Essentials of superior brand strategy

Powerful brands generate more sales, secure more relative market shares and command premium. A brand succeeds at the cost of rival brands. A brand’s success lies in what customers value. The delivery of relative superior value occurs when a brand translates its attributes into superior benefits to target customers.

Essentials of superior brand strategy

The following are essentials for superior brand strategy.

1. Development of brand attributes which translate into superior benefits to target customer: A brand is a bundle of tangible and intangible attributes. Successful brands offer attributes or benefits sought by customers. A brand must be closer to what is needed by the customers. Such brand can achieve discriminating response from the customers. Discrimination means the action of discriminating against competitors. Lack of discrimination translates into poor brands.

2. Securing the purchase vote: A brand must secure the purchase vote. When a brand is not able to secure a purchase decision, it eventually fails. Failure occurs when a brand offers inferior value compared to competitors. Exploring brand failures helps understand brand success.

3. Potentiality of Brands for failure:

The following types of brands have potentiality for failure:

  • Parity brands: brands offering similar value
  • brands suffering competitive disadvantage
  • mismatch brands: brands offering value not in line with customer needs.
  • overpriced brands: brands offering superior value at higher sacrifice.

4. Making a brand relevant: The key to any brand’s success lies in its connection with customer. Products must be relevant to customer motives, values and benefits. They must represent themselves as a means to achieving what is sought by customers.

5. The cognitive representation of brand: Consumers learn about things related with consumption ( products, brands, stores etc). The amount of experience and information that a consumer has about a particular brand, product, object, store, person or service plays an important role in consumer buying behavior. A person can think about cars in terms of fuel efficiency, power, engineering excellence acceleration, maneuverability, etc. The knowledge structure influences cognitive processing.

6. Creating brand consumer relationship: The brand’s knowledge structure makes it relevant in prospect’s mind. Successful brands create a strong relationship between the marketer and consumers.