Xv) Advertising (Including Brands) Or Product Category By Market Segmentation

"...Advertising is a quest not to be forgotten..."
Isaac Stanley Becker, 2019

This can include being divisive, negative, polarising, etc

- such as age, gender, lifestyle, geography, industry, size of business, etc. Branding efforts that concentrate on the products/services/attributes being flexible enough to do many jobs can result in misdirected or undirected effort. It is best to define the circumstances which get the job done which can then be communicated with a 'purpose' brand. Therefore, when the customers think about themselves in those circumstances: they will think instinctively of the brand and know what to buy in order to get the job done, or achieve the outcomes that they seeking. Customers pay a significant premium for a brand which produces an outcome they desire. An example of purpose branding is the Marriott Hotel Chain where its hotels brand themselves differently depending on the market segments they are targeting: Courtyard Hotels are the hotels "designed by business travellers for business travellers"; the Fairfield Inns are a good holiday place for a family; Residents' Inns are a home-away-from-home.

Brands are at their peak when they are created at stages of the value-added chain where products/services are not-yet-good-enough. The aim of brands is to help create price premiums. On the other hand, when competitors' products/services are more than adequate, any price premium disappears. Yet shifts in the value chain can create opportunities for branding. For example, initially computer systems were complex and unreliable. IBM, with its superior service capabilities, could charge a price premium up to 40 percent compared with competitor's comparable equipment.

Remember: the movement of branding power in a market that has many tiers is a process, not an event. Thus branding is aimed at customers who are still not satisfied with functionality and reliability. On other hand, where speed, convenience and responsiveness drive competitive success, profitable brands are found at the levels of subsystem and distribution channels - away from the product/service.