Paper Example on Building and Maintaining a Positive Brand Image

Introduction

Successful business management requires that the management understands existing market conditions and other aspects that determine the success of any business venture. According to Warren Buffet, one of the key aspects of management that anyone within the business sector ought to understand is that it could take decades to build a reputable brand name, but minutes to ruin the same reputation (as cited in Friedman, 2018). Simply put, one could invest significant time and resources in making a business reputable enough, but it could take a simple action, possibly involving negligence by any stakeholder in the business to ruin everything the investor worked for. Most importantly, the different factors that contribute to customer trust take time and resources to achieve and are often so fragile that constant maintenance is essential to reduce the chances of possible failure. Hence, Warren Buffet's argument is feasible only to the extent where the challenges to the brand reputation are irrecoverable and ultimately cost the business its position in the market through loss of market share.

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Meeting Customer Interest and Value

Some of the most successful brands in the contemporary society have achieved their well-earned success and a positive image through significant investment in research on customer needs, following which they invest in products that would serve such interests. In particular, investment in research and development is one of the largest costs that most of the modern companies accrue in the course of getting their products to consumers (Mollick & Robb, 2016). Achieving success in various innovative process not only requires financial capital but could take time where no available and open innovation exists where the said companies could base their development and further the research. However, such research and innovation are crucial to ensuring that the business meets the needs of its target market.

In particular, a reference to the decades taken to achieve success in a business is equivalent to the resources needed for a business to earn the customer's trust in the company's products. Apple Inc. is one such company that turned around its fortune from focusing on modern smartphone technology, a venture that required significant resource investment, but ultimately led to the company's success (Arocha, 2017). Consequently, Apple Inc. controls a significant market share of the contemporary smartphone industry and has often been viewed as a model investment for anyone who wishes to succeed in the business sector. However, the company could just as easily lose consumer trust if several new products continuously disappoint the market, and its competitors, such as Samsung, take advantage of the situation to reach out to the Apple market. Ultimately, competition and the need to match product quality, in the long run, demand significant investment, with potential failure posing quick and highly costly consequences for any business.

Notably, meeting customer interest and value necessitates investment in market research. As research and development of various products, market research is capital intensive (Buckley & Ghauri, 2015). In some cases, an investor could even hire a consultancy firm to conduct a market feasibility test, in a particular market before finally settling on the area for possible investment. However, such does not always guarantee business success since the management would need to adjust its business approaches consistently to match the changing trends in the industry. Failure to make such adjustments in light of the market conditions could lead to market loss, whose recovery could require just as much an investment as was necessary when the said business entered the market.

In essence, meeting customer interest and value takes time and resources, and its maintenance is just as capital intensive. However, it would take a simple mistake for the businesses in question to experience significant failure if they failed to acknowledge the necessity of maintenance of such investments. This explains why businesses such as Apple Inc. always seek dedicated and exceptional talent in their recruitment processes as the sensitivity of a keen approach to business activities is critical to the success of the organizations. Just as Warren Buffet had indicated that, it could take decades to build such a reputation and organizational culture, but failures in a team of new recruits to lead the business to failure over a couple of months or years. A possible failure in the quality and standards department could cripple the business by influencing a slip in the quality standards that the management at the company attempted to stabilize and improve across the decades.

Business Credibility

A business could lose its credibility if it fails to meet consumer standards, which could ultimately affect the brand image that took a significant resource investment to build, thereby ascertaining Buffet's argument. By definition, credibility primarily involves trust in an entity or establishment. It applies within the business environment as the existence of consumer trust in an organization's products, which depends on the company's efforts to maintain the desired product quality. According to Stephenson (2007), a business that loses credibility loses its customers. In practice, every consumer seeks a relationship with a business that would satisfy his or her needs with limited concerns over future references for complaints about the product's quality. Consequently, achieving such success would require that the business invest in research and product analysis to determine the potential shelf life of the products, and consistently work on improving the quality of the goods to satisfy customers' definition of value.

