Multi-dimension Benefits Lead to Brand Extension
The traditional view of marketing is that marketers ud to succeed by providing superior products and other distinctive functional benefits. But today for such benefits can readily be imitated. Marketers must therefore find new ways of differentiating their products and rvices by identifying new customer benefits from the customer’s view. Basing on this background, some companies emphasize process benefits and relationship benefits or integrate them with functional benefits to reshape the three benefits combination to attract the consumers who value the new types of benefits as highly as functional ones. The basis for creating successful marketing strategies has expanded to three dimensions and conquently leads to brand extension.
This essay aims at make a brief discussion on the issues. Process benefits and relationship benefits are critically analyzed firstly. Then maximizing value creation by identifying new customer benefits from the customer’s cognitive space will be evaluated. Additionally, relevant brand differentiation and brand extension, the key to competitive ad
vantage, will be assd. In general, brand benefits deriving from adding dimensions to single functional benefits and resulting in strong brand ripple effect, are running through the whole article as a main clue.
Today’s marketplace is fundamentally different as a result of major societal forces that have resulted in many new consumer and company capabilities (Kotler and Kevin, 2009). Consumers now tend to pursuit more convenience, pleasantness in consumption process except for high quality products and rvice. Their needs and wants, also says the consumers value, have expanded and updated to multi-dimensions including process benefits which make transactions between buyers and llers easier, quicker, cheaper, and more pleasant and relationship benefits which reward the willingness of consumers to identify themlves and to reveal their purchasing behavior.
Meanwhile, companies are finding the market environment increasingly complex and competitive (Reid, 2008). They struggle to market more distinctive offerings to satisfy consumer needs. Delivering multi-dimension benefits to customers is the key, realistic an
d feasible step. The ability of process and relationship benefits to transform the customer’s shopping experience is becoming more and more apparent (Court et al., 1999). IBM and AT&T, which are both significantly stronger in such elements than their competitors, illustrate the point well. The two companies communicate confidence: consumers feel that if they buy the brands, they will not go wrong; as the saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." (Leiter et al., 2002).
On the relationship benefit side，British Airways redesigned its cabins to offer the first flat beds in business class when other airlines merely incread the pitch or width of their ats. Virgin Atlantic Airways reinforced its famous "doing things differently" brand personality with a restyled "Upper Class" rvice that features "designer-styled" cabins, a sit-down bar, an in-flight massage rvice, and flat-bed ats (Aufreiter et al., 2003). British Airways has found that building relationships with its "premium customers" incread the amount of business generated by the customers by nine percent (Kristy, 2003).
Just as the cas mentioned above indicated that, with the rapid development of the economy and modern industry, more and more excellent products are available. Consumers are more powerful, active and intelligent than ever before and are becoming more and more benefits nsitive to lect the products and rvice between the different benefits.
It is sure that customers are value maximizers and estimate which offer will deliver the most perceived value and act on it. The forces have created new opportunities and challenges, and marketing management has change significantly in recent years as companies ek new way to achieve marketing excellence (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Becau a buyer’s satisfaction is a function of the product’s perceived performance and the buyer’s expectations. Swanson and Kelley (2002) pointed out that high consumer satisfaction has many benefits for the firm, such as incread consumer loyalty, enhanced firm reputation, reduced price elasticities, lower costs of future transactions, and higher employee efficiency.
Under this circumstance, in order to occupy market and achieve maximum profits, many companies began to rethink their strategies for future growth. In respon to consumers’ multi-dimensions needs, it is important for companies to gain a thorough indepth consumer understanding which helps to make sure that the right products are marketed to the right consumers in the right way. To do this, the first step is market gmentation according to the consumer extending needs. A market gment consists of a group of customers who share a similar t of needs and wants (Kotler and Keller, 2009). The core is to format corresponding branding extension to attract the consumers’ multi-dimensions needs.
One rearch shows that consumers can be gmented by all three dimensions of benefit (functional, process, and relationship benefits) to create more complex and powerful maps of preferences. The size and nature of the important clusters vary substantially (Court et al.). So it is necessary and beneficial that a company needs to identify which market gments it can rve effectively. The most savvy marketers have fashioned hundreds of functional, process, and relationship combinations and identified a
similar number of distinct consumer gments that might be attracted to them. A cell phone manufacturer looking for promising offerings in veral profitable markets, for example, established cross-functional customer gment panels. With this information in hand, it was truly meeting the needs of target customer gments in critical markets (John et al., 2006). Such decisions require a keen understanding of consumer behavior and careful strategic thinking. The identification of customer needs in order to rve and build the value of customer gments is a major challenge that marketers encounter (Johnson and Schultz, 2004).
