You are viewing Aaker on Brands blog posts from August 26, 2011 through October 18, 2011. You can also view the most recent posts.

Is Tesco’s Subway Virtual Store the Current Coolest Digital Program?

What is the coolest digital program out there? One that elevates the brand, stimulates customer action and delivers real ROI? One nominee is Tesco’s subway virtual store, developed by their HomePlus brand in South Korea.

Tesco, thanks to a major acquisition in 2008, is a strong retail number two in South Korea behind E-mart. Although still trailing in physical number of stores, Tesco wanted to close the gap without opening more stores. The solution was to “bring the store to the people” with subway urban shopping. Displays were installed in subways that looked identical to the supermarket aisle. Those waiting for trains could use their smart phones to identify items to purchase, specify the quantity and determine the best time to have the purchases delivered to their home.

For customers, the effort turned wasted waiting time in a subway into productive shopping time and also saved people an often painful…

October 18, 2011 • Permalink

Will Retailing Ever Be The Same?

A person with a smart phone can scan a bar code in Best Buy or Macy’s, check the price and order the product from Amazon or Target on the spot. So, Amazon could receive an order from a customer that was stimulated to buy while in Best Buy.

This may revolutionize retailing and cause considerable consternation and ultimately dislocation for several players.

Remember when the Internet arrived and the savvy customer gained the power to check prices of all of the options? Especially for durables, that power led to price sensitivity and resulting price pressures.

The smart phone’s ability to scan SCAs and buy items from competitors on the spot adds a step function to this pressure. The driver is the availability and use of smart phones. Over 40% of all wireless phones are now smart phones, and this number is growing fast. A new report…

October 13, 2011 • Permalink

Transforming the Work of Marketing

The marketing field is faced with several challenges that for many firms will require a transformation in its capability and charge. Among them are the following four:

First, marketing needs to lead in substantial and/or transformational innovation that will result in new offerings and will define new categories or subcategories. Most marketing, in fact, is developed to “my brand is better than your brand” strategies supported by incremental innovation and conventional marketing. That direction rarely creates sales growth and at best will reduce sales decline because customers have little incentive to change habits, thus markets have a lot of inertia. The only way to grow is through Big Idea Innovation that will create enhancements or augmentations of the offering that will be regarded by or enhance customers as “must haves.”

Second, marketing needs to be strategic rather…

October 13, 2011 • Permalink

Insights from the Cheezburger Network

Ben Huh, the founder of the Cheezburger Network which owns megasites Cheezburger.com, Failblog (which developed 20 million viewers per month in a short time) and dozens of other humor-content social media sites, spoke at the MSI (Marketing Science Institute) social media conference in Berkeley this week.Several of his points caught my eye.

First, his mission is simple and compelling: “Make everyone in the world happy for 5 minutes a day.” His viewers look at his sites as providing a break, especially when things get stressful. They quickly create a smile or a laugh. What a great, focused value proposition that is appealing and credible.

Second, the power of audience-created content is enormous. He asserts that users create more content in one day than the media does in a year. There is simply a lot of motivation…

October 6, 2011 • Permalink

Secrets of Social Media Revealed 50 years ago

Almost 50 years ago Ernest Dichter, the father of motivation research, did a large study of word of mouth persuasion that revealed secrets about how to use social media to build brands and businesses. The study was reported in a 1966 article in HBR.

A major Dichter finding that is still very relevant today was the identification of four motivations for a person to communicate about brands. The first (about 33% of the cases) motivation is product-involvement. The experience is so novel and pleasurable that it must be shared. The second (about 24%) is self-involvement. Sharing knowledge or opinions is a way to gain attention, show connoisseurship, feel like a pioneer, have inside information, seek confirmation of a person’s own judgment or assert superiority. The third (around 20%) is other-involvement.…

September 29, 2011 • Permalink

Amazing Brand Loyalty Data

Brand Keys’ 2011 Customer Loyalty Leaders Index is based on over 500 brands from 79 categories.

