Multi-dimension Benefits Lead to Brand ExtensionThe traditional view of marketing is that marketers used to succeed by providing superior products and other distinctive functional benefits. But today for such benefits can readily be imitated. Marketers must therefore find new ways of differentiating their products and services by identifying new customer benefits from the customer’s view. Basing on this background, some companies emphasize process benefits and relationship benefits or integrate them with functional benefits to reshape the three benefits combination to attract the consumers who value these new types of benefits as highly as functional ones. The basis for creating successful marketing strategies has expanded to three dimensions and consequently leads to brand extension.This essay aims at make a brief discussion on these issues. Process benefits and relationship benefits are critically analyzed firstly. Then maximizing value creation by identifying new customer benefits from the customer’s c ognitive space will be evaluated. Additionally, relevant brand differentiation and brand extension, the key to competitive advantage, will be assessed. In general, brand benefits deriving from adding dimensions to single functional benefits and resulting in strong brand ripple effect, are running through the whole article as a main clue.Today’s marketplace is fundamentally different as a result of major societal forces that have resulted in many new consumer and company capabilities (Kotler and Kevin, 2009). Consumers now tend to pursuit more convenience, pleasantness in consumption process except for high quality products and service. Their needs and wants, also says the consumers value, have expanded and updated to multi-dimensions including process benefits which make transactions between buyers and sellers easier, quicker, cheaper, and more pleasant and relationship benefits which reward the willingness of consumers to identify themselves and to reveal their purchasing behavior.Meanwhile, companies are finding the market environment increasingly complex and competitive (Reid, 2008). They struggle to market more distinctive offerings to satisfy consumer needs. Delivering multi-dimension benefits to customers is the key, realistic and feasible step. The ability of process and relationship benefits to transform the customer’s shopping experience is becoming more and more apparent (Court et al., 1999). IBM and AT&T, which are both significantly stronger in such elements than their competitors, illustrate the point well. The two companies communicate confidence: consumers feel that if they buy these brands, they will not go wrong; as the saying goes, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." (Leiter et al., 2002).On the relationship benefit side，British Airways redesigned its cabins to offer the first flat beds in business class when other airlines merely increased the pitch or width of their seats. Virgin Atlantic Airways reinforced its famous "doing things differently" brand personality with a restyled "Upper Class" service that features "designer-styled" cabins, a sit-down bar, an in-flight massage service, and flat-bed seats (Aufreiter et al., 2003). British Airways has found that building relationships with its "premium customers" increased the amount of business generated by these customers by nine percent (Kristy, 2003).Just as the cases mentioned above indicated that, with the rapid development of the economy and modern industry, more and more excellent products are available. Consumers are more powerful, active and intelligent than ever before and are becoming more and more benefits sensitive to select the products and service between the different benefits.It is sure that customers are value maximizers and estimate which offer will deliver the most perceived value and act on it. These forces have created new opportunities and challenges, and marketing management has change significantly in recent years as companies seek new way to achieve marketing excellence (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Because a buyer’s satisfaction is a function of the product’s perceived performanceand the buyer’s ex pectations. Swanson and Kelley (2002) pointed out that high consumer satisfaction has many benefits for the firm, such as increased consumer loyalty, enhanced firm reputation, reduced price elasticities, lower costs of future transactions, and higher employee efficiency.Under this circumstance, in order to occupy market and achieve maximum profits, many companies began to rethink their strategies for future growth. In response to consumers’ multi-dimensions needs, it is important for companies to gain a thorough indepth consumer understanding which helps to make sure that the right products are marketed to the right consumers in the right way. To do this, the first step is market segmentation according to the consumer extending needs. A market segment consists of a group of customers who share a similar set of needs and wants (Kotler and Keller, 2009). The core is to format corresponding branding extension to attract the consumers’ multi-dimensions needs.One research shows that consumers can be segmented by all three dimensions of benefit (functional, process, and relationship benefits) to create more complex and powerful maps of preferences. The size and nature of the important clusters vary substantially (Court et al.). So it is necessary and beneficial that a company needs to identify which market segments it can serve effectively. The most savvy marketers have fashioned hundreds of functional, process, and relationship combinations and identified a similar number of distinct consumer segments that might be attracted to them. A cell phone manufacturer looking for promising offerings in several profitable markets, for example, established cross-functional customer segment panels. With this information in hand, it was truly meeting the needs of target customer segments in critical markets (John et al., 2006). Such decisions require a keen understanding of consumer behavior and careful strategic thinking. The identification of customer needs in order to serve and build the value of customer segments is a major challenge that marketers encounter (Johnson and Schultz, 2004).Rather than creating the segments, the marketer’s task is to establish and deliver the distinctiv e benefits of the companies’ market offering to the exact segmentation. The choice of corresponding benefits to communicate and emphasize would seem to be especially important in situations where consumers may vary widely in the benefits sought and evaluate brands rather than products (Orth et al., 2004).In addition, the competitive advantage of successful products and service providers is often explained with a logic wherein offering contributes to customer value, resulting in increased satisfaction and behavioral intentions, eventually creating loyalty that manifests itself in enhanced profitability (Cronin et