand development and management is a challenging and complex endeavour in a dynamic business world with increasingly sophisticated media.

In this section we will address briefly the origins of brands, define what a brand is and refer to the relevance and value of brands to organisations and consumers.

OpenLearn - Marketing in the 21st century
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