A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy

HBR Article by Niraj Dawar & Charan K. Bagga

June 2015
Business To Business Marketing Assignment
SCMHRD | Semester IV | MBA (Exe) 2015-18
Submitted By – Indrani Das (2015-G07)
  Dawar and Bagga present a new map on which a brand's position
is based 0n two traits:

1. perceived centrality - how representative it is of its category

Background 2. distinctiveness - how much it stands out from other brands

 When linked to other metrics like sales, this tool can help
marketers determine a brand's current and desired position,
predict performance, and devise marketing strategies
  A brand is a set of perceptions, impressions, ideas and feelings
that consumers have for the product compared with competing
products.
What is Brand?  Marketers plan positions that give their products the greatest
advantage in selected target markets and they design marketing
mixes to create these planned positions.
  A brand strategy is a long term plan for the development of a
successful brand in order to achieve specific goals.
What is Brand
 A well defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a
Strategy? business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions,
and competitive environment.
  Marketers have 2 goals –
Why the need  To make their brand distinctive
 To make their brands central in their category
for Brand
 If a company is able to set the right balance between centrality
Strategy and distinctiveness, it affects how the brand will be perceived
Mapping?  Proper mapping can help marketers and strategists determine the
best paths for growth and profitability
 Brand Positioning

• Perceptual positioning maps

Traditional
Way of Brand
Strategy
Mapping? Business Performance

• Strategic tools that map brands on metrics such as

multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis
  As companies probe customer mind-set, they usually turn to two
tools, both of which are flawed and should be replaced by an
approach he has developed.
Why  One common effort is perceptual mapping: The brand chooses
some dimensions of its appeal considered decisive, and compares
Traditional itself to competitors. So colas might check out sweetness and fizz.
But usually those are arbitrary factors, based on the brand
Way of Brand manager’s intuition of what’s important and may miss what
Strategy actually motivates customers.
 To counter that, companies may try multidimensional scaling or
Mapping is cluster analysis, using surveys and sophisticated data techniques.
flawed? But the manager’s mind-set still dominates when it comes to
analysis, and usually little is said about pricing and sales volume,
two key elements of business success.
  Marketplaces used to be static places. Citizens would flock to a
central square and purchase goods, choosing amongst the
assorted vendors, who knew their customers and preferences.
The New Way -  But Niraj Dawar, a marketing professor at the Ivey School of
Business, points out that these days products, brands and
Dawar and marketplaces have become more ethereal.
Bagga Way  Marketplaces exist in the customer’s mind, where he is comparing
brands, making trade-offs and choosing what to buy. To
understand competition we need to understand what goes on in
the mind.
 Marketers have always juggled the seemingly contradictory goals of
How This making brands both more distinctive and more central to their
Approach category. lt's not surprising that these two dimensions appear in
various measures of brand equity.
Differs From These contributions reside in demonstrating that these goals aren’t
Relevance- as contradictory as they may appear in mapping cognitive
dimensions to market performance, in elaborating strategies for
versus- each map quadrant, and in demonstrating the use of this tool for
firms that manage brand portfolios in competitive markets.
Differentiation Also, centrality evaluates the position of a brand in its category, not
Construct? how relevant the brand is to a specific consumer. For example, Mini
may be a relevant brand for someone, but that consumer is still
(relevance is a brand's ability to
deliver on the category benefits) likely to rate Toyota and Ford as more central.
  Prof. Dawar, with Charan Bagga, developed Centrality-
Distinctiveness Maps.
 It brings the marketplace of the mind closer to key business
factors:
How typical a brand is of the category it’s in
Centrality- – how central it is
Distinctiveness –how distinctive it is

Maps Using this tool, managers can determine a desired market position,
make resource allocation and brand strategy decisions, track
performance against competitors over time, and evaluate strategy
on the basis of results. Company may choose to go for both
centrality and distinctiveness and benefit substantially.
This tool allows us to take quantifiable metrics like sales, market
share, profitability, etc.
  That leads to a matrix with four quadrants in which your offering
might fall

Centrality-
Distinctiveness
Maps
 • Niche Players • Highly
• Business Models differentiated
designed for • Wide appeal
profitability at low
volumes • Highly priced
• Sales would • Faces challenges
increase they move from mainstream
to aspirational &
quadrant Unconventional Aspirational unconventional
quadrants
Centrality-
Distinctiveness
Map
Peripheral Mainstream

• Low distinctiveness
• Substitutes as low
price • Wide appeal
• May attempt to • Most popular
shift their • Faces challenges
positioning by from
adding distinctive unconventional and
features peripheral
quadrants
 Conduct a survey and
Identify geographic collect data on
market and customer consumer’s perception of
Creating A segment to be surveyed brand’s distinctiveness
Centrality- and centrality
Distinctiveness
Map of A
Brand This data yields unique The map captures market
Category co-ordinates for each performance too and it is
brand’s position on a 2x2 denoted by size of the
matrix bubble
Centrality-
Distinctiveness
Map

Example 1
Centrality-
Distinctiveness
Map

Example 2
 • Brand’s map positions carry strategic implications

• Using regression analysis, companies can create what-if scenarios for a range
How To Use of strategies to move a brand along centrality or distinctiveness dimension and
assess how those moves would affect sales or profitability
C-D Map?
• By mapping the positions of these brands, over time, companies can develop an
understanding of the costs associated with different strategies and the impact
that the resulting shifts in position have on brand performance
 • With their brands on the C-D map, company strategists and marketers
can better understand where they stand and how to move forward.
Business
• The C-D Map helps companies assess the strengths and weaknesses of the brand
Application and whether to stay in place or find the strategies that will help them move to a
more advantageous quadrant.
 The map seems to reveal important insights about brands. But its
limitations stem from:
1. Relying on consumer research to rate centrality and
distinctiveness. Consumers often aren't familiar with all brands
in a category do and their perceptions are shaped by marketing
and so may reflect advertising effectiveness or spending to
establish brand awareness. A better approach might be to
Limitations combine consumer perceptions with more objective
measurements.
2. Using traditional category definitions. Coca-Cola may be in the
soft drink category but people trade it for products outside that
category like water and coffee. Lt’s position on a map would
differ dramatically depending on the category definition. Also,
disruptive products don't fit nicely into existing categories.