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| | The Marketing, Channels/Partnership & Sales Execs Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Both emotional and rational branding are useless. | Views: 849 | | Dec 25, 2004 7:08 pm | | Both emotional and rational branding are useless. | # | 
Chen Sun | | Most of the conversations regarding emotional versus rational branding, selling, and unique selling proposition are primarily perspectives. It seems to me most products and services have both emotional and rational components, and perhaps people should be seen as been motivated by percentages of both.
Whether it’s branding or USP, or emotional or rational, the key point is marginal profit returns. Are we getting stuck on discussing means rather than the results?
If a brand can be built, then the brand has a certain value, and that value is expressed in investment returns—and in a sales capacity, a higher price. This is irrelevant of whether the branding has a emotional or rational appeal. So, if the brand has value of, say, an additional 5% price margin, and because this extra 5% may be 95% of the entire profit, that brand value may be a significant profit factor.
So, it doesn’t matter if I am only a little bit motivated emotionally or rationally by Walmart or Gillette—all it takes is a small percentage of motivation, and the profit (not the sales) returns can be extremely high.
Let’s consider this—if I have a Gillette razor at $1 and a no-name at 95 cents, which will I buy? The Gillette hence, Gillete’s branding made 5% impact on me. It’s not truly a thinking process on comparative investment returns, because I “think” I have no branding affinity for Gillette and it’s not quite emotional either, because I did make a quick calculation on the risk of buying a no-name brand. And furthermore, how about the comparison with Schick on the same display? Very complicated buyers’ mental processes.
Similarly, with Walmart. Walmart’s concept is a single source, convenient, inexpensive shopping location for the lower incomes. It doesn’t matter that individual items can be purchased less elsewhere. As a whole, Walmart costs less with convenience for certain income brackets, and that is its market positioning, and perhaps its USP as well. In any case, this USP, market positioning, or branding, or all three, may have a +1% pricing impact, which is a lot of profit for Walmart. Makes no difference whether it is emotional or rational in people’s motivation.
I believe if one examines the branding concept carefully, one will find that the information cost in gathering what is emotional or rational, as well as the buyers’ information costs in determining what may be emotional or rational to him are actually very high barriers to figure out. Hence, why not just take the view that it’s a degree of both, and then focus on the profitability impact.
Chen Sun
ww.WebAndNet.com,
a Web Inventions eNterprise, WINning Solutions TM
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