Final Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Use Steps: Use steps include all the customer's value added activities or the consumption of the product itself. These steps include all the costs the customer incurs in employing the product in its intended use.

C.
Experience: Enhance the experience the customer has with the product

2. Associate the company or the product with an image to increase customer pleasure in using the product

A.
Warnings and advice

No.	SIC	Year	Note
1	0	1992	Customers seem to be swayed less and less by environmental consciousness in manufacturers.
2	0	1989	Brand imagery plays a significant role in loyalty to such products as cigarettes, perfume and beer. People often stay with a particular brand because they want to be associated with the image its advertising conveys.
3	0	2003	Corporate brand associations provide credibility. A trustworthy organization will be given the benefit of the doubt. An organization will be liked because of its citizenship activities. And an expert organization will be seen as especially competent in making and selling its products. Trust is an important attribute and it is easier to develop for an organization than for a product.
4	0	2003	The corporate brand represents an organization as well as a product. As the endorser, it can differentiate, create branded energizers, provide credibility, facilitate brand management, support internal brand-building, provide a basis for a relationship to augment that product brand, support communication to broad company constituencies, and provide the ultimate branded house. Corporate brands can find different organizational associations. While products and services tend to become similar over time, organizations are inevitably different. Wells Fargo is very different from its competitor Bank of America in terms of style, personality, headquarters location, skills, citizenship programs, and heritage. A person may become more comfortable with one organization over another, particularly if the products are similar. The challenge the corporation faces is to identify those organizational characteristics and make them relevant to customers.
5	0	2003	A firm brings to a market a perception of having assets and capabilities with regard to its ability to deliver innovative products and value to customers. Wal Mart has the technology needed to deliver a wide variety of merchandise at a lower price, Singapore Airlines can deliver exceptional service, Prudential has financial assets behind it and LeapFrog has the ability to understand the educational needs of children and translate them into products.
6	0	2003	A reputation for innovation enhances credibility. Innovation has made the acceptance of new product offerings more likely. Most firms aspire to be perceived as innovative but few really break out of the clutter. Innovation needs to be relevant and visible. Sony has benefited from being able to capture its innovation from a variety of categories within its corporate brand. Home Depot and Dell have innovated in visible ways to bring products to customers in different and superior ways.
7	2389	2002	For years, Levi Strauss jeans were the same model, the same price, everywhere. Then the jean's market diversified into a hodge podge of designer to utilitarian garb and Levi's began to suffer.
8	3711	2001	BMW consumers have great brand-loyalty, two-thirds of customers being repeat buyers. This aspect of BMW's brand allows for 10% to 30% higher pricing than comparable models, whereas the rest of mass-carmakers are offering huge discounts.
9	3711	2002	Coach overcomes the challenges of losing profits due to unpredictable changes in fashion by periodically using focus groups and surveys taken in stores and shopping malls. When the company learns that one particular style does not sell, the company changes. Coach chooses to market only new styles that will contribute long-term to the brand's image.
10	3711	1975	Porsche may have an advantage with its late entry into the SUV market, because it didn't have to pave the way with SUVs and risk its luxury image. Cadillac, Mercedes, BMW and Acura have all produced SUVs before Porsche.
11	3711	2001	Luxury auto-makers' attempts to expand their brand with lower-priced vehicles can be risky in the long-term by lowering their appeal and eliminating their desirable "out-of-reach" quality. However, the luxury auto-companies claim that they will instead attract more customers than they may lose.
12	5812	2001	Jack in the Box targets 18-40 year old males but it has a diverse menu to bring in customers over 40. It has been successful in separating its identity from other fast-food restaurants because of its food diversity.
13	7319	2004	Brands are indispensable in modern business, communicating messages and promises to the masses and developing relationships. Direct marketing techniques, CRM and one-to-one marketing allow companies to respond to the needs and desires of the consumer. Most strategic and tactical tasks can be better performed at the level of consumer segments than marketing to the whole audience. Companies that employ disaggregate marketing over traditional marketing techniques are better able to tailor their offerings and influence consumer buying patterns while reducing communication costs. Kraft's food & family magazine is personalized to the individual consumer and the circulation has rapidly grown. Product brands remain well suited to promising and delivering a specific usage benefit but aren't as effective for building consumer relationships. Retailer power has also grown as brands have changed; retailers now focus on promoting store-brand awareness and differentiation with profitable private-label lines. In most markets, brands spend more money wooing the retailer than the consumer. Tesco has been most effective with this, using loyalty cards to create an information-driven marketing program. Data from the cards allows Tesco to personalize the experience. When one of Kraft's products is advertised on television without the context of other Kraft products, inefficiency and duplication is created. To switch from mass to individual marketing, information must be gathering to tailor the content.

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