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Fair & Lovely vs. Dark is Beautiful

Social identities have a strong impact on consumer brand relationships, as how a person feels or views themselves often translates into their purchases (think about the luxury goods conversation from Burberry - consumers want to see themselves as someone who owns and wears Burberry regularly). While I have never lived in India or purchased fairness cream, this case did have an impact on my brand relationship with Dove. As discussed in class, Dove has the ideology of "real beauty" and embracing beauty in its many forms. Therefore to me, this case highlights a dissonance, as how can Dove be owned and operated by the same company that sells Fair & Lovely? I understand Unilever's public stance is that their "brand's efforts are tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its consumers" but question how "both Dove and Fair & Lovely fully fit with Unilever's mission to meet every day needs for nutrition, hygiene, and personal care." To me, it feels like the brand promise should be focused on real beauty and embracing women as they are instead of profiting off of unregulated products that don't fit with the values of confidence and self-esteem.

This brand relationship becomes even more contentious as a main competitor, Garnier, refuses to compete in this fairness space, as they "strongly believe advertising should not encourage social discrimination of people based on aspects like the color of their skin. Our conviction is that there is no single model for beauty." That last sentence sounds more like Dove to me, based on their strong branding of real beauty, however, it's from one of their main competitors.

This case highlights the need to truly understand the world impact of a brand to better understand if their values are universal or by market and then make decisions accordingly based on my own personal values and what I want my money to support.

Case: Fair & Lovely vs. Dark is Beautiful

[sophiamit]

Burberry

The Burberry case interested in me in what the store experiences of luxury shopping are like. This was spawned by Instagram making luxury feel more accessible, as unboxings and designer goods become main stays in our feeds. Additionally, the uptick in the "quiet luxury" trend, where smaller accessories and colors indicate affluence led me to think about what the store experience is like to purchase these items that can determine the "old money status". Retail stores are a main point of sale for Burberry and have to meet the needs of three customer segments (absolute, aspirational, and accessible). Furthermore, the store experience in Tokyo might be different than Chicago and is something the brand needs to reconcile with and is a tension point in the case.

This led to my discovery of Mood Media, which works on aspects of a customer's experience in the store - whether that be the soundtrack in the background, how the store smells, what color the store is painted, what font the signage in the store uses, and all things "retail atmospherics". Mood Media impacts perceptions and behaviors in over half a million store locations around the world. As seen in the paper written by Jayme Foster and Melinda McLelland in 2015, a cohesive theme in a store will sell more merchandise than a store that doesn't sell a story. This is where the combination of Mood Media and Burberry comes into play, as Burberry is a Mood Media client, who together worked on sharing Burberry's history in the stores, while also bringing it more modern with augmented sales clerks through technology so it felt more modern and relevant.

This experience, as well as feeling like part of a group, is why there is some protection for brands against the threat of counterfeits, as Professor Gosline's research shows. However, this is problematic for Burberry, as the Chavs were buying and wearing Burberry, which Burberry felt was diluting the brand. Like Professor Gosline found, this does not match the brand image that Burberry has, and a potential way out of this situation is to double down on who the ideal customer is.

As we think about brands, it's important to think about the brands behind those brands which drive our experience with products, particularly luxury ones where the experience is one of the main selling points. This is why consumers are sold a story, even if that happens to be one of quiet luxury.

Case: Burberry (Ivey Publishing)

Readings: Mood Media (J. Bettencourt); Retail atmospherics: The impact of a brand dictated theme (J. Foster and M. McLelland); Rethinking Brand Contamination (R. Gosline)

[sophiamit]

AI in CX

From our readings, it seems like the biases humans have about AI are changing over time. For instance, Castelo's 2019 study found preference for humans as opposed to AI in subjective tasks, like songwriting, but four years later, that perception seems to be waining. I think in part this is due to the formal launch of ChatGPT and humans being curious about what it can do and how it can save time or enhance what they have already done.

Even MIT Sloan is thinking about this, as all students were sent a survey to ask how we use AI in school, as a reflection of our customer experience with MIT as a student. The answer choices, listed below, reference ways AI could be used to remove friction in the classroom, such as debugging code or translating languages. The larger questions that need to be addressed are ones of bias - how does Sloan feel about AI? How does each faculty member feel about AI? Is teaching AI helping students going into the workforce or does it devalue what an MBA is? Is it ethical to upload cases to AI and have AI do the analysis? And if ethical, does it short cut or deepen the learning? How does the value of an MBA and two years of time investment change because of AI? Most importantly, the question Professor Gosline poses in her HBR article "should AI be doing this?" needs to be answered.

