Hot Topic: Conceptualising the Service Brand

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Hot TopicConceptualising the Service Brand
Broadening the Concept of Brand Equity

• Professor Rod Brodie
• University of Auckland Business School
• Frontiers in Services Conference
• June2006
• University of Queensland
• Australia

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MSI Top Research Priority
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Towards Service Centric Thinking

• Goods vs. Services is not the point (CMP
  Research)
• 80 of all firms describe their primary market
  offer having an emphasis on service
• all firms differentiate on the basis of their
  service offer
• Vargo Luschs New Logic
• From Goods-Centred Exchange
• tangible (operand) resources, embedded value and
  transactions
• To Service-Centred Exchange
• intangible (operant) resources, the co-creation
  of value and relationships
• How does this change thinking about marketing
  branding?

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Evolving To a New Frame of ReferenceLusch
Vargo (2004)
To Market (matter in motion)
Market To (management of customers markets)
Market With (collaborate with customers
partners to produce sustain value)
Through 1950 1950-2005 Future
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To Market Concepts Transitional Concepts Market With Concepts
Goods Services Service
Products Offerings Experiences
Feature/attribute Benefit Solution
Valueadded Coproduction Cocreation of value
Profit maximization Financial engineering Financial feedback/learning
Price Value delivery Value proposition
Equilibrium systems Dynamic systems Complex adaptive systems
Supply Chain ValueChain Valuecreation network/constellation
Promotion Integrated Marketing Communications Dialog
Product orientation Market orientation Service orientation
Lusch Vargo (2006)
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Multifaceted Nature of Brand

• Consumer based concepts
• identity, logo, image, symbol, expression, and
  personality
• Organisational concepts
• positioning statements, cluster of values,
  vision, and risk reduction
• Relational concepts
• promises, trust and commitment, relationships,
  and experience with customers and other
  stakeholders
• Financial perspective
• a resource or asset that creates value
• above the water line (15)
• what is visible about the brand to the consumer
  i.e. the logo and name
• below the water-line (85) are the unseen
  value-adding processes

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Integrating the Research Role of the Brand in
Co-creating Value
Consumers, Customers Stakeholders
INTERACTIVE co-creating meaning and experience
EXTERNAL making promises through value
propositions
Brands ( Company) facilitating, mediating
realising the co-creation of value
Organisation
Employees
INTERNAL enabling the fulfillment created by
promises
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Is there a Missing Fundamental Premise in the SD
Logic?

• Service brands
• facilitate and mediate the marketing processes
  used to realise the experiences the co-creation
  of value between the organisation its customers
  stakeholders)
• provide sign systems that symbolise meaning in
  the marketing network,
• hence are a fundamental asset or resource that a
  marketing organisation uses in developing
  service-based competency and hence competitive
  advantage.
• But does this overstate the case?
• danger of becoming too brand centric and this
  detracts from customer centric logic (Rust al
  2005)

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Synergistic Advantages from a Multi-method
Approach

• Quantitative and qualitative inquiry can support
  and inform each other. Narratives and
  variable-driven analyses need to interpret and
  inform each other. Realists, idealists and
  critical theorists can do better by incorporating
  other ideas than by remaining pure. Think of it
  as hybrid vigor. (Huberman Miles 2002, p396)
• If my thoughts are at least close to the mark,
  researchers in marketing are entering the age of
  pluralism (Green 2001 marketing scientist)
• When consumer researchers discuss multi-paradigm
  research a visual metaphor usually dominates,
  notably that of overcoming perspectival
  limitations to create more comprehensive
  frameworks. Thompson, Arnould Stern 1997
  postmodernists)