Brand Management of Video Game Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Brand Management of Video Game Industry - Essay Example For this assignment, various marketing reviews were researched upon. Scholarly articles and textbooks were researched for concepts of Brand Positioning, Product Design, Building Brand Equity and Nintendo’s strategies of Wii were analyzed in the light of the latter. In order to analyze the branding strategies of Wii, I used the concept and applications of Disruptive Strategy to see where Nintendo has positioned its Wii. This concept is also known as the â€Å"Blue Ocean† strategy where the brand is positioned in the virgin space or spot in the market which hasn’t been targeted by the competition yet. On the basis of that, Nintendo targeted the market of former gamers or non-gamers who were not habitual gamers but did play games produced in Flash or other computer games like Solitaire. Besides the brand positioning of Nintendo’s Wii, I also studied the product design of Wii in the light of the competitors’ products, Play station 3 and Xbox. This also helps Nintendo’s Wii to become more of a family brand where an adult or a non-gamer can give a fair competition to a hardcore player in the family belonging to the ideal gamer demographic profile of aged 18 – 35 years. As far as the pricing is concerned, Wii was targeted for the down-market in the game console industry. This meant that Nintendo had to push the prices down in order to attract more consumers. Its advertising and promotional strategies helped Wii to become the most selling brand during Christmas time and especially amongst families who preferred to own only one of all the consoles in the market which lead them to purchase Nintendo’s Wii. In the short-run, Nintendo did capture the market with its unique design, price and going down-market strategy but in the medium-run Nintendo was planning to go in direct competition with the other up-market brands namely Sony’s Play Station and Microsoft’s Xbox. What these major players failed to rea lize was that Nintendo was positioned just as a casual gaming brand whereas Nintendo did not only wish to stay with the family positioning as it believed that there was no casual gamer and that only non-gamer-or-former gamer existed which made Nintendo see a huge potential beyond the down-market’s easy gamers market. With a long-term plan in consideration, when Nintendo established its brand of Wii in the down-market, it then moved into the up markets which were being catered and ruled by Sony’s Play Station and Microsoft’s Xbox.