The multi-sensory and multi-experiential brand challenge

The multi-sensory and multi-experiential brand challenge

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Product & Brand Management, Volume 21, Issue 6

Introduction

Technological innovation is changing the way consumers interact with brands. Consumers today have increased access to information and are more market-savvy. Emerging technological platforms allow consumers to express and share their opinions about the brands they experience (McAlexander et al., 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). These changes have led to a power transfer from organizations to brand communities and, as a result, an increase in consumer power over brands (Cova and Dalli, 2010). In some cases this power transfer has been so dramatic that the concept of brand hijacking has emerged (Cova and Pace, 2006). Recent examples such as The Gap’s failed attempt to change their logo and Mountain Dew’s failed attempt to update their image illustrate the new kind of challenge that brand management faces: brands are evermore owned and controlled by consumers.

The traditional approach to brand management regarded consumers as simple passive receivers of meaning (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) and it was assumed that brand meaning was managerially determined. From this perspective, the key activities that managers believed they had to leverage to successfully build a brand were communication and advertising (Frow and Payne, 2007). However, in the current market, and as a consequence of technology that facilitates the increase in consumer power, consumers are demanding more intense multisensory brand experiences that deliver higher quality brand interactions. Brand experiences have been described as takeaway impressions (Carbone and Haeckel, 1994) that are formed in the mind of consumers as a result of their encounters with the holistic offer of the brand (Klaus and Maklan, 2007). This means that brand experience management requires delivering the brand promise consistently across all customer touchpoints (Brodie et al., 2009; Dall’Olmo Riley and de Chernatony, 2000; Payne et al., 2009). Brands that succeed in delivering a consistent and outstanding brand experience achieve higher levels of brand loyalty and even evangelism. Therefore, organizations must seek to engage customers and other stakeholders through online and real-life physical brand interactions while consistently delivering the promised brand experiences.

Delivering consistent brand experiences given the plethora of available brand touchpoints is becoming a challenge itself. Consider a successful brand such as Apple. Apple customers interact with the brand when using its products; opening their products’ packaging; entering their brick-and-mortar stores; interacting with its sales associates personally, online, or over the phone; signing up for an Apple account; downloading apps at the Apple app store; navigating and purchasing music and videos on iTunes; or buying books on iBooks. Furthermore, Apple customers interact with other Apple customers personally, read their blogs, follow their tweets, like their Facebook pages, and share and learn what they pin on Pinterest. In the words of Iglesias and Bonet (2012, p. 259):

Over time, the consumer-perceived brand meaning in the consumer-brand relationship evolves and is reinterpreted in accordance with the experiences gathered from the brand touchpoints and inputs received from a wide range of external stakeholders.

Recent research by Nielsen (2012) unveils that 92 percent of consumers around the world trust word-of-mouth (WOM), and 70 percent trust user-generated-content (UCG), more than any other form of advertising, social media or email marketing. This reinforces the view that managers need to ensure a consistent delivery of brand experiences across all touchpoints as the primary mechanism to ensure that different brand stakeholders share and spread positive recommendations. Nonetheless, a first magnitude issue remains. How can a brand entirely control its delivered multisensory brand experiences when customers have more trust in the content and information that is not created by the brand’s organization? The answer seems to be that, even if the brand experience is the key activity to be managed, it is no longer plausible to have total control over all of the different sources of brand meaning.

Brand meaning, according to Jevons et al. (2005), depends on a highly complex number of agents and touchpoints, some of which can be more easily controlled and others that can only be influenced. A first important implication is that managers need to accept that they cannot have full control of the overall brand experience (Palmer, 2010). A subsequent implication is that managers need to develop new skills and capabilities in order to successfully cope with this new environment. They need to be more humble and understand that it is not possible to build brands without taking into consideration the views of their consumers and related stakeholders. They also need to trust their staff and empower them, so that they can better perform their role at every customer touchpoint that they will encounter during the customer experience. Finally, managers also need to comprehend that they cannot control the social media conversations, but that they can learn from, and influence, them if they align their proposals with the interests of all different stakeholders. This new approach, labeled by some authors as “persuasive brand management”, claims that a central activity for brand managers is to persuade a wide range of internal and external stakeholders in order to achieve co-creating a brand image consistent to the management’s proposal (Iglesias and Bonet, 2012).

In the past two Journal of Product and Brand Management special issues derived from the Academy of Marketing’s “Brand, Identity, and Corporate Reputation Special Interest Group” International Colloquiums, the focus shifted from “The power of brands as intangible assets” (2009, Vol. 18, No. 5) to the “Key changes and challenges for brands in an uncertain environment” (2011, Vol. 20, No. 6). In the first special issue papers primarily explored how tangible and intangible aspects of branding affect the brand experience and serve as sources of value for the consumer. In the second special issue the focus shifted towards the corporate brand and how these address the broader interests of multiple stakeholders.

This special issue, which derives from the 7th International Colloquium held in Oxford in 2011, brings the focus back to the consumer, and explores the challenges brand management faces as customers demand multisensory and multi-experiential brand interactions. Two articles directly explore how elements of the marketing mix affect consumer brand interactions; namely online banner ads and brand names and logos. Three articles focus on how allocating brand resources in order to strengthen consumer brand interactions can lead to increased brand equity. In addition, the final article presents a timely and thorough review of the literature in B2B branding.

