Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant

Preface xiii

1. Winning the Brand Relevance Battle 1

Cases: The Japanese Beer Industry and the U.S. Computer Industry 1

Gaining Brand Preference 9

The Brand Relevance Model 13

Creating New Categories or Subcategories 17

Levels of Relevance 25

The New Brand Challenge 26

The First-Mover Advantage 30

The Payoff 34

Creating New Categories or Subcategories—Four Challenges 39

The Brand Relevance Model Versus Others 41

2. Understanding Brand Relevance: Categorizing, Framing, Consideration, and Measurement 47

Categorization 48

It’s All About Framing 53

Consideration Set as a Screening Step 62

Measuring Relevance 64

3. Changing the Retail Landscape 69

Cases:

Muji 71

IKEA 73

Zara 74

H&M 76

Best Buy 77

Whole Foods Market 81

The Subway Story 86

Zappos 88

4. Market Dynamics in the Automobile Industry 97

Cases:

Toyota’s Prius Hybrid 98

The Saturn Story 106

The Chrysler Minivan 110

Tata’s Nano 115

Yugo 118

Enterprise Rent-A-Car 119

Zipcar 122

5. The Food Industry Adapts 127

Cases:

Fighting the Fat Battle 129

Nabisco Cookies 134

Dreyer’s Slow Churned Ice Cream 136

P&G’s Olestra 139

From Fat to Health 141

General Mills and the Health Trends 142

Healthy Choice 148

6. Finding New Concepts 157

Case: Apple 157

Concept Generation 165

Sourcing Concepts 169

Prioritizing the Analysis 192

7. Evaluation 197

Case: Segway’s Human Transporter 197

Evaluation: Picking the Winners 200

Is There a Market—Is the Opportunity Real? 202

Can We Compete and Win? 215

Does the Offering Have Legs? 220

Beyond Go or No-Go—A Portfolio of Concepts 223

8. Defining and Managing the Category or Subcategory 227

Case: Salesforce.com 227

Defining a New Category or Subcategory 234

Functional Benefits Delivered by the Offering 239

Customer-Brand Relationship—Beyond the Offering 254

Categories and Subcategories: Complex and Dynamic 260

Managing the Category or Subcategory 261

9. Creating Barriers: Sustaining the Differentiation 269

Case: Yamaha Disklavier 269

Creating Barriers to Competition 275

Investment Barriers 276

Owning a Compelling Benefit or Benefits 283

Relationship with Customers 290

Link the Brand to the Category or Subcategory 294

10. Gaining and Maintaining Relevance in the Face of Market Dynamics 297

Case: Walmart 298

Avoiding the Loss of Relevance 301

Product Category or Subcategory Relevance 302

Category or Subcategory Relevance Strategies 304

Energy Relevance 311

Gaining Relevance—The Hyundai Case 320

11. The Innovative Organization 327

Case: GE Story 327

The Innovative Organization 332

Selective Opportunism 334

Dynamic Strategic Commitment 339

Organization-Wide Resource Allocation 344

Epilogue: The Yin and Yang of the Relevance Battle 355

Notes 359

Index 371