Is Your Company Overestimating the Power of Brands?
The Role of Brands in B2B Markets
The B2B market requires a very different sales and marketing approach than B2C. Yet, companies in the B2B space continue to over emphasize certain sales and marketing activities at the expense of others. This paper explores the principal problems with the current sales and marketing approach in the B2B space and identifies what’s required to improve it.
Most B2B companies are committed to building a strong brand. Open any quarterly report, article, or press release and it’s there: “Building a strong brand is at the core of what we want to do. A strong brand will enable us to drive customer adoption and acceptance in the market.” The confidence in
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A Customer Value Model is a comprehensive accounting of the value, expressed in monetary terms, that a supplier delivers, or could deliver, compared to the value of competing solutions. In building a Customer Value Model the company examines the way in which all the components of its offering (products, programs, systems, and services) impact, or could impact, functionality and performance in the customer’s unique situation. It expresses this impact in monetary terms (e.g., cost per transaction, productivity per hour, etc.) It must then conduct a similar analysis for the competitive offering or offerings (whatever the “next best alternative is”). Because this research is conducted with real customers in real usage situations, it provides an objective and data-driven basis for comparison. It helps companies exploit opportunities in customer segments where they provide superior value, and shore up weaknesses in segments where their value proposition is inferior. It is important to do this because, as Anderson and Narus point out, in choosing between competitive alternatives business customers look at two factors: price and value. Suppose, for example, that a company were considering proposals from two Learning Management System (LMS) providers: Saba and Docent. It will compare the two offerings in terms of the following equation: (ValueSaba – PriceSaba ) vs (ValueDocent - PriceDocent)
The
Once a decision is made to develop a business, whom the customer will be is the next decision to be made. Whom will the company target as a customer? Will it be a business? Or will it be a consumer? Business-to-business (B2B) marketing has differences from business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing practices. This paper will outline these differences between the two types of e-commerce business transactions.
Customer Value is ‘the performance characteristics, features and attributes, and any other aspects of goods and which customers are willing to give up resources’ (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter, 2012). This broad definition highlights the fact that there are multiple aspects that contribute to create a sense of value within the customer.
Before i go further let me touch on a brief introduction on customer value, customer value can be defined as the difference between what a customer gets from a product and what he or
According to Veloutso & Moutinho (2009, p.315) Brand relationship is defined as the continual exchanges between a specified brand and an established customer, where relationship characteristics of love, association, interdependence and loyalty are developed with the brand. However, Keller (2014, p.365) revealed that consumer-brand relationships are the quality of relationship between brands and consumers. As a result, there are many influences that formulate consumer brand relationship. Basically, brand loyalty , brand equity and trust Escalas and Bettman, (2005, p. 379) are the underpinning factors that generates brand relationships. Furthermore, this developing customer brand relationship constitutes a sum of long term experiences with the brand where the brand is the entirety of the customers experiences with the brand. However, supplementing the long term customer brand relationship, brand communications is the major catalyst in relation to enticing both customer and seller in the long term relationship, hence attaining a brand emotional connection. This brand relationship does not only lodge an essential position in the mental period of a brand connection, rather it stimulates greater sales due to customer retention, less price Vulnerability, superior customer loyalty and advanced profit margin.
In the B2B domain the fastest way to improve your sales number is to build great relationships with your customers. Relationships help discern when the industry a large number of established players in the market, customers are always asking for price-cut and the industry is quite mature with widespread adoption of products.
The main difference between B2B and B2C is who the buyer of a product or service is.