Four findings caught my eye.

The strength of the online brands with real differentiation was surprising. Amazon is number one (up from seven last year) and Zappos is number six (unrated last year). Except for J. Crew at 21, the only other retailers to make it into the top 50 were discount chains, starting with Walmart at 13. It looks like the future is now for online retailing. I wrote in a recent HBR blog posting “Will Retailing Ever Be The Same?” that smart phones that allow someone to order online while they are in a store have tipped the retail balance. That observation coupled with the strong execution and points of differentiation in the very best online…

September 20, 2011 • Permalink

Does Brand Love Really Exist?

One way to conceptualize intense loyalty is to use love construct. Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, was an early advocate and elaborated the concept in his 2004 book Lovemarks.

Three Michigan researchers, Rajeev Batra, Aaron Ahuvia and Richard P. Bagozzi, have provided more depth to “brand love.” They conducted two qualitative studies exploring what a person means by loving a brand or other object and a quantitative study to identity its underlying dimensions and the output or value.

The findings are fascinating.

The qualitative studies found characteristics that subjects reported when discussing brands they loved. They included feelings that the loved brand:

is the best in every way from value, to key attributes, to experience.

connects to something deeper. Apple (the most mentioned loved brand was the iPod) represents

creativity and self-actualization.

creates emotional benefits

…

September 13, 2011 • Permalink

The Influence of Brands Differs by Category and Country

A study of the overall importance of brands with a category (BRiC) was conducted by German professors Marc Fischer, Franziska Volckner and Henrik Sattler and was published in the Journal of Marketing Research (October, 2010).

The study involved 20 categories and five countries: U.S., UK, France, Spain and Japan. It used a 12 item scale measuring brand relevance in a category (e.g. When buying, I focus mainly on the brand), risk reduction (e.g. I choose a brand name to avoid disappointments), and social demonstration (e.g. I purchase brands because I know others notice them).

The results are fascinating and have both tactical and strategic implications.

The U.S. has the highest level of brand influence. Spain and France are closely behind with respect to risk reduction, but not social demonstration, while Japan and the UK have the reverse pattern. Such a finding suggests that the same positioning and communication strategy may not span these four countries.

Durables…

September 8, 2011 • Permalink

Nation Branding Part 2 — Opportunism, Support and Leverage

In a previous posting, I indicated that in my talk directed at the Council for Nation Branding established by the President of Korea I discussed the importance of creating a strategy that would include objectives, target marketing and brand vision. With a strategy in place, I identified four effective nation branding tools: hosting a global event such as the World Cup, creating events such as the Korean Knowledge Forum, identifying symbols such as the Guggenheim at Bilbao, and supporting the work of corporate brands such as Samsung and Hyundai.

My theme was that, in my view, efforts of the council to build the Korean brand should focus on opportunism, support and leverage. I suggested the council should not sponsor or direct brand building programs, especially local ones, nor expect an ongoing budget to create communication programs.

Opportunism: In my view, the council…

August 31, 2011 • Permalink

Whole Foods Market Invents a New “On-Brand” Category

Whole Foods Market is testing four prototype “Wellness Clubs,” stores that apply the exercise club model to food. For $119 and $45 a month, you get access to club services that teach you about healthy food and cooking and allow you 10% reduction on your Whole Foods Market purchases, which will defray much of the monthly fee.

The concept supports and enhances the Whole Foods Market brand, which is all about having a passion for buying, preparing and enjoying healthy food that is natural and organic.

The Wellness Club has a host of services. A chef will teach you to prepare a dish such as mango quinoa porridge and tell you which ingredients to buy in the attached store, or how to cook kale, the new wonder food. Lifestyle evaluations are available. There are courses and lectures by medical doctors, a reference library, skill-building classes, support clubs and coaching. Shopping will be guided by having products that meet the club's "code of health" and carry a Wellness Club…

August 26, 2011 • Permalink

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