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Rothy’s is a sustainable shoe and a sustainable brand

Rothy’s is a shoe company based in California that makes women’s flats out of recycled water bottles. The company’s mission statement is “to create the most stylish, comfortable shoe for today’s on-the-go woman. And do it with low-waste, low-impact materials, hand-assembled for high quality and durability.” The company’s mission to mesh sustainability, comfort, quality, and style into a shoe for busy women is very authentic and really resonates with the younger generation of women.

Their shoes are quite pricey ($125 to $165 per pair), but customers are willing to pay a premium because they trust the company. Rothy’s products align naturally with their mission statement, and they also focus on building relationships with their customers. For a company that started to be on people’s radars beginning in 2016, the 1000+ reviews that they have on their Facebook page is quite impressive, of which 700+ are 5 stars. Rothy’s was able to find those customers that are willing to post those positive reviews.

Rothy’s also deals with negative reviews on social media seriously, which shows that they really care about relationships with customers:

As a very new brand, I would classify Rothy’s as moving from the Emotional relationship to a Sustainable relationship with its customers. The main complaint customers have on social media is the slow customer service and the inefficient exchange process. However, people clearly have developed an emotional attachment to the brand because they are willing to work through these issues to give the company another try. Once Rothy’s matures and fixes these issues, they should be well on their way to having a Sustainable relationship with their customers.

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I found an interesting article that interviewed doctors from five telemedicine companies (TelaDoc, Doctor on Demand, HealthTap, American Well, and MDLive) to learn about what it was like to be a telemedicine doctor. Their responses certainly highlighted some concerns I had with telemedicine.

One concern is that you are unable to control the distractions around doctors if they are not in their office. The doctor from HealthTap said, “I try to answer questions at night while I’m watching TV.” This to me is alarming, as I would want any response from my doctor to be written with their undivided attention.

Another concern obviously is being unable to physically examine the patients. For this reason, I think telemedicine only really works for really minor issues. Otherwise, there’s just too many assumptions being made and reliance on extraordinary verbal communication skills from both the physician and the patient, which I think is asking a lot.

“It’s more about being honest about limitations. I’ll tell patients, ‘I can’t listen to your lungs so if you have this symptom or you feel uncomfortable, you need to go get this checked out.’”

“If they have a family member available – a lot of times they do – I’ll have the family member lay them flat and palpate for me.” (as a patient, I would definitely NOT want this)

Since telemedicine is provided over a new medium, doctors are forced to act in a different way. Some physicians might be able to adapt better than others, but it is hard for patients to figure out who is good as a tele-doctor and who’s not.

“You’re trying to intuit a bit more than you would in a normal clinical situation… I don’t have a nurse describing the problem. I don’t have the formal medical triage. We have to keep our threshold pretty low for possible problems that could get complicated.”

“...Because you take away the physical exam, you have to use your listening skills a lot more.”

My overall impression is that there is a lot of variability in the approach of the different companies, and this could lead to a lot of variation in quality of care. Of the 5 companies, American Well seems to be the most thorough and serious about providing quality care specific to tele-communication channels. Below are some quotes from Dr. Lauralee Yalden from American Well:

“We actually made a decision as a group that video is involved one hundred percent of the time when prescribing...we want that extra level of communication”

“Before we go to see our very first patient, there was a lot of training and practice involved together with the team. We practiced amongst ourselves, just like we did in internship. Sometimes you’ll play the patient; sometimes you’ll play the doctor. We needed to figure out what an online consult would be like and how we would want to handle it.”

“Every month we meet together and review our protocols...We’re actively creating telehealth-specific guidelines”

I believe that these are all differentiating factors for American Well, and that they could use these to strengthen their brand.

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Ralph Lauren uses both House of Brands and strong endorsement

Ralph Lauren is one of the most well-known brands in the world, with its widely recognized logo of the polo-rider. The company’s branding strategy includes both House of Brands as well as strong endorsement.

Its strong endorsement strategy is obvious, as the words “Ralph Lauren” appear in the name of directly related sub brands, such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Double RL, Ralph Lauren Collection, etc. All of these brands are consistent with the overall image of Ralph Lauren and share the association of preppiness, status, and wealth.

Ralph Lauren is also a House of Brands. Apart from the brands with “Ralph Lauren” explicitly in the name, there are also Club Monaco and Chaps. Club Monaco focuses on basic designs that are great for the office, and is mid- to high-priced. Chaps is a cheaper alternative to the other brands and is a watered down version of Ralph Lauren’s preppy style that might appeal more to the general public. Through this House of Brands strategy, Ralph Lauren can reach different markets - the explicit Ralph Lauren brands target higher income people who like the preppy style of clothing, Club Monaco targets employed adults who want basic, high quality office wear, and Chaps is for people who want something a bit more toned down or cannot afford Ralph Lauren. Within this House of Brands strategy, Ralph Lauren also made sure to eliminate any channel conflicts - Chaps is only sold in lower-end department stores like Kohl’s and Bon-Ton, Club Monaco is only sold in its retail stores, and strongly endorsed Ralph Lauren brands are sold either in Ralph Lauren retail stores or in higher-end department stores. Ralph Lauren also avoided any incompatible associations between its brands through its House of Brands strategy - for example, preppy attire is not suitable for the workplace, therefore Ralph Lauren kept Club Monaco entirely separate.

