Brand Extensions Fail



Brand Extensions Fail

Understanding the brand

The literature review suggests that brand encapsulate the brands cultural accessories and personal philosophies. Essentially, the underlying purpose of branding is to differentiate a product or service from competitor offerings, and to achieve effective positioning. By stressing particular aspects, such as quality, consistency, and reliability, brands may influence what consumers wear, what they eat, where they shop, where and how they travel, and so on, thus branding becomes one of the most vital and crucial step in a company's success.

Building a powerful brand is all about creating the strongest positive perception in the minds of the customers. But the existing customers already have a perception - one that's the result of all the experiences over time they've had in dealing with the company. Customers will interpret a brand's performance in their own way and the company's interpretation of the situation has no relevance to the customer. Instead of arguing against customer's interpretations of the brand's performance, a company should try to understand the reason due to which the customer arrived at such a conclusion. This would often include an impartial assessment of the brand's performance and the customer's existential situation in which he was using the brand. A customer should never be allowed to have a perception about the brand which is against the perception that the company wants its customers to have. This claim is unrealistic and seems not very feasible as every consumer have different perception about the performance of brand, so it is not easy for company to make every consumer to have same perception about the brand. Customers might “own” their perceptions, but it is the job of the brand manager to cultivate relationships with customers to help influence those perceptions in a positive way. To ensure that customers perceive the brands as managers wish them to, they have to be first apparent on what the companies' brand values are.

Brand Extension

When discussing brand extension, the literature makes it clear that brand extension strategies afford considerable benefit to both organizations and consumers. There are many examples, one example that the literature review give is that of the dental hygiene market, brands like Colgate are extended into Colgate Total, Colgate Gel, and Colgate toothpowder. But marketers cautioned against extended the brand too much. Like Colgate extended its self and in the wrong category when Colgate decided to use its name on a range of food products ...