A Study on Effectiveness of Branding Activities on Customer Awareness

This study is undertaken to assess the effectiveness of branding activities following by the Gokak Textiles Mills Ltd., and its effect on customer awareness about the products produced by the Gokak Textiles Mills Ltd is vital in this research. To collect the primary data self-employed questionnaire was followed. Non-probabilistic convenient sampling method was followed to select 100 customers. Pearson’s correlation and ANOVA was employed to thorough SPSS 20.0 to analyze and interpret the data. It has been found that as an increase in the branding activities leads to an increase in the customer awareness.


INTRODUCTION
The Gokak Mills was registered in the year 1885 in the name of Gokak Water Power and Manufacturing Ltd, (GWPML); it has started its operation on 5th October 1887. In the 1919 the company was registered in India as 'Gokak Mills Ltd.' Mill was renamed in the year 2007 as "Gokak Textiles Ltd".
Gokak Textiles Ltd is situated in the foot hills of Sahyadri hill, on the bank of River 'Ghataprabha', 6 KMs away from Gokak city. Mill is producing the wide variety of products and exporting approximately 50% of current output to more than 35 countries across the world. The mill is also producing variety of finished products such as T-shirts, Inner wears, Towels, and many more.
Brand awareness is defined as the probability that consumers or customers are well-known about the accessibility of the products. It is also called as the degree to which consumers precisely connected the brand with the explicit product. Brand awareness is improved to an extent to which brand names are selected that is simple and easy to pronounce or spell; known and expressive; and unique as well as distinct.
There are several innovative ways to increase brand awareness in the minds of the customers. Among these some of them have been discussed here, such as  Display your art or other product that should get influenced by customers  Packaging of the product should be branded one.  SEO (search engine optimization) research should be done  Double-down on social networks  Step up your game on social networks such as Twitter  Take advantage of search engines such as Google's Ad-Sense auto ads

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:
The Gokak Textiles Ltd, Gokak (Division of Gokak Mills) is leading cotton industry not only in Karnataka but also in India, which is producing variety products such as T-shirts, Inner wears, Towels, and many more.GTL is following branding activities to increase brand awareness in the minds of the customers. So, to assess or examine the effectiveness of branding activities following by the Gokak Textiles Mills Ltd., and its effectiveness on customer awareness about the products produced by the Gokak Textiles Mills Ltd is vital in this research.

LITERATURE REVIEW:
Now a day's Brands are coming to market vastly, all the brands are needs confidence to deliver its service; these all have done by branding activities which forms a huge

OBJECTIVE:
To examine the role played by branding activities in preferring GTL products

HYPOTHESIS:
Ho: There is no Positive and significant relationship between branding activities and awareness H1: There is Positive and significant relationship between branding activities and awareness

METHODOLOGY:
The primary data has been collected through self employed questionnaire. Questionnaire has used as schedule for collection of data from 100 respondents. Non-probabilistic convenient sampling was used to choose the customers i.e. respondents. The validity test has done i.e. Cronbach's Alpha value has found 0.737 and which is very good for collection of data through the same questionnaire. For analysis of data Pearson's correlation has done through SPSS 20.0.
To understand the relationship between the branding activities and customer awareness regarding the GTL products, Pearson's correlation has been employed through SPSS 20.0. Pearson correlation value was found 0.505, which is positive. It shows that there is positive correlation between the branding activities and customer awareness.
ANOVA To confirm level of significance ANOVA was employed and have found that there is a significant relationship between the brand awareness and customers' awareness. The p-value 0.000 is less than the 0.05.However, as increase in the branding activities, customer awareness is also increases. Finally, null hypothesis has been rejected and accepted hypothesis i.e.
H1: There is Positive and significant relationship between branding activities and awareness.

FINDINGS:
It has been found that as increase in the branding activities leads to increase in the customer awareness. Branding activities also creates the buying behavior of the customers. Ultimately customer awareness leads to increase in the sales volume.

CONCLUSION:
Brand awareness should educate the customers to retain them for long period of time. It should always create a brand positioning in the minds of the customer. In such a way brand activities have to performed and executed. Brand activities should work towards increasing the brand awareness in the minds of the customer, which ultimately creates the buying behavior and increases the customers' satisfaction.