Decision-makers in the industry normally don’t understand the connection between people’s knowledge, opinions and emotions – and what actually makes them want to buy a product or pay a premium price. Put differently: companies may know whether their brand is known, but not if it’s known for the right things.
Almost all traditional brand studies deliver irrelevant results from a long-term revenue perspective. They normally look at the history, making it difficult to prove how branding and communication contributes to future sales and revenues.
But modern technology has opened doors to new ways of researching customer’s decision processes and motivations for choosing a certain supplier. After many years of research, Johan Anselmsson and Niklas Bondesson, two of Sweden’s leading brand personalities, have developed a model that with high accuracy can identify the parameters that truly drive sales in a given industry and market. It also pinpoints which associations are most favorable to build on in order to maximize market share and/or price premium. We call it “The Brand Potential Analysis”.
Unlike traditional customer satisfaction and image surveys – which only tell you what people know or think – this model reveals which of those thoughts and feelings matter most to maximize your sales. Be prepared to be surprised. During 15 years of collaboration with Johan and Niklas, working with around 30 companies, many executive teams have gained shocking insights into their customers, markets and competitors.
In the start of the project, we normally let each person in the management team give their view of what they think drive customers to choose a certain brand and pay a premium price. Normally the ideas are totally wrong. They are based on what they have heard customers say which very often is a lie – or rather what a customer is expected to say as a professional purchaser – and not what really drives him to decide.
One example from a study we did for a Nordic company providing steel solutions.
Stated/estimated drivers to select a steel brand:
- Price
- Quality
- Delivery performance
Sounds logic, right? But it’s far from the truth. The true drivers were:
- Easy to do business with
- Community feeling
- Service minded
Why? The 3 stated drivers are of course important, but they don’t differentiate. If you are a reputed supplier in the market, potential customers feel fairly secure that you (and your main competitors) have products of good quality and the price level on the market is often established. The same reasoning often makes drivers like local presence (competitors often have offices beside you), broad product range (customers often only need one solution) and sustainability weak drivers.
Interested to know what drives your customers to buy more and pay more, just reach out to ulf.vanselius@comprend.com