Six Major Brand Devaluation Reasons: How to Avoid & Fix Them!

Brand value devaluation is a harsh fact, that’s why we hear about rebranding carried out by major brands all the time.  There are six major or primary reasons for brand devaluation.

1.      Poor Customer Service
2.      Pressure Group
3.      Lack of blockbuster Product Launches
4.      Employee Remuneration
5.      Quality Decline
6.      Competitors

Considering the above reasons, it is imperative for small medium and large businesses to keep check on these areas all the time. So that any brand devaluation can be prevented in advance.

Now let’s discuss each reason one by one and in the end I will provide a reasonable fix to avoid any potential brand devaluation.

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Brand Devaluation Six Reasons

Customer Service

Customer perception of service brand in particular and product brand in general depends on front line employee’s behavior ⁽¹⁾.  That means that your employees dealing with your customer is essential to the success of your brand. 

Similarly late response to customers, multiple contacts by customers without any positive outcome has been major cause of dissatisfaction in around 74% customers in the US ⁽²⁾. 

And according to Harvard study, one dissatisfied customer, customer having bad experience with a business, company did negative word mouth to around 10 or more people ⁽³⁾.

In light of the above facts imagine the consequences of your bad customer service.

While on other hand positive word of mouth is the driving force behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions and that a 10 percent lift in word of mouth increases sales by up to 1.5% ⁽⁴⁾.

You may also like How to Deliver Effective Customer Service

 

Pressure Group

Pressure groups or interest groups can drastically change public opinion about a brand. Take for instance McDonald, which has been constantly criticized by various health groups for its menu. 

All of this has pushed McDonald to rebrand ⁽⁵⁾ now by pressure group I don’t mean every interest or pressure group that is part of your brand environment, rather you need to identify the right pressure group and then you need to devise a strategy to pre-empt any brand devaluation due to any such pressure group.

By the right pressure group, I mean a pressure group that has immense influence on public opinion, a group that has huge membership or represents a large section of society that share common interest.

Such public opinion (health conscious group in US) is on the rise , with its members increasing everyday in USA ⁽⁶⁾, thus becoming a “right group” in context of McDonald.

Lack of Successful Product/Service

It was your successful product/service that made your brand a “brand” in the first place. But as you know successful product/service don’t last forever and so does the leverage it gives to your brand.

That is why, innovation is essential even after successful product/service and for that reason I would like to share, an idea of Super Product, (an article that give a unique strategy on product development that would surely result in a blockbuster).

Employee Remuneration

Customer’s expectation about the brand can be sustained through employee performance ⁽⁷⁾. And employee performance depends on employee satisfaction, which results in customer satisfaction ⁽⁸⁾.

And employee satisfaction can be achieved through effective remuneration. In a nutshell if you don’t have a right remuneration plan in place, you are more likely to become victim of brand devaluation.

Quality Decline

You started off awesomely, you were the best and thus your target market loved you but with time you lost it , lost in terms of quality, ending up as a victim of brand devaluation.

Remember that a lower quality product/service has been a major cause of dissatisfaction for about 64% of customers in the US ⁽⁹⁾.

Competitors

Over the years markets have become highly competitive and customers very demanding ⁽¹⁰⁾. In such scenario market orientation or market knowledge plays extremely essential role in success of any organization, business ⁽¹¹⁾.

And being a manager, entrepreneur it is your key responsibility to protect and strengthen your company, business against your competitors to maintain your business hold and success. 

In other words building up company structures, managing its growth and development and defending its strategic assets (in our case strategic assets would be brand image, brand value etc) against competitors is your key role as an entrepreneur, owner/manager ⁽¹²⁾.

And to do that, to carry out strategic assets defense effectively, you as a manager/owner/entrepreneur should have market knowledge (customers and competitors orientation), as “Market knowledge(Customer Orientation & Competitor Orientation) is widely regarded as an important contributor to innovation and new product outcomes that lead to greater business performance” ⁽¹³⁾.

So considering the above fact based on research one can understand the importance of market knowledge and how it helps in developing a successful new product.

Learn how to use new product development as offense/defense against competitors (an interesting read), beside that, most small business owners are confused about their competitive strategy, their competitive strategy focus.

Well here is an interesting read on that, learn, know what should be your small business competitive strategy focus.

Now Let’s Move To The Fix

Simple, start your experiments in a single business outlet, experiment there with different approaches, variables while at the same time keeping the primary reasons of brand devaluation in perspective.

In a nutshell, experiment >> implement >> assess >> corrective measures/due measures >> implement, follow this cycle until you don't get your desired results.

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That’s it, over to you guys ! comment box is , yeah just under ;)!

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References:

1.      Cadwallader, S., Burke Jarvis, C., Bitner, M.J. and Ostrom, A.L. (2010), “Frontline employee motivation to participate in service innovation implementation”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 38, pp. 219-239.

2.      http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Global-Consumer-Pulse-Research-Study-2013-Key-Findings.pdf

3.      Harvard Business Review, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman, July 2010.

4.      http://www.forbes.com/sites/mckinsey/2014/02/14/can-a-goldfish-show-you-how-to-excite-your-customers/

5.      http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-23/mcdonalds-to-embark-on-rebranding-initiative-over-next-18-months

6.      http://www.caloriecontrol.org/articles-and-video/feature-articles/americans-increasingly-health-conscious

7.      Ind, N. (2004), Living the Brand: How to Transform Every Member of Your Organization into a Brand Ambassador, 2nd ed., Kogan Page, London.

8.      P.r.sandilyan; Mousumi Mukherjee et al  “Effect Of Remuneration And Rewards On Employee Motivation- A Study Of Selected Hotels In West Bengal” ZENITH International Journal of Business Economics & Management Research Vol.2 Issue 4, April 2012.

9.      http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Global-Consumer-Pulse-Research-Study-2013-Key-Findings.pdf

10.  Blocker, C.P., Flint, D.J., Myers, M.B. and Slater, S.F. (2011), “Proactive customer orientation and its role for creating customer value in global markets”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 216-233.

11.  Grinstein, A. (2007), “The effect of market orientation and its components on innovation consequences: a meta-analysis”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 166-173.

12.  Schumpeter, J.A. (1934), The Theory of Economic Development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

13.  Grinstein, A. (2007), “The effect of market orientation and its components on innovation consequences: a meta-analysis”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 166-173.