Additionally, credibility could result from references from alternative consumers who have used a particular product. In their marketing efforts, organizations may often seek to partner with public figures to promote the popularity of their products (Hackley & Hackley, 2015). For instance, Nike significantly works with athletes and teams across the world to market various Nike products ranging from sports gear, apparel, to footwear. However, no organization or athlete would partner with such an organization, to the extent of using the company's products in the professional activities, if the company had not invested sufficient resources to ensure that the products would be good enough for the said athlete. Consequently, it would take time for such a company to earn the necessary position in the market, for it to reach out to the corporates for sponsorships and endorsements.

The situation with the marketing efforts would experience a downward spiral if the products from, say, Nike, were determined by the players to be less effective in their professional activities. The case of Nike customers burning their Nike products dissuaded some users from purchasing the products, ultimately affecting the company's sales. Although it may attempt to do some damage control and address the problem, it could take time before the affected users develop confidence in the products, enough to use them in competitive sports. Ultimately, the company would have suffered a loss it took several years to build.

Concisely, building brand credibility takes human, financial, and resource investment, over time to achieve. However, it would take a simple message from potential partners used in marketing the products to turn away the market from the company's product completely. Notably, consumers will always seek opinions from people who have used a particular product while making their decisions on consumption, and the review gathered could play a critical role in the consumer's future choices (Vohs et al., 2018). Ultimately, the aftermath of negative reviews due to a minor case in the production process could have far-reaching ramifications that could significantly affect the progress made by the business. Hence, the efforts made to build a positive reputation, and that needed to lose business credibility confirm Buffet's argument on the business brand image.

Professionalism Among Employees

An investment in professionalism would require significant capital for appropriate training, but a possible poor response from the customer service desk could end up adversely affecting a company's reputation, particularly in the contemporary digital era, which further ascertains Buffet's claims. In determining the quality of services or products within a business, the consumers often measure the quality of interaction with the employees at the firm. In some cases, the quality of interaction between the employees and the consumers could be enough to get the consumers to market the company to their peers. For instance, an individual buying an electronic product such as a stereo system for the first time may require some assistance determining the suitability of the said product to meet his or her needs. Therefore, the employees aiding the customer in the purchase should be well versed on the products at the firm, and they would require that the company invest resources in training the employees to such a capacity.

Notably, businesses make a significant investment in training programs with the intention of training their employees on appropriate conduct in addition to the firm's expectation of their interactions with consumers. Additionally, businesses give allowances to their workers to attend workshops that aim at improving the quality of labour within the business, which would infer incurring greater costs meeting the consumer needs during the period where the employees would be unavailable (Meijerink, Bondarouk, & Lepak, 2016). Ultimately, it takes significant resource investment for businesses to train their employees to meet the expected product quality in addition to remaining with the business. However, failure by the employees to meet the consumer expectations would negatively affect the company's reputation as it happened with Starbuck's customers in Philadelphia.

According to Warren Buffet, it would take minimal resources to reverse that gains made from investment in human capital that the management therein would have made in the employees. For instance, cases of sexual harassment have been known to ruin the reputation of employers to the extent of reducing the appeal of the said companies to new talent (Gupta & Pallekonda, 2016). In essence, the board of a particular public company may have made significant effort to introduce policies intended to improve the quality of the business future by introducing policies that pay attention to talent management. However, a simple misstep by a member of the management team could be sufficient to ruin the positive reputation the firm could have built in the market.

Most importantly, a negative perception of the employer by the labour market not only compromises the chances of attracting new talent, but it also results in a loss of confidence among the remaining employees. Consequently, the business would face challenges with an increase in the labour turnover levels, in turn affecting the quality of employees interacting with the consumers. Therefore, the previous organizational strength derived from having a knowledgeable team of employees, conversant enough with the organizational culture, would be lost. Ultimately, the experience with the loss of the professional employees within a company, given the amount of investment made in equipping them with the necessary expertise would be lost to the damaged reputation of the business.

Customer Service: Contending Buffet's Argument

A proper effort to address a challenge resulting from poor business-consumer interaction could ultimately end up...