al., 2000; Slater and Narver, 1994; Wang et al., 2004). For example, Starbucks offers added cultural value to attract customers; BMW, Audi, and any other automobile companies, locate four ‘s’ stores in China to offer a comprehensive after-sale service and strengthen the brand image (Fisk, 2006).In another words, the more important thing for companies is put forth a customers value proposition, a set of distinctive benefits or benefits combinations they offer to customers to satisfy their cognitive needs. From the company's perspective, these buying motives should be captured in a customer value proposition (CVP), making it a strategic priority issue in areas such as segmentation, service development, and marketing communications (Rintamäki et al., 2007).According to the view of Anderson (et al., 2006), in order to differentiate itself from its competition, the company needs to have points of difference in its value proposition. In general, identifying customer value propositions begins with understanding the key dimensions of customer value that motivate the targeted customers, and development of customer value propositions benefits from hierarchical evaluation and combining of economic, functional, emotional, and symbolic customer value dimensions (Rintamäki et al., 2007). Foe example, creating functional value is often associated with products that meet the target customers' needs, and processesthat increase convenience at different stages of the shopping experience (Seiders et al., 2000). Tesco is a British retailer that has gained competitive advantage by creating superior value for its customers. Tesco's customer-focused commitment to provide customers value is summarized in the company's value proposition “Every little helps,” which is successfully communicated to customers as well as the employees.It is commonly acknowledged that effective marketing communications must recognize the relationship between a product/a brand and the consumption values or benefits consumers seek (Sheth et al., 1991). Because consumers can vary greatly in their value composition, they may seek a range of different benefits from products and brands and hence will react differently to marketing communications emphasizing selected brand benefits (Orth et al., 2004). So from a managerial point of view, extensions are more powerful when they are connected to the customer relationship and brand positioning (Davis and Halligan, 2002).It is clear that that every organization needs to develop strong brands as an essential part of their business strategy (Kay, 2006). It has been accepted that strong brand is a very important factor for a company to win the competition. Good brands make them win customer loyalty, and loyal customers will cost less to retain and service (Cheverton, 2000). It is an expression of competitive advantage. A brand is thus a product or service whose dimensions differentiate it in some way from other products and services designed to satisfy the same need (Kotler and Keller, 2009). From the customer's point of view, a brand can be defined as the total accumulation of all his/her experiences, and is built at all points of contact with the customer (Kapferer, 2004).To a successful branding marketer, it is vital to realize that customers must see any competitive advantage as a customer advantage. A strong brand identity that is well understood and experienced by the customers helps in developing trust which, in turn, results in differentiating the brand from competition. A company needs to establish aclear and consistent brand identity by linking brand attributes with the way they are communicated which can be easily understood by the customers (Ghodeswar, 2008). Southwest airlines gave a good example. Southwest airlines distinguished itself as a “fun” airlines and adopted “the first-come, first-served opini ng seating”. Southwest airlines is now the nation’s largest airline in terms of passengers flown a nd holds the distinction of being the only low-fare airline to achieve long-term financial success.Apart from that, effective brand extensions play a key role in the innovation and it is accepted by more and more companies. The established brand can easily be retrieved from memory and the extended brand can be more accessible than individual brands. Extensions are more powerful when they are connected to the customer relationship and brand positioning (Davis and Halligan, 2002).Meanwhile, McQuiston (2004) pointed out firms endeavor to create some form of brand distinctiveness to avoid their products being viewed as commodities. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have managed to maintain their brand differentiation, irrespective of the similarities of their physical product. In other words, differentiated brands can be based on a feature, service, program or ingredient (Aaker, 2003).In conclusion, consumers become much more dynamic than ever before, because of the constantly changing conditions and environments. Similarly, consumer behavior has made a tremendous changes compared with the past one. Mowen and Mino (2000) describe consumer behavior is defined as the study of the buying units and the exchange processes involved in acquiring, consuming, and disposing of goods, services, experiences and ideas. Incremental income and knowledge makes consumers’ consumption concepts and self-concepts become mature.Consequently, these changes profoundly impact on the consumer attitudes and behaviors to the traditional marketing. How to keep the consumer loyalty in these conditions is one of the challenges faced to the marketers. The traditional view of marketers being used to succeed by providing superior products and other distinctivefunctional benefits doesn’t work. As a result, the traditional commercial criteria and principles are facing with new challenges. This circumstance have driven more and more marketers to treat brand benefits deriving from adding dimensions to single functional benefits as their core of marketing programs. Firms often try to exploit their existing well-established brands by extending them into new product categories (Wu and Yen, 2007). Brand benefits integrate both functional benefit and process and relationship benefit i.e. emotional benefits that are relevant to the consumer, build on concrete and abstract attributes, are sufficiently known, and are perceived to be different from competition. Just as CEO of BP Browne said: in a global marketplace, branding is crucial in attracting customers and business. It is not just a matter of a few gas stations or the underpin everything that you do and every relationship that you have (Wheeler, 2003).Through launching new products under the parent brand, brand managers may gain several advantages: Not only are new products launched effectively and cost-efficiently, but the extended brand product may also help revitalize the parent brand or flagship products (Supphellen et al.,2004). 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