Recent trends in the marketplace have increased the ability for consumers to access branded goods and services without owning them. This research argues that extending brands into access-based consumption spaces can lead to disparity in inter-consumer brand commitment, which affects user imagery and brand extension evaluation for the firm’s most loyal consumers.
This research was selected as one of the three Best Papers of the 2016 Brands and Brand Relationship Conference!
Here we are in September and wouldn’t you know it, Apple released another version of the iPhone. Arguably the most successful smart phone to date, the iPhone routinely captures the attention of Apple fanatics and detractors.
If you’ve ever held a conversation with me about cellular phones and/or mobile technology then you know I’m a faithful Apple supporter. Usually, I’m fully submissive to every single idea that they’ve ever had (let’s not even talk about that Apple Maps fiasco…or heaven forbid we bring up their failed attempt at a music social network).
For the most part, I’m still an extremely loyal brand ambassador for Apple products. What’s not to love? Their products are consistently cutting-edge, easy to use, and cool to own. When I was first able to afford my own iPod, I hurried to buy because I was enticed by the allure of social status and intrigue the Apple brand afforded me. I felt cooler. I felt more interesting. As I acquired more Apple products, I felt that the brand became a part of me..
None of my Apple products were as much a part of me as my iPhone. I mean, I literally carry it everywhere I go. For the majority of the past four years, associating myself with the iPhone has meant that my self concept was associated with the sleek, cutting-edge, superior qualities that the iPhone embodied.
Early in our relationship, it was easy for me to defend my precious self-validating iPhone against petty competitors. You have a Nokia? Nahh, you can’t seriously think that your phone compares to mine! Blackberry? Bah! Who uses BBM in 2013? Palm Pilot? Pssh! Styluses are for sissies. I gladly volunteered my time as an ad hoc salesman for iPhone.
I began to notice that my arguments for why iPhone was superior than other phones sounded weaker and weaker until they were ultimately untrue. I ignored this for a while and thought, “You’re tripping. iPhone is still the best thing out. Everyone has one. They have to be doing something right.”
This went on for a while until about a month ago when I decided that I’m going to leave iPhone behind.
I told myself that I wanted to learn something new. I told myself that Apple’s innovation seemed to plateau. I told myself that I was bored with iPhone. And while all of those things are likely to have some part to play in my decision, I feel that there are psychological rumblings deeper in my subconscious.
Simply put: the iPhone brand just does not represent me as well as it used to.
Because I identified so closely with my iPhone, the realization that we may not be as perfectly matched as I thought severely disrupted my psyche. I reached a point where the tension between why I thought I owned the iPhone (it was an extension and validator of my self concept) and my reality (there are cooler phones out there that more closely resemble my self concept) finally manifested itself in an epiphany: I’m leaving iPhone.
Think about the premise of movie, Inception. The engineers had to implant the seed of an idea deep within their target’s subconscious so that it could develop into actions that the target believed to be their own. In a similar way, the cognitive dissonance I experienced with my iPhone led me to this current state of dissatisfaction. Social Psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term, “cognitive dissonance,” in his book, When Prophecy Fails, in 1956.
My urge to abandon my iPhone was exacerbated with Apple’s latest release. I originally purchased an iPhone to separate myself from other phone users who weren’t as cool as I thought I was. Not only did Apple fail to appropriately innovate in a way that reinforced my perception of my personal coolness, now even MORE people around the world would have access to the technology due to its 5C extension…or as one source put it, “The First iPhone You Don’t Want.”
Meanwhile, all of the other close competitors’ advertisements seem to be speaking directly to me now…or, at least about people like me. Take the new Nokia, the phone for the photographer–or Instagram addict. How about the Moto X by Google? It’s the phone that let’s you customize every aspect of its appearance and operate touch-free. I think even the most staunch iPhone support can yield some innovation ground to the industry’s heir apparent, Samsung Galaxy.
What do you think? Am I just a simp being suckered in by all the new phones coming out? Are you getting tired of your iPhone too? Discuss it in the comments or on twitter.
Lately, it seems like Microsoft always comes up a little short. The company has suffered several embarrassing failures in different markets. Internet Explorer, Zune, and Bing are just a few. I’m sure there are several ways that each of these efforts can be dissected to show why they’ve come up short in their respective markets.
However, I believe that at the heart of each product’s failure, is Microsoft’s inability to accurately understand its customer. Microsoft Office and Explorer shared similar initial successes because of their early entry into their markets. The Zune and Bing, however, were late entrants that did not achieve enough significant differentiation from the current competitors. Furthermore, none of those products really captured the majority of consumers’ interests and preferences.
Microsoft’s shining beacon that seems to have “got it right” is their popular game console, the XBOX. The Xbox entered the market later than its competitors but gathered enough interest AND adapted well enough to survive and even thrive in the gaming industry.
Recently, The New York Times recently released an article explaining how Xbox planned to further engage its consumers and attract more business.
Through strategic brand extensions, I see Xbox’s effort to increase their brand’s perception as the premiere alternative for interactive entertainment, but also extend their relationship with their consumers beyond just gaming.
You’ll remember that Xbox is the brand that brought competitive gaming between distant participants from computers to consoles with the ingenious, “Xbox Live.” This fit perfectly as a complement into Aaker and Keller’s (1990) discovery of three bases in which consumers categorize and evaluate brand extensions. The new extension of the brand must either “fit” into the consumer’s idea of the brand as a:
Yet again, Microsoft is taking interaction to another level. I think they have wisely decided to create a live-action television series (with director Steven Speilberg!) modeled after their cash cow, Halo. This makes total sense as a brand extension because it has an immediate connection to a current brand winner and has the potential to drive even more interaction with the brand. Furthermore, no other game system currently occupies this space successfully. Xbox has the opportunity to define this sector in a similar way that they did with Xbox Live.
I see where Xbox strategists are trying to draw the linkage between their second extension, a smartphone app in partnership with the NFL that allows users to interact with their fantasy league teams as they watch the game, but I think ESPN already provides significant competition in this space. They will need to really make their offer to their consumers extremely salient and prove that their mobile app is the method for real gamers to interact with their fantasy football leagues.
The following video alludes to the XBOX ONE’s new features while heralding the brands previous accomplishments and almost makes me want to become a gamer again. Enjoy.