According to King (1970) “What is in
a brand” people opt their brands as they choose their friends irrespective of
their skills and physical features. Which might be interpreted as, the functional
characteristics of the branded product are not important for consumers’ brand
preferences. In my opinion, this argument misses the fact that symbolic brands
(associated primarily with intangible benefits) are more likely to be used as
means of self-expression than functional ones (associated primarily with
physical characteristics, performance), which is supported by the research of
Aaker (1997) Richins (1994) and Katz (1960). And switching to symbolic
positioning, because of the above mentioned argument, can pose to a lot of
threats as stated in the article “Competing for consumer identity: Limits to
self-expression and the perils of lifestyle branding”. In other words, if managers
choose to position their brand as a symbolic (lifestyle positioning), thinking that
they will more easily catch the consumer and brand personality is the only
thing that matters to him, they can even face a bigger threat by
across-category competition by different self-expressive brands as well as
non-brand self-expressive means and behavioral acts. That’s why, because self-expression can be
saturated by many alternatives, even non-branded means and is finite.
In conclusion, the above mentioned argument
falsely assumes that consumer’s choice for brands is only/primarily determined by
the personality of the brand. Moreover, managers should carefully consider the
threats and not to switch functional branding to lifestyle branding, just because
its popularity grows or mislead by the power of brand personality.
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