For me personally, my bias is against using AI in assignments, as I feel it's important for me to do the readings and think critically about my classes, rather than using AI as a short cut. I genuinely enjoy being a student and don't mind the tradeoff of spending more time on homework and assignments as a result of not using AI. I feel more ownership over my learning and the output of my assignments, as I'm the one authoring them. Therefore, I demonstrate more of the "human favoritism bias" that Professor Gosline also found in her research. However, there are plenty of other students with the opposite bias, citing that AI is the wave of the future and not learning it now is detrimental to our future careers and the opportunity cost of not using AI is too great, especially with other time pressures like networking and recruiting. Like Professor Gosline's research found "friction isn't always negative", but what is perceived as friction isn't universal.

Readings: Why AI Customer Journeys Need More Friction (HBR) and Human favoritism, not AI aversion: people's perceptions and bias toward generative AI, human experts, and human-GAI collaboration in persuasive content generation (Society for Judgement and Decision Making)

[sophiamit]

Concha y Toro

I firmly believe that perception is reality, especially in the alcohol industry. This became apparent to me when my dad and I went on the Bourbon Trail, a part of Kentucky that has distilleries and tasting room for visitors. I am not much of a bourbon drinker myself, but I was in Kentucky for a SEC football game and knew how much my dad was looking forward to going to Woodford Reserve, Maker's Mark, and Bulleit. He perceived those as the best quality and me not knowing much, I was just along for the ride. Much to my dad's surprise, at the end of the trip when he asked me which bourbon I enjoyed the most, I told him Evan Williams. He could not believe that, especially given the price point differential between his favorites and mine, but to me, as someone who doesn't know much about quality, my perception was based solely on the tour experience. Evan Williams built the brand for me in how the tour was laid out, explaining the history and making it fun. It was more interactive and the tasting room was brighter, as you can see below. To me the quality was in the experience because I didn't know enough about the taste to truly judge that and it didn't matter to me. I derived quality from how my time was spent there more so than the taste.

This is the halo effect in action - my assumption of quality was based on my experience and expectations. What's curious about this is that I would not describe myself as the target market for any bourbon, so it begs the question of should Evan Williams (or any bourbon brand for that matter) be marketing to me? Does my perception of the brand matter if I'm not a frequent drinker?

The same can be said for most people drinking wine. They associate their selections with a fun time in Napa or wishing that they were in France (also coming from someone in a very French family!) and less so on the grapes or harvesting process. I know some people who pick wine solely based on the label or how pretty the bottle is! These aspects are as much a part of the brand as the quality is and it serves brands to think holistically about the experience, which goes well beyond the quality, though high quality certainly helps.

Case: Concha y Toro

[sophiamit]

The Power of Nudges

Reading about nudges made me realize how many nudges I am encounter on a daily basis. Below I tried to capture all of the nudges I experienced on Saturday morning.

My Apple Watch is a key source of nudging - whether that be to work out, hit my monthly goal that it selects for me, hit my weekly stand and exercise goals, mediate when waking up, sending a remind to breathe when my heart rate rises...all subtle, vibrating nudges to remember my health.

After completing a work out class and leaving the studio, I received a nudge in the form of a push notification encouraging me to book my next class. Even how the studio is set up with natural light and fun music is a nudge, as is the placement of the medium size weights for use during the class. All subtle nudges that make my time there enjoyable.

On my grocery store trip, there were many nudges - placing baking mixes by the eggs, placing the freshest fruit at eye level, encouraging snack buying close to the registers, and using signs and colors to promote buying certain items (i.e. green check mark meaning organic).

When shopping online for a few items, I noticed a disclaimer about how many other people were looking at the same items in the same size and/or shade I was, a nudge for me to purchase before it sold out (and no way for me to know if that was actually true!).

I received an email indicating some of the skincare items I had purchased were getting close to "empties" status and a reminder to purchase before I ran out, nudging me to buy now and help my future self.

Outlook has the Microsoft Viva Assist tool, which sends nudges to reply to emails, set up meetings referenced in emails, and finish flagged tasks.

The NYT app provides nudges to keep my Wordle and Connections streaks alive by playing each day and reminding me. This is also true on the news side of the New York Times, as there are nudges to continue reading the news and rewarding that behavior through doing well on the weekly news quiz.

Thinking through a normal morning, I reflected on the number of externally imposed nudges I am exposed to. There are likely even more that I didn't capture because I am so predisposed to responding and doing things, but I feel like that's also the power of a good nudge. I was well aware of gamification and how that attracts attention to different activities and tasks, and I know that I get a variety of push notifications throughout the day, but stopping to think about the other nudges outside of those categories was a good exercise!