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SA understands the importance of perception

I think it’s very impressive that Singapore Airlines has been able to stay at the forefront of their industry in terms of customer service since the 1970s. The key to their success is that the company understood from its inception that perception is reality in the service industry. From the start, Singapore Airlines was already using this as a guiding principle in various ways. They influenced customer perception through their cabin crew, in which they invested significant resources to train properly. They cultivated the image of the Singapore Girl and painted the Far East as an exotic destination to Western markets, and was able to make people feel that they “brought the romance back to travel”. They also understood that new planes were not just about fuel efficiencies and cost savings. They knew that new planes would generate a “feel good factor” and increase “overall product appeal”. Singapore Airlines clearly understood that it’s all about how you make the customers feel.

As the company matured, they continued to focus on customer perception to great success. After joining Star Alliance, they made great effort to carefully select code sharing flights and ensure that customers knew when they were under the service of Singapore Airlines, which showed the company’s awareness in how important it is to manage customer expectation.

Now, Singapore Airlines is taking this to the next level, as some of their improvements resonate with behavioral science findings. For example, their On-Ground Service, which contains queue-combers as well as performance incentives for baggage handling, ensures that customers’ experiences with SA end on a high note (in line with the “finishing strong” principle). They were the first airline to offer a choice of meal to all passengers (in line with the “build commitment through choice” principle).

Singapore Airlines has been able to stay successful for so long because they are great at using the various surveys to gather customer perceptions and then make that an actual reality. Through this feedback mechanism, they are able to stay ahead of evolving customer needs (e.g. shift from wanting consistent treatment to individualized attention) as well as increasing customer expectations. Customers are dissatisfied when reality falls short of expectation, and Singapore Airlines has been able to continuously succeed because of their unwavering emphasis on understanding customer expectations and implementing solutions to address these expectations in their actual operations.

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Perception is everything when it comes to wine

A lot of people say that they love wine, but it seems that most people don’t actually know what good wine should taste like, or what distinguishes a good wine from a bad one. In the North Dakota article, we saw that consumers used the origin of the wine as a cue to judge quality. In a Caltech study (found here: http://www.caltech.edu/content/wine-study-shows-price-influences-perception), participants were asked to taste 5 wines that cost $5, $10, $35, $45, and $90, and the result was that they rated the $90 bottle as tasting better than the $10, and the $45 better than the $35, even though the $90 and $10 were the same wine, and the $35 and $45 were the same bottle. These studies show that consumers don’t actually know much about wine quality and taste, and instead use external cues such as price and origin to help them judge wines.

Given that it is all about perception when it comes to wine, Concha y Toro should focus on how they want consumers to perceive their brand. With a bottom-up strategy, they need to create a sub-brand since they are already known for “value for money” and consumers have associated them with a lower price point. With a top-down strategy, they should focus more on building out their high-quality segments (which showed promise) and making the consumer perceive them as a high-quality wine producer. From a consumer’s perspective, if I think of Concha y Toro as a great premium wine producer and saw that they now made a mid- to lower-priced wine, I would be more likely to buy it than the other way around because I would think of Concha y Toro’s lower-priced wines as a good bargain and also trust that it would still be a good wine. I believe it is easier to change consumers’ perceptions going from expensive to inexpensive rather than vice versa (premium wine makers know how to make wine, whereas cheap wine makers might just make bad wines or only know how to make good cheap wines), so a top-down approach could work.

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Week 1 post

The brand images of Heineken and Corona consist of opposite characteristics - Heineken's image is one of exclusivity, sophistication and elitism, whereas Corona’s image is focused on being “unpretentious”, “drinkable”, and having a great time with friends at the beach. I think Corona’s branding is more successful than Heineken’s because Corona’s message of “Sun, Fun and Beach” fell in line well with the demographics of beer drinkers, most of whom are young people and like the idea of having fun with friends at the beach. In addition, beer is a product that is consumed in a social setting, and Heineken’s image of exclusivity, superiority, and arrogance could be a disadvantage because people who are out socializing presumably want to make friends, and people who are perceived as snobby and arrogant would have difficulty doing so. The decline of Heineken’s success could be because the arrogant image does not resonate well in particular with young beer drinkers, who would be more focused on socializing and fitting in than perhaps older beer drinkers, who want to distinguish themselves from others. Corona also had some luck in that the beer drinker demographic shifted to include a lot more Hispanics, who prefer Corona.

I think the case showed the importance of having a brand image/message that is timeless, such as Corona’s image of having a good time with friends, as people are inherently social beings and Corona’s message would work in any time period. It is important to pay attention to any changes to consumer demographics, consumer tastes, or social values that might require a change in brand image. A key aspect of building a successful brand is also the ability to distinguish between challenges that require a change in brand messaging (Heineken’s challenges) and those that can be solved by other means while staying true to the brand (Corona’s challenges).