George At Asda Brand Image and Positioning Essay

George At Asda Brand Image and Positioning - Essay Example To begin with, Asda is a chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom that began as a subsidiary to Wal Mart 1999. In recent times, it has come to occupy the position of the second largest chain in UK after TESCO. Asda is owned by Wal Mart and it consists of 37 supermarkets, 5 Asda Living stores, 10 George Clothing Stores, and 24 depots. To this effect, it makes use of 150,000 employees in all of its 340 units. (www.wikipedia.com) With the Asda Public Campaings becoming huge successes, the chain retains a 16.8% market share as of February 2007. This is second only to TESCO which has a 31.4% share. Its closest competitor is Sainsbury which follows at 16.5%. (www.wikipedia.com) Besides promoting itself as the lowest price supermarket by remaining loyal to the Advertising Standards Agency, Asda has paid special attention to its clothing line that goes by name of George. The marketing and branding features that have been related with this brand in the last two years are as follows: The aim of this paper is to study the changes made by George clothing as far as branding and brand image are concerned, in the past two years, with a focus on measuring the success of the same. This will be studied from various aspects like conception of brand image, and others, so as to measure the same on various counts. The methodology used in this case is that of the Elaboration Likelihood... In order to become a more global brand, it has marketed its clothes in Mexico, UK, Canada, Argentina, Japan, and the US. It has launched various new categories of clothing in the past two years including lingerie, kids wear, baby wear and many others. It has retained an image of being easy to maintain besides being affordable due to its association with Asda, yet it has created a niche market of its own. It has raced ahead of Marks and Spencer's in the last two years as far as market share is concerned. (Official Website: George; http://www.george.com/company/) Methodology and Purpose Statement The aim of this paper is to study the changes made by George clothing as far as branding and brand image are concerned, in the past two years, with a focus on measuring the success of the same. This will be studied from various aspects like conception of brand image, and others, so as to measure the same on various counts. The methodology used in this case is that of the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The choice of the Elaboration likelihood Model was one that came directly from the consumer oriented characteristics of brand equity and brand knowledge. Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo 1983), for instance, identified message relevance as one of these factors. According to this model, when message relevance is high, individuals will actively process and evaluate the information in the advertisement when forming or changing attitudes. When message relevance is low, individuals will not actively process the information in the advertisement, but will instead rely on peripheral message cues to form or change attitudes. This dissertation will therefore draw on the elements of the Elaboration Likelihood Model in order to study the elements that define the nuances of