Wed, 19 Apr 2000 03:37:11 +0530
From: "Mahesh Murthy"
:Re: [IndiaEntrepreneurs] Brand Loyalties: Re: Niche publication

Would respectfully differ from both combatants in this debate. One convenient definition of "brand" is "what you pay more for". ('Pay" can mean money, attention, time, or some other valuable personal asset). One can understand and value a brand as the amount you'd pay extra for a shoe with a swoosh on it compared to the exact same shoe without the offending ornamentation. Or what you'd be willing to pay for a bottle with brown sugar water and a red and white logo on it, compared to a store label or one without that famous graphic. A brand is the sum of rational and emotional reasons - mostly the latter really - why you prefer one product over another. Human beings use brands because they're personalised views of products. And, largely, we don't trust inanimate objects as much as we trust people or personalities or objects with personalities (a.k.a. brands). If we were all perfectly rational creatures, all products would be bought only on side-by-side comparisions of features and costs. Unfortunately or otherwise, we don't work that way - or we'd all be driving Skodas and Ambassadors, bathing with Lifebuoy, buying from buy.com instead of amazon - and thinking twice about our choice of our respective spouses:)

Will hesitantly put forward a contentious statement: One is really not aware of _any_ transactions in the world where brands - or emotional reasons - don't play a role. One thinks this is true of all transactions whether is business-to-business, business-to-consumer, c2b, c2c or any other combination of those letters. The opposite of 'brand' - 'commodities' is a rapidly shrinking world where there already are premiums in every sector - for egyptian cotton over indian, indian tea over Bangladeshi - etc: all of which again connote brand strength for the preferred choice. One believes the arrival of the Internet hasn't really changed human beings on the inside. We still prefer brands: an expensive ISP like AOL or MSN over many cheaper alternatives, news sites like the timesofindia.com over asianage.com, or even some contributors in this forum over some others . Like people's personalities, brands need to be fed, grown, displayed and kept up-to-date and desirable. It's not that HMT has no brand and Titan does. HMT does have a brand image - but it is less desirable and less known to its audience than Titan's image has become. What the net economy does is make the costs of brand switching really low (the other brand is just a click away) - so, one believes, it becomes even more important to build a strong brand for an online offering. Build product parity, likeability and salience - and loyalty will follow from there. This indicates that Brand is the only long-term product differentiator you can build - one assumes you can't _always_ have the best or most bells and whistles.

Perhaps the people responsible for the "humongously large logo as advertising" school of thought at India's big portals will see that all they're building is salience, not likeability - and they can merely be outspent to be beaten. Which, methinks, might not be a bad thing after all.

My (slightly contentious) $0.02,
Mahesh

From: Ratnesh Mathur
To: indiaentrepreneurs@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 6:57 AM Subject: Re: [IndiaEntrepreneurs] Re: Niche publication

I do not quite agree with the following statement. Brand loyalty is a concept applicable only to products with wide-range and fairly eclectic competition - and it's in any case a concept that has taken a severe licking, at least in the mass publications paradigm, through the last decade of the past century Consumers are not a loyal lot, they a greedy lot. Brand loyalty is all about who offers me maximum value, i will go to him. This value can be in any shape or form. HMT offered great value, but on came Titan, changed the value dimension and rest is history. If you do not remain 'in tune' with the consumer and try to live with loyalty of a fading generation - well then thats the way you go. The Statesmen or Deccan Herald or others have done the same mistake - while TOI became trendy, modern, colourful with city specific supplements etc etc. Also consumers started looking at ads at source of news (which sale is on, which exhibition can i go to etc). The retail ads have become so important, that TOI in Bangalore went all out with aggressive selling to woo all the retailers - the result of combination of the two efforts is to seen in Bangalore. However, if you look at magazines like India Today, or Stardust who have constantly evolved themselves and ensured that they are giving that extra values to the consumer - have still a brand loyal following. If any marketer thinks that once he has made a consumer loyal, then he can rest - he is in for bad news, sooner or later. Its not just the size of company that matters, it is the size of value that you can offer that matters most. Web is a great leveller in that sense. Some small guy in some obscure corner of the web will give me more value then this full page advertising monoliths, and you bet i will go to the smally - for cost of going to both is same! regards