The brand awareness has a serious impact on the consumer purchase decisions as the consumers prefer to buy the goods from the outlets with a huge brand image. The consumers carry out research on the products and the brands that they wish to choose before the actual purchase (Srinivasan, Anderson and Ponnavolu, 2002). The study reflects that the process of purchase is divided into three sections that is the pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase. Every part of the purchase process is necessary for the consumers in order to evaluate the level of satisfaction (Bowen and Chen, 2001).
There are various modes of the sales process that are adopted by the company such as selling the products in shops as well as conducting online sales. According to the Mintel (2014), the online retail sales has increased by 14.7% to 38.3 billion pounds in the year 2014 and the value is expected to increase in the later years. Further, the companies prefer to create brand awareness online because by following the online process, it can attract the attention of millions of customers across the world. On the contrary, the web portals launched by the companies are also important to attract the consumers as they get attracted to the colourful portals with valuable information regarding the chosen brand.
The study suggests that promotional strategies used by the companies in order to create brand awareness play a key role in driving the attention of the customers. The companies try to convey their vision through advertising and promotion as well as using the logos for each brand (Caruana, 2004). Based on the information provided by the companies in their web portals, the consumers make their purchase decisions and they can also anticipate the risk factors associated to the purchase plan. Hence, there is a need to study the impact of the strategies adopted by the companies in the UK on the customers.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the influence of the strategies adopted by the companies of the UK market to create brand awareness on the customers (Caruana, 2002). The companies create web portals to inform the customers regarding the new products that are launched in the international market that would be highly beneficial to the customers.
In order to achieve the aim, the researcher considers the following issues as the objectives.
According to Back and Parks (2003), the brand awareness refers to the fact that whether the customers are aware of the business and its products in the international market. The process of achieving successful brand awareness implies that the brand has been recognized by the loyal customers and it helps the customers to differentiate the products from its competitors.
Brand awareness has a serious impact on the customer’s perceptions as well as the attitudes of the customers towards the products. The companies adopt their strategies to create brand awareness especially when they are about to launch some new product for the target customers. Aaker (1990) defines brand awareness as the ability of a buyer to recognize the significance of the brand. There is a link between the brand and the product quality because the brand awareness has the possibility to spread information among the customers across the world.
The companies provide valuable information about the product through its promotion but there are cases when the companies provide asymmetric information that creates controversies among the consumers. The asymmetric information also forces the consumers to make wrong decisions and the company loses its loyal customers. However, Ambler (2005) suggests some of the factors that can affect the brand image such as the price of the product, after sales service, positioning and quality of the product. The brand image that is created by the companies is essential to enhance the customer base of the companies; otherwise, there is a possibility of losing the market share. As there is huge competition in the international market, the companies adopt different strategies of creating brand awareness such as promoting the brand through social media which is operated by millions of customers all over the globe. In case the brand develops a stronger equity, the consumers have a unique association with the particular brand in the international market (Bai, Law and Wen, 2008). The concept of brand awareness influences the consumer perceived risk awareness measures related to the product because the risk associated to buying a brand of a particular company that does not advertise for its products is high.
