Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic

Marketing: A

Global−Managerial

Approach, 14/e

9. Elements of Product
   Planning for Goods and
   Services

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

262 Chapter 9

going strong) are Borden’s Condensed Milk, Quaker Oats, Pillsbury’s Best Flour, and

Ivory Soap. Today, familiar brands exist for most product categories, ranging from

crayons (Crayola) to real estate services (Century 21). However, what brand is

familiar often varies from one country to another.

Brand acceptance must be earned with a good product and regular promotion.

Brand familiaritymeans how well customers recognize and accept a company’s brand.

The degree of brand familiarity affects the planning for the rest of the marketing

mix—especially where the product should be offered and what promotion is needed.

Five levels of brand familiarity are useful for strategy planning: (1) rejection, (2)

nonrecognition, (3) recognition, (4) preference, and (5) insistence.

Some brands have been tried and found wanting. Brand rejectionmeans that

potential customers won’t buy a brand unless its image is changed. Rejection may

suggest a change in the product or perhaps only a shift to target customers who have

a better image of the brand. Overcoming a negative image is difficult and can be

very expensive.

Brand rejection is a big concern for service-oriented businesses because it’s hard

to control the quality of service. A business traveler who gets a dirty room in a

Hilton Hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, might not return to a Hilton anywhere. Yet it’s

difficult for Hilton to ensure that every maid does a good job every time.

Some products are seen as basically the same. Brand nonrecognitionmeans final

consumers don’t recognize a brand at all—even though middlemen may use the

brand name for identification and inventory control. Examples include school sup-

plies, inexpensive dinnerware, many of the items that you’d find in a hardware store,

and thousands of dot-coms on the Internet.

Brand recognitionmeans that customers remember the brand. This may not seem

like much, but it can be a big advantage if there are many “nothing” brands on the

market. Even if consumers can’t recall the brand without help, they may be reminded

when they see it in a store among other less familiar brands.

Most branders would like to win brand preference—which means that target

customers usually choose the brand over other brands, perhaps because of habit or

favorable past experience.

Brand insistencemeans customers insist on a firm’s branded product and are will-

ing to search for it. This is an objective of many target marketers.

Five levels of brand
familiarity

It takes time and money to build
brand awareness, so sometimes
brands can be extended. Both
Bounce and Mr. Clean have
recently introduced new products
that benefit from their well-
recognized brand names.