Building a brand for a services business is more complicated than ever. Customers might perceive one hotel chain or insurance company as pretty much the same as its competitors.

The 2016 College Football Playoff national championship game was played January 11 in Glendale, Ariz. Marketing Professor Michael Mokwa and other marketers and economists have been studying the economic impact of these sports events since the mid-1990s.

Do you know when your customer’s service experience actually starts? That is, when it begins in your customer’s mind? Could you be missing something important?

After you have received an application and the application fee from your tenants, you will want to process the application in a timely manner. I ask tenants to notify their employers and previous landlords to expect my call so that I can process the application as quickly as possible.

Much has been made of data analytics lately — arguably for good reason. These days we have access to more and more information and the tools that can help make sense of it. People are clamoring for big data — the bigger the better!

Some people go shopping for a lift when life delivers a blow to the ego, but that purchase may not make them feel better. Marketing researcher Monika Lisjak has found that depending on what people buy, they actually might make themselves feel worse and will perform worse on subsequent tasks.

In part three of this series, we are looking at the elements that combine to create your brand’s personality. The elements of brand personality are considered intangible, and on the table of brand elements they are classified as feelings.

You don’t need to be a famous expert to understand the elements that make up your brand — what matters most is your inquisitiveness. It is your willingness to wonder and ask questions that enables you to gain understanding that you can use to build your brand’s value to your customers.

What are the elements that make up your brand? Nancy Gray, a marketing instructor at the W. P, Carey School, explains how those elements contribute to the way your brand is perceived — and lived ­— by your customers.

Super Bowl XLIX and related events landed earned $720 million in economic impact for the Phoenix metro area this winter — more than any special event ever staged in Arizona. But the gains for Arizona go beyond dollars and cents.