Literature Review
RadioShack's brand struggle may be examined through an investigation of three major concepts: Brand Deviation, Customer Confusion, and Brand Implementation.
Brand Deviation RadioShack's humble origins began in the 1920s, when Theodore and Milton Deutschmann began by providing radio products and services. Despite the brand name, RadioShack was originally never product-oriented; its business definition was to appeal to hardware hobbyists, helping people complete "Do-It-Yourself" (DIY) projects. The original brand identity of RadioShack revolved around innovation, uniqueness, affordability, and product variety. In the 1960s, RadioShack's CEO (Charles Tandy), stated "We're not looking for the guy who wants to spend his entire paycheck on a
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Because of knowledgeable employees, its customer and potential-product oriented focus, RadioShack pursued market opportunities, while supporting the business definition. After the success of CB radios, RadioShack soon shifted attention away from the potential product ("Why do customers choose this brand?"), and more towards the core product ("What products and services can my brand sell to customers?"). Initially, this focus did not create problems-RadioShack shifted to selling the first mass-marketed Personal Computer, the TRS-80. This decision resulted in high profits, and appealed to the target customer, hobbyists. However, RadioShack decided to focus solely on core products, and eventually disregarded the original business definition-to help people solve complex hardware problems. This was evident in late 2000s, when RadioShack rebranded itself as "The Shack", with the purpose of appearing cutting-edge, and attracting tech-savvy customers. The former CMO of RadioShack, Lee Applbaum, stated that, "Mobility is our focus…we're going to continue to build our business around mobility…", signalling to customers of its intent to fully focus on offering mobile devices. Most importantly, the
If we refer to products, people often take them as the things we get from suppliers with a price. Apparently, this is a definition from the perspective of exchanges and does not quite catch the essence of the meaning of product in the marketing discipline. In this regard, Rothschild (2009) offered a probably better definition for products as a bundle of benefits for customers. This definition also offers an important perspective for JB Hi-Fi to understand its products. Because after all, JB Hi-Fi is only a retailer and all its home theatre products are sourced from their manufacturers. If JB Hi-Fi only sees its products as the tangible parts, it may miss out the very important parts of the competition. However, if JB Hi-Fi sees the product as a bundle of benefits it can offer to its customers, the tangible part is only part of this bundle. There is much more for JB Hi-Fi to offer to improve the benefits to customers, and at the same time differentiate itself from its competitors.
“Sears is the leading retailer in home appliance, tools, lawn and garden, electronics, and automotive repair and maintenance. They are also the largest home service provider and answers over 11 million service c...
Vogelstein, Fred. "The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone#ixzz0ic3Qh8jx." Wired - Wireless. Condé Nast Digital, 09 Jan 2008. Web. 12 Mar 2010.
More important than product, people, and advertising, branding is going forward as one of the most important factors in a business. While Klein has a bias against branding and wishes the reader a word of warning, in this specific essay she focuses on what branding means for the future. Klein starts off her minor claims with the bloating of corporations. “A consensus emerged that corporations were bloated, oversized; they owned too much, employed too many people, and were weighed down by too many things (Klein 769).” Through the use of branding, these same businesses could cut down all of their problems and payrolls through importing and simply putting their brand name on the product. Then when the dreaded “Marlboro Friday” happened, and it seemed that all brand significance was for naught, Klein showed us examples of businesses that thrived from a new age of marketing. “For these companies, the ostensible product was mere filler for the real production: the brand (Klein 774).” With brand driven marketing rather than product driven sales, businesses soared with selling the idea of their products more than their products quality. Using the example of Starbucks, Klein also supports her claims of branding not through marketing but weaving its name into products and culture. “The Starbucks coffee chain was also expanding during this period spinning its name into a wide range of branded projects: Starbucks airline coffee, office coffee, coffee ice cream, coffee beer (Klein 775).” By spreading its name not through marketing, but through spreading the brand through new and different products Starbucks found success in turning their brand concept into a virus and sending it through cultural sponsorship, political controversy, consumer experience and brand extensions. These forms of image building could make a company like Starbucks successful with branding over
Best Buy’s History & Main Characters: Best Buy is Minneapolis-based and is North America's leading specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. Throughout Best Buy's 37-year history, the company has maintained the tradition of making life fun and easy for customers and employees, while providing a significant return to partners and investors. It has 80,000 employees and over 550 stores in the U.S., in addition to the brands Best Buy Canada, Future Shop and Magnolia Hi-Fi. Their leadership is led by Dick Schulze, Founder and Chairman, Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman and CEO, Al Lenzmeier, President and COO, and Darren Jackson, Executive Vice President of Finance and CFO. Chairman Dick Schulze founded Best Buy in 1966 with the Sound of Music, an audio component systems store in St. Paul, Minn. In 1973, Vice Chairman and CEO Brad Anderson joined Sound of Music as a salesperson. The company quickly expanded into video products and computers, was renamed Best Buy in 1983, and became a public company in 1985. Best Buy’s revenues for fiscal year 2003 were $20.9 billion and net earnings of $622 million. It was ranked number 91 on the Fortune 500 in 2003 (Bestbuy.com). Best Buy stores are redefining the way customers shop by offering an unparalleled assortment of affordable, easy-to-use entertainment and technology products and services available through its network of more than 550 retail stores in 48 states and online at BestBuy.com. Best Buy is scheduled to open 60 new stores in fiscal 2003 and is on track to have 650 stores by fiscal 2005. Magnolia Hi-Fi is a high-end electronics retailer specializing in audio and video solutions for homes, ...
