Most companies face a dilemma as to how to brand
their next generation product of an existing product. Products upgrade in any corporate consist the
majority of research and development activity. However, there is not much
academic research in this subject. There is a lot of research in the new
branding of a product but the issue of branding a successive product is looked
upon much closely by mobile branding experts.
When Apple launched the latest iPad many experts
thought that Apple would name it as the iPad 2 but instead it called it simply
as ‘’the new branding iPad ”. It was a questions for many expertise was it a
lazy affordable branding products or a deliberate strategy of the company to
market its products better. So it is a challenge for managers to find out the
best strategy to market its next generation products.
Experts say that managers do not necessarily read
the details to learn about the new products but they always notice a new name. Many
companies for this reason choose a sequential learning approach like 1, 2 etc
or a complete name change approach. A research was made to determine the best
approach to a next generation product.
Name
change approach
In a research conducted there were 78 participants
who had to consider a situation in which a well-known firm was preparing to launch
a new version of its color printer and the participants were split into two
groups who received a group of successive model names. For the first group, the
model was branded in a sequential pattern for the participants and for the next
group latter on they like this upgrate version whereas the last three models
were represented a change in the name of the brands like Magi Color, Magi Color 2
and Magi Color 3.
The participants were asked to rate the products based
on name change only on a scale of 1 to 7 even though the participants had no
information on the actual features of the products. It was observed that with a change in name,
the participants predicted a much greater change when the latest version was
named Magi Color than when it was named version on 2700W. It was observed that
with a change in name, the participants expects features that are very much
different than being new and with a name
continuation they just expect an improved performance on existing features.
While this experiment focused on high tech
equipment, the researchers have seen that the findings hold true for most of
the industries.
Risk
vs. reward
The companies must also assess the risk versus
reward strategy when branding any product upgrade. The change in the brand name
may induce lots of excitement among the prospective consumers but on the other
hand, customers may worry on the challenges the new features pose on the risk
of new glitches. It is very much important for a firm to carefully predict the
likelihood of risk aversion in its branding decision. It is all the matter of
what the situation is for the marketers.
Creative
sequences
A change in name of a internet brand seo services company also has the risk of
disappointing consumers who expect more from the product than they otherwise
would have. It is better to use a brand name continuation than a brand name
change if it is about added benefits to the previous generation of products
because people will believe it is a completely different product with a name
change and this will lead to massive disappointment in them. A brand sequencing
approach may be tricky in a market where there are competitors who are also
using the same approach.