The categories of value creation on which BestValue currently relies come from the “Communicating Value in the Sales Message” section of the chapter and include product quality, quality of the buyer-seller relationship (trust), service quality, salesperson professionalism, corporate reputation, application of technology, and price. BestValue Computers is providing quality products in an atmosphere of trust with a sales representative who has developed high-quality relationships with her clients. In addition, BestValue provides a variety of technology products with local service at reasonable prices. Finally, the success of Leroy’s business is an indicator that BestValue has developed a highly respected reputation among his existing and
First of all, a strong brand can be seen as the condition for organisations to expand products, offer more service, and introduce new products (Chernatony and McDonald, 2003). Secondly, a strong brand can lead to growth marketing communication effectiveness (Keller, 2009). ‘To build a strong brand, the right knowledge structures must exist in the minds of actual or prospective customers so that they respond positively to marketing activities and programs in these different ways.’(Keller, 2003, p. 140) Furthermore, Kay (2005) asserted that the strong brand can be seen as a resource of management, which make brand extension easier and useful to build distribution network. Companies are not treated by the intermediaries (Chernatony and McDonald, 2003). Moreover, companies are comparatively easier to change price if they have strong brands. As Henderson, et al (2003) said, a strong brand can allow for premium pricing even still remain loyalty customers, which help companies to survive in the intensive competitive market.
Customer value essentially is the perceived benefits concluded by the customer, derived from obtaining the product held up against the sacrifices being made to acquire the product (Weinstein, 2012). Organisations creating value, furthermore customer value is progressively being seen as a fresh and up to date source of competitive advantage (Woodruff, 1997). Because of this, the creation of customer value is an incredibly significant central concept within marketing (Patterson & Spreng, 1997). However there is not one single agreed upon definition that may be used for customer value, as well as no distinct definitive theory or framework used to emphasize customer value (Weinstein, 2012). Adopting the way in which organisations are able to create value, Smith and Colgate (2007), have developed an innovative framework where four types of value created merely by the organisation are acknowledged - these being functional/instrumental value, experiential/hedonic value, symbolic/expressive value and cost/sacrifice value.
In over 20 years, of taking several small businesses to million dollar ventures, each in less than 12 months, I have identified 4 BIG and critical sales and marketing concepts that are MISSING from businesses that aren’t as successful as they should be. The good news is that they are all easy to apply. By understanding these concepts it will help you appreciate why many businesses – yours included, don’t achieve the results they should.
In this research, the objective is to study the brand management and to get an insight of how Birlasoft has participated in the globally evolving IT industry, while remaining focused on consistent innovation, benchmarking, learning and developing.
B2B branding has recently become seen as increasingly important although there is no clear consensus regarding what level of branding is appropriate for B2B companies (Leek & Christodoulides 2011). Kuhn et al. (2008, cited in Leek & Christodoulides 2011) also present a revised version of Keller’s (Keller 2003) customer-based brand equity pyramid revised for
The days of plain, undecorated packaged products aimed for those on a tight budget are history now. ‘Private labels’, also known as store brands with a share of around 10-12%, are an integral part of the organized retail sector. They are no longer seen as just budget friendly substitutes to recognized brands. They comprise now of high quality products that satisfy a consumers desires across a vast price range. What is the reason for retailers to become bold enough to come up with their own brands competing with pre-existing market leaders in the face of fierce competition that would normally discourage new entrants? But maybe the real question is, how are they actually becoming successful?
Store brands saw a rise during the recession, but many consumers continue to buy them. With the recession over, consumers purchase store brands for different reasons other than cost savings. Store brands are now competing with national brands. Both, store and national brands, need to focus on what they can do for their consumers and offer them value plus brand promises. How is this accomplished? This paper explains the causes behind the rise of store brands and how national and store brands create brand loyalty by focusing on consumer needs as they compete for consumers, along with how brands achieve success.
My experience with iBank.com as a service provider has presented me with a great value for my money. When my thoughts wander to value, I immediately think of getting something better than I expected for the amount of money I intended to spend. In other words, my perception of something being better is what drives my value determination. According to Walters and Rainbird (2007, pg. 25), “The underlying motivation for changes in customer expectations is a shift in the consumer perspective of value, which has moved away from a combination of benefits dominated by price towards a range of benefits in which price, for some customer segments, has very little impact. Value is assumed to be the benefits received from a product choice less their costs of acquisition.”