Before some of the smartest property attorneys at the Marcus Evans November 2006 Conference in Washington D.C, Dan Bogue had to do the single most important thing anyone can think of when it comes to being an Entrepreneur, which is get investments in order to build a company. However, Command Audio patented an idea that could be considered the start up for a lot of the new age technologies in todays world. What is particularly interesting and rather impressive is that he was presenting his company, which successfully created a business model for intellectual property. Combining those two aspects: a great product and a great speaker are the fundamental keys for success in Entrepreneurship.
During the 1990s, each company experienced specific difficulties to their market share. Both companies struggled to reestablish themselves in the global consumer electronics world. As the year 2000 came around, new CEOs at both companies came up with even more complicated initiatives and reorganizations.
Moving up the pyramid, the next level includes brand meaning – what are you? This incorporates performance and imagery. The product itself is at the heart of brand equity, and designing and delivering a product that satisfies the consumers’ needs and wants is crucial for successful marketing. In order to reach resonance at the top of the pyramid, the product must (at least) meet, if not surpass, customer expectations and functional needs. The goal here is to identify and communicate brand meaning. Performance dimensions consists of five categories: primary characteristics and supplementary features; product reliability, durability and serviceability; service effectiveness, efficiency and empathy; style and design; and
Sarkar, A. N., & Singh, J. (2005). New paradigm in evolving brand management strategy. Journal of Management Research, 5(2), 80-90. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/237238894?accountid=28644
Kmart's main weakness was that it had an aspiration to be all things to all people – its dabblings in drug stores, home improvement stores, bookstores, cafeterias and specialty stores in the 1980s and early 1990s seemed to spread the company very thin. This focus on diversification is just one example of how the retailer has often not made the wisest choices when faced with a tight spot.
S.H. Kress achieved a unique architectural distinction in both defining a brand identity while simultaneously fitting in with the five-and-dime market and the local main street character of each town. He was a pioneer in creating company brand identity through a “signature storefront”. He viewed his buildings as an advertisement and each store had some components that were standardized, reflecting the popular assembly line approach at that time, while other components varied based on the location to fit within each town culture.
Tanner and Raymond (2014) describe branding activity as “strategies that are designed to create an image and position in the consumers’ minds” (c.6). When branding messages coincide with its offerings’ characteristics, it establishes consumer trust, and brand strength. For example, when first introducing Dove brand in 1957, by labeling its product as a “beauty cleansing bar . . . [with] ¼ moisturizing cream, that rinses cleaner than soap” (Unilever, 2016), we can see that marketers associated the brand to moisturizing and beauty, and disassociated the brand from common soap. Over the years, this consistent message coinciding with product performance has strengthened the Dove brand. Strong brand equity is derived from consistent, strategic branding that establishes perceived quality and emotional attachment (Entrepreneur, 2016); therefore, consumers are more likely to pay higher prices, as well as purchase new offerings connected to the
Arrow Electronics is a distributor of electronic parts, including semiconductors and passive components. It was founded in 1935 and has reached number one position among electronics distributors by 1992. Arrow’s North American operations were headquartered in Melville, N.Y. Sales and marketing functions were divided among five operating groups. This case study focuses on the largest of Arrow’s groups, Arrow/Schweber (A/S).
3] Keller, K.L. (1993) Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing 57, 1–22.
As a result of an existing dynamic environment, the repositioning of a brand rep-resents a given advanced development of its positioning, according to Homburg and Krohmer (2006). As identified by Roosdorp (1998) repositioning is considered as the second phase of the positioning strategy itself (cf. Homburg/Krohmer 2006,