Hot Topic: Conceptualising the Service Brand & Broadening the Concept of Brand Equity

1. Hot Topic:Conceptualising the Service Brand & Broadening the Concept of Brand Equity Professor Rod Brodie University of Auckland Business School Frontiers in Services Conference June2006 University of Queensland Australia

2. MSI Top Research Priority

3. Towards Service Centric Thinking • Goods vs. Services is not the point (CMP Research) • 80% of all firms describe their primary market offer having an emphasis on service • all firms differentiate on the basis of their service offer • Vargo & Lusch’s “New Logic” • From Goods-Centred Exchange • tangible (operand) resources, embedded value and transactions • To Service-Centred Exchange • intangible (operant) resources, the co-creation of value and relationships • How does this change thinking about marketing & branding?

4. Evolving To a New Frame of ReferenceLusch & Vargo (2004) To Market (matter in motion) Market To (management of customers & markets) Market With (collaborate with customers & partners to produce & sustain value) Through 1950 1950-2005 Future

5. Lusch & Vargo (2006)

6. Multifaceted Nature of Brand • Consumer based concepts • identity, logo, image, symbol, expression, and personality • Organisational concepts • positioning statements, cluster of values, vision, and risk reduction • Relational concepts • promises, trust and commitment, relationships, and experience with customers and other stakeholders • Financial perspective • a resource or asset that creates value • above the water line (15%) • what is visible about the brand to the consumer i.e. the logo and name • below the water-line (85%) are the unseen value-adding processes

8. Integrating the Research: Role of “the Brand” in Co-creating Value Consumers, Customers & Stakeholders INTERACTIVE ‘co-creating meaning and experience ’ EXTERNAL ‘making promises’ through value propositions’ Brands ( & Company) ‘facilitating, mediating & realising the co-creation of value’ Organisation Employees INTERNAL ‘enabling the fulfillment created by promises ’

9. Is there a Missing Fundamental Premise in the SD Logic? Service brands facilitate and mediate the marketing processes used to realise the experiences & the co-creation of value between the organisation & its customers & stakeholders) provide sign systems that symbolise meaning in the marketing network, hence are a fundamental asset or resource that a marketing organisation uses in developing service-based competency and hence competitive advantage. But does this overstate the case? • danger of becoming too brand centric and this detracts from customer centric logic (Rust al 2005)

10. Synergistic Advantages from a Multi-method Approach Quantitative and qualitative inquiry can support and inform each other. Narratives and variable-driven analyses need to interpret and inform each other. Realists, idealists and critical theorists can do better by incorporating other ideas than by remaining pure. Think of it as hybrid vigor. (Huberman & Miles 2002, p396) “If my thoughts are at least close to the mark, researchers in marketing are entering the age of ‘pluralism’… “ (Green 2001 – marketing scientist) “When consumer researchers discuss multi-paradigm research a visual metaphor usually dominates, notably that of overcoming perspectival limitations to create more comprehensive frameworks.”Thompson, Arnould & Stern 1997 – postmodernists)