Marketing mix

In “Consumer recall of brand versus product banner ads,” Van Steenburg (this volume) compares the effectiveness of brand-reinforcing versus product-reinforcing online banner ads. Using three experimental design studies he manipulates the type of online banner ad and measures consumer need for cognition (NFC). His main findings reveal that consumers with different levels of NFC recall product-reinforcing and brand-reinforcing ads differently. The author then delves into explaining the practical implications of his findings and suggests different alternatives to help brand managers make better strategic decisions regarding their online marketing mix based on specific consumer cognition characteristics. These findings provide valuable insight for enhancing consumer online experiential brand interactions.

Machado, Vacas-de-Carvalho, Costa and Lencastre (this volume), in “Brand mergers: examining consumers’ responses to name and logo design,” explore how a brand name and its logo design characteristics, specifically its figurativeness, can influence consumer preferences in the context of a brand merger. The authors develop a typology of all the possible post-merger corporate identity brand structures and analyze consumer preference for the alternative branding strategies. Their main findings suggest that consumers prefer figurative logos and that these might be as important as the company’s name in ensuring a consumer connection to the brand’s past. Their article provides managerial guidelines for evaluating and choosing post-merger branding strategies that allow for maintaining or reinforcing consistent multisensory brand interactions across different brand touchpoints, such as the name and logo.

Brand equity

In “Consumer-based brand equity and top of mind awareness: a cross-country analysis” Hakala, Svensson, and Vincze (this volume), focus on the dimensions of consumer-based brand equity, and specifically on the recall level of brand awareness, in order to identify existing differences in levels of brand recall across various product categories – beverages, computers, and cell-phones – in different national contexts – Finland, France, Sweden, and the USA. They explore the relationships between consumers’ awareness of brands, attitudes related to brand equity, and changes in cultural context. Their main findings indicate that the four dimensions of brand equity vary depending on the cultural context. They also discover a relationship between top of mind awareness and the national context that is generalizable for the three product categories. The authors provide evidence and valuable insights for global branding regarding the need to tailor multisensory and multi-experiential brand interactions in different national and cultural contexts.

In “Sources of equity in fashion markets” Calvo-Dopico and Calvo Porral (this volume) sets to identify sources of differentiation and brand equity in the fashion market that enable developing competitive fashion offerings. After conducting in depth interviews with sector executives and collecting consumer survey data, his main findings indicate that multiple brand touchpoints – the product itself, brand image and design, brand loyalty, and brand associations – represent the most outstanding sources of brand equity. His article suggests that identifying these multiple sources of equity allows for optimally allocating resources to develop multisensory and multi-experiential brand interactions.

Cúneo,López and Yagüé (this volume) also explore brand equity, but of private label brands (PLB). In their article “The value of private level brands: measuring equity across consumer segments,” they provide evidence that over time PLB can build brand equity, but that their level of capitalization varies across consumer segments and product categories. The authors incorporate key consumer level factors identified as important in the literature and show their relevance in determining PLB choice. Their brand choice model is tested using data for a three year period from a Spanish consumer panel. Their main findings indicate that PLB have been able to build equity across product categories, but that it is only capitalized across some consumer segments. The authors discuss their findings in depth and their important managerial implications regarding market segmentation.

B2B branding

In “Systematic review on B2B branding: research issues and avenues for future research,” Keränen, Piirainen, and Salminen (this volume) thoroughly review the current body of B2B branding literature and identify issues that hinder research in this field. They identify 73 relevant journal publications from 1973 to 2010 and systematically evaluate them for further analysis. The authors identify five possible issues that possibly affect current B2B branding research: the lack of systematic theory development, the transference of consumer concepts, the dominance of quantitative research, the lack of longitudinal research, and the focus on single industries. By identifying these issues the authors hope to aid a more rapid advancement of B2B branding as a discipline and direct future research efforts to areas where a greater impact can be made. This valuable study is the first systematic review of B2B branding literature of its kind.

Final reflection

This special edition is intended to ignite an intense academic discussion on the present and future of branding and how increased consumer power is forcing brands to deliver higher quality multi-sensory, multi-experiential brand interactions. The subsequent articles attempt to engage the academic and managerial community in discussing and further researching some of the emerging topics identified during the 2011 colloquium in Oxford. We would like to suggest future research that explores topics such as the imperious trend towards brand co-creation; the need for developing consistent multi-sensory brand experiences across all brand touchpoints; media planning and the role of social media in the current brand environment; the role of leveraging secondary sources of value to increase consumer engagement, brand loyalty, and ultimately brand equity; the role of product, service, and corporate brands in the current brand environment; and more specific B2B branding research. With this volume we hope to inspire these new research ideas and stimulate a growing area of discourse.

Francisco Guzmán Associate Professor, Department of Marketing & Logistics, University of North Texas

Oriol IglesiasAssistant Professor, ESADE – Universitat Ramon Llull and Academic Director of the ESADE Brand Institute