Reading: A Practitioner's Guide to Nudging by Kim Ly, Nina Mazar, Min Zhao, and Dilip Soman (Rotman)

[sophiamit]

The Customer Journey

Our readings for class three focus on the customer journey and using market research to determine what the customer needs and wants. I find this really interesting, as the out of the box experience has become widely popular. While I do not own any designer handbag (yet!) I know exactly what the packaging and experience looks like due to Instagram unboxing videos. But this is true for all ages - even Mary Kay has unboxing videos (see below!). It's also important to note how important segmentation is, as the market research reading highlights that different samples lead to different estimates of population value and unless all studied participants are part of our target market, we risk making decisions that aren't representative of what the brand should be.

When I connect the readings on the customer journey framework and understanding market research, I think about how market research and customer journey begin to intersect and how it's very difficult to determine what our own personal preference is. Are these experiments of market research actually working, or is it the algorithm telling us what to like and we conform? To me, that's one of the strongest form of secondary data we have. We see this all around the world, as the culture flattens, making trendy restaurants or office spaces look similar across the globe. There's an interesting podcast that talks about this phenomenon, linked here. It made me question how much testing and market research can truly be done as experiences and things that used to be exclusive become expected. Similar to the structured form of market research, consumers might be unaware or too embarrassed to admit that their desire for a product or service came from Instagram influencers, but I believe it's there. To be fair to both of our readings, algorithms weren't widely used in 1991 or 2010, but to me it's a fascinating topic to understand and explore the influence of algorithms on personal preferences and research data!

Readings: Richardson, Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience (HBR) and Dolan, Market Research (HBS)

[sophiamit]

Corona Beer

"There's no mystery about brewing beer. Everyone can do it...beer is all marketing. People don't drink beer, they drink marketing." - Michael Foley

Reading this case was interesting, as I am from St. Louis, which is the US home of Anheuser-Busch. It was not surprising to me to read all of the stats about how Budweiser leads the US market, and I wonder if part of this is also due to their brand architecture. For instance, the St. Louis Cardinals play at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, which is named after the Busch family that started AB. It has had this name since 1953, cultivating a lot of recognition. This doesn't require an ad campaign per se, it's just the name on the stadium in a prominent part of the skyline (see picture below). These tactics, combined with the $192M AB spends in advertising impact the way US consumers view the brand.

To our conversation about customer segmentation in yesterday's class, I find it interesting that the sub-brand of "Corona and a lime" was developed by US consumers due to it's long-neck bottle. This is not how the beer is consumed in Mexico, as bottles are returned there. This potentially is a brand vulnerability. Additionally, the pricing structure is more expensive in the US than Mexico, positioning Corona Beer as a premium beer in the US. This could be the same fate as B&D, where customers have one perception in their mind, even if the product performs just as well. "Fun, Sun, and Beach" became more of a party beer, and the coronavirus also changed what Corona meant in the mind of consumers.

A final aspect to think about is the packaging. The glass long neck bottles are part of Corona's brand, but make the logistics of shipping and placing into stores much harder, which is how Corona Beer creates revenue. As one industry observer noted: "It is remarkably simpler and cheaper to brew, package, ship and retail 100 cases of Bud Light 12-pack cans than it is to ship 25 cases of Bud Light 12-packs, 25 cases of Blue Moon 12-packs, 25 cases of Fat Tire 12-packs and 25 cases of Corona 12-packs [and] that’s a vastly simplified example."

Case: Corona Beer

Article: Schuhmacher, Harry. “Potential Pitfalls of the Craft Beer Revolution.” All About Beer, The Beer Curmudgeon, 1 Sept. 2013, allaboutbeer.net/article/potential-pitfalls-of-the-craft-beer-revolution/. 

[sophiamit]

The Black and Decker Corporation

I was surprised to see that the two segments of tradesmen and industrial are so different. Tradesmen would appear to have more brand loyalty, as these are consumers who bought their own tools for on the job use, whereas industrial are purchased by the company. When Makita is selling more, it is a direct result of how the consumer views the brand, in this case carpenters using the products. Although B&D and Makita have similarly-performing products, the Tradesmen have a perception that Makita makes higher-quality (82% vs. 51% for B&D) and durable tools (71% vs. 48% for B&D). Perception becomes reality when it relates to what is purchased, especially considering Makita is priced at a premium.

It is interesting because I believe I identify like most customers and know Black and Decker for the household products, such as the vacuums and kitchen supplies. This segment being the largest percentage of B&D's revenue in turn hurts the brand, as to professionals it is seen as a "use at home not on the job brand". And, to a consumer like me who is not a carpenter and has no plans to be, this doesn't bother me, but I'm not the target demographic. The customer base in each segment have distinct preferences, buying behaviors, and economic sensitivities. Changes in any of these factors could impact the performance of Black and Decker's shares in each segment differently. Prior to this case, I had not thought about the strength of a consumer brand being a detriment to a commercial brand.

Case: The Black & Decker Corporation (A): Power Tools Division