Branding a Next Generation Products

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.