Final answer:
Strong brands during the maturity phase use their established reputation, large advertising budgets, and emotional marketing to maintain market dominance, discourage new competitors, and ensure continued consumer loyalty.
Step-by-step explanation:
The role of strong brands in the maturity phase of a product's life cycle is multifaceted, serving as symbols of trust, reliability, and quality. During this stage, a well-established brand can deter new competitors due to the high marketing investments required to overcome the brand's presence. Brands with large advertising budgets, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, can daunt potential market entrants who are aware of the substantial promotional efforts needed to challenge these giants. This establishes a barrier to entry, leaving the strong brands to dominate the market.
Furthermore, leveraging social marketing techniques, companies create emotional connections with their customers. A company like Apple, with its bitten apple symbol, capitalizes on these emotional triggers to build loyalty and pride among consumers, thereby reinforcing Brand loyalty during the product's maturity phase. The brand becomes synonymous with a particular emotional response, which can drive continuous consumer engagement.
Last but not least, established brands in their maturity phase also benefit from economies of scale, which makes it cost-prohibitive for new entrants to compete at the same level. With a mixture of reputation for quality, broad recognition, and competitive pricing, strong brands are challenging to displace at this stage.