Defining a brand involves emphasizing its key benefits and attributes. To do so, marketeers must recognise that a brand consists of more than a bundle of tangible, functional attributes; its intangible, emotional benefits, along with its “identity,” frequently serve as the basis for long-term competitive differentiation and sustained loyalty. That is where market research can help.
Marketeers could promote many tangible and intangible brand attributes, but the goal is to uncover the relevance of each to consumers and the degree to which it helps distinguish the brand from those of competitors. The number of brand elements at play and the interaction that often exists between tangible and intangible factors can make any assessment complex. Fortunately, statistical techniques used within market research can now increase companies insights into which brand attributes are ‘must haves’ – we call these ‘hygiene factors’ and which brand attributes are ‘differentiators’.
Any Brand Manager who ignores the hygiene factors does so at their peril as these are of key importance even though they don’t distinguish the brand from the competition. However, the most successful brands focus on the factors that are both important to consumers but also differentiated from those of the competition.
From our experience, marketeers can increase their chances of brand success by investing heavily to communicate the ‘brand essence’ internally. For any successful brand building, the CEO must believe in the brand and become the chief brand advocate in the organisation.
Companies can build better brands for less money with a forward-looking segmentation and sophisticated analytic tools that increase the precision of defining and delivering a brand. For more information visit www.b2binternational.com/branding.html or contact one of our team at https://www.b2binternational.com/contact.html
