Creating and Managing Brands
A. Tybout and G. Carpenter
Question:
Tybout and Caprenter mention several (dis)advantages of using specific types of branding. Explain how these (dis)advantages relate to the emphasis on functionality, image and experience.
The specific branding methods recognised by Tybout and Carpenter have on the one hand specific qualities, but also some negative side effects, directly related to the method chosen. The most tangible way of branding has to do with so called functionality. The brand is based on the qualities and features of a product, and the product thus gets promoted by its own merits as object of use. This method is often used for products that mainly have to do with everyday use, and for this it seems no-nonsense way of advertisement. Where use is of great importance the consumer can easily differentiate the different product within a market segment. With an emphasis on the technological or the economical superiority, brands can differentiate without losing touch with their product and its use. Maintaining efficient functional branding isn’t as easy as it seems, especially when the products within the market all get more alike, and it gets much harder to stay innovative and thus to differentiate oneself. Functional branding is also very much a short-term product, with companies racing after each other in order to keep their product specs up to date. Image branding hasn’t got this short-term problem, because an image is so specific it does not have to innovate itself all the time. Image branding has mainly to do with attaching an emotional quality to a brand and thus projecting a certain image to the consumer. The specificity of an image brand insures a relative insulation from its competition and of the price-market, especially when an image is already established. A new competitor will have to attack a brand already on the market, although it is far more functional. Secondly an established brand doesn’t necessarily have to consider the economic value of a product as opposed to the competition, because a brand can dictate its own value according to the popularity among consumers. Image branding also deals very well with a market that deals with products that have little functional qualities to differentiate on brand from another or where products have become so alike that there hard to differentiate with an emphasis on functional qualities. Although image brands do not have to deal with short time change, they do not live forever. Because it deals very much with feelings and lifestyles of consumers, an image can become outdated, which is a process that can harm sales more and longer, because it is less easy to solve as a momentarily innovative deadlock. Experiential brands back up an image with experiences and have far better contact with consumers then both functional and image brands. Often used for, but not limited to, products based on experience, not ownership, experiential branding emphasises the consuming of a product. The fact that it is related to people’s experiences makes it a highly personal way of branding and this is then also one of the main advantages. It also maintains the enduring quality of a strong image. One of the important and most difficult qualities of experiential quality however is maintaining consistency, because the experience must be the same in every instance the brand occurs. A lack of consistency will cause the consumer to loose its loyalty to the brand and a slip up is easily made. Also much in the same way as functional branding, experiential branding can get caught in a rat-race of innovation, in this case the introduction of new experiences. Because this form of branding is so highly personal, it can raise to high expectations that it cannot live up to, and greatly damage the brand in the eyes of the customer.
Blogging the Market
G. Darermos
Question:
Daremos argues that weblogs can be “a hierarchy circumvention mechanism”. What does he mean by this?
First and foremost Daremos deals in this article with the use of weblogs within corporations as a means of employees sharing there views with other employees but also the world. He only marginally focuses on all the unaffiliated bloggers that roam the internet. What is it then that these weblogs do so that they circumvent the hierarchies within the corporate realm? Mostly this has to do with a process that Daremos calls collaborative filtering. Whether it is through a computerized system (amazon) or through a weblog, collaborative filtering is the process wherein personal recommendations and opinions take centre-stage once again. It allows people to browse through numerous opinions in order to shape his or here opinion. Because this personal contact is considered to be more valuable to consumers, at least according to Daremos, the recommendation of a product by its production company becomes outdated. Traditional marketing and the hierarchies that surround it are thus becoming obsolete. Even from a corporate point of view, the use of employee weblogs can greatly increase the ‘personalisation’ of a company. Allowing personal contact with, for instance the developers, it also generates problems how a corporation must deal with these different views from the company, and how it must be incorporated within the corporate policy. This again shows how weblogs can literally bypass the traditional communication tools owned by a corporation and thus bypasses the hierarchic distinctions that are present in a company.