Page 22 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

14 Marketing: the Basics
more than others. The reasons for this are that brands reduce the effort required to find a suitable product and reduces the risk of experiencing buyer’s remorse from a poorly informed purchase due to the promise of quality associated to the brand. When we buy a Ralph Lauren polo shirt we realize that we could spend less money on a generic brand, but the polo horse on the shirt means that we have bought a good quality shirt. It also makes our search for that new shirt that much easier, we don’t have to go from shop to shop endlessly comparing goods to find one that makes us feel comfortable. Buying a brand also may give us ‘street cred’ or social status among our peers. These are three of the key advantages of brands to the customer.
Where do brands apply? In virtually every category. It is possible to brand a physical good, a service (British Airways, Bank of Tokyo), a store (Nike, Holt Renfrew), a person (John Grisham, Barack Obama), a place (the Lake District, Niagara Falls), an organization or an idea (Britain’s Automobile Association, UNICEF).
BUILDING A BRAND
The key to successfully branding a product is to create enough points-of-parity (POP) to be able to be considered as part of a product category, as well as enough points-of-difference (POD) to be distinguished against competing brands in a product category in the mind of a customer. For example, for the product category of personal vehicles, a car brand must satisfy basic expectations: it must have four wheels, an engine and come equipped with seat belts, anti-lock brakes and so on. Any new entrant who aims to join the car market must also offer the same points-of-parity in order to be considered by consumers. The branding element comes into the equation to help distinguish one model from another. Almost everyone associates the words Volvo with vehicle safety and Ferrari with high performance. In the case of Toyota, the words fuel- efficiency and reliability come to mind, even though there are a few Toyota models that underperform in those categories against other companies.