Branding of Services in Kenya

INTRODUCTION

Definitions

According to the American Marketing Association, “a brand is a term, sign, design, symbol or a combination of them, that identifies a service or a product of one seller and differentiates it from those of competitors.”

A brand is more than just a trade name or a company logo; it incorporates everything about a product or service that customers are buying or seeking. A brand represents both a general impression of a company and customers' direct experiences of its products and services

On the other hand, branding refers to carefully integrating multiple brand elements across the whole spectrum of the marketing the program, directed towards making the buyer recognize
Relevant added values that are unique when compared with competing products and services and which are difficult for competitors to emulate.

Branding enables customers create mental structures that help them clarify their decisions about a product. For instance, the use of the umbrella symbol by insurance firms creates the impression of protection, whereas the Nakumatt slogan ‘you need it we’ve got it’ conveys the message of comfort and convenience to the customer.
Often, the less concrete a brand value, the more important it is that brand elements capture the intangible aspects of a brand.


IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING IN SERVICE FIRMS
· Effective branding pre-disposes potential buyers to trust the value (and believability) of benefit claims.
· Branding is particularly important to service firms to address potential intangibility and variability problems.
· Brand symbols may especially be important as they help make the abstract nature of services more concrete.
· Brands can help to identify and provide meaning to the different services offered by the firm. Branding has become especially important in financial services to help recognize and label the myriad of new offerings in a manner that consumers can understand.
· Branding a service can also be an effective way to signal to consumers that the firm has designed a particular service offering that is special and deserving its own name. For example, British Airways not only branded it premium business class service as “Club Class”, they also branded its regular coach service as “World Traveler”, a clever way to communicate to their regular passengers that they are also special in some ways and that their patronage is not taken for granted.
· Brands enable marketers to build extra value into products and services to differentiate them from competitors to deliver higher profits. Brands charge a premium compared to their competitors.
· Brands deliver higher consumer expectation of quality, price, purpose, associations and performance and aim to build loyalty. This results in brands being able to deliver higher profits over a longer period of time. Customer loyalty is a more important determinant of profit.
· Your brand identity will help you to decide on an appropriate marketing approach. For example, a dependable cleaning service might be best advertised in a local newspaper, whereas a luxury health spa might be better promoted in a glossy magazine.
· A strong brand is of real value in providing differentiation. More specifically, it can:
a) Justify a price premium-people will pay more for a name they trust
b) Attract talent-who would you prefer to work for, Hyundai or Mercedes?
c) Win new business-or help you extend into new area of business.

In conclusion, brand drives preference, top-of-mind awareness, and higher fees and improves desirability.

SERVICE BRANDING TECHNIQUES

A. Branding to make the tangible the intangible
One of the most problematic aspects associated with service brands is that consumers have to deal with intangible offerings. To overcome this problem, marketers put a lot of emphasis on the company as a brand, especially in sectors such as financial services, since this is one way of making the service more tangible.
An effective way to make brands tangible is to use as many physical elements as possible that can be associated with the brand, such as staff uniforms, office décor and the type of music played to customers waiting on the telephone.
The first points of contact with a service organization, such as car parking, design of building and appearance of the reception area, all interact to give consumers clues about what the service brand will be like.
Other ways that brand communicate with consumers are through tangible elements such as stationery, the way employees dress and brochures.
B. Consistent service Brands through staff
Even though the service organization may have developed a well conceived positioning for their brand and advised a good communication programme, the brand can still flounder because of insufficient attention to the role staff play in producing and delivering the service. The following factors can compromise the success of the brand:
-Ineffective recruitment
-Conflict in the duties staff is required to perform
-Poor fit between staff and technology.
Staff embodies the service brand in consumer’s eyes. In many cases the service staff are the only point of contact for the consumer and by thoroughly training staff and ensuring their commitment to the brand; its chances of succeeding are greater.
Staff of a service organization can ensure quality of the service to customers through reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and appearance.

C. Service Brands with optimum consumer participation
If the service performance requires a high degree of consumer involvement, it is vitally important that consumers understand their roles, and are willing and able to participate /perform their roles, otherwise their inevitable frustration will weaken the brand.
The level of consumer participation varies across services. In service sectors such as airlines and fast-food restaurants, the level of consumer participation is low, as all is required is the consumer’s physical presence and the employees of the organization perform the whole service.
In sectors such as banking and insurance, consumers participate moderately and provide input to the service creation through providing information about their physical possessions. When consumers are highly involved in the service, for example participating in weight watchers, they need to be fully committed and actively participate.
Consumers therefore contribute to the quality of the service thereby influencing their assessment about the service brand.

WAYS OF CREATING A BRAND
To create your brand, you may first have to decide how you want existing and potential customers to perceive the business. You need to be able to see your company and what you are offering through their eyes. Note down as many concepts or values that you want them to associate with what you are doing. You could come up with ideas like 'dependable', 'creative', 'fun', 'high quality', 'value for money' or 'professional'.
Then check your ideas with employees, friends and customers, because they may have different views and be able to add to the list. If any of these views conflict with the brand that you would like to project, you will need to change either the branding or the perception. You've got a real problem if, for example, you want your company to be seen as reliable and responsive, but people perceive you as erratic and uncommunicative.
The next step is to build the brand into everything that the customer sees or experiences before they have direct contact with your business. Experts say that strong first impressions are created during the first 30 seconds of any encounter. It is therefore crucial to make sure that everything the customer sees projects the right brand image.
Everyone talks about brand-building, and how important it is. Yet few take the proper steps to make an indelible impression in the mind of the customer.

The essence of branding is to distinguish peculiar perceptions about a given service so that a service stands out from those provided by others. Due to the intangibility of service provision, there are several approaches that a firm can use to create brand value. Most of these approaches draw form the attributes of the service and the context in which it is provided. Branding can be enhanced through:
a) Use of strategic location
Certain categories of services require the customer to visit the premises of the producer. For these service types, location is key to the brand image one seeks to present. Locations in exclusive high-end area lends to an image of premium service. For example, in the hotel industry, top hotels such as the Hilton have located themselves to support their brand of targeting high net individuals.
Medical consultants also locate themselves in exclusive areas to support the brand value of superior service.
b) Use of Price
Where customers equate value to price, then price can be used to sustain either a high-end service for which customers pay a premium or low cost service. Several forms of price can be as follows;
Entry/Membership fees
In order to restrict access to service area since customers are part of the service environment, some enterprises use entry requirements to sift through the clientele base.
Membership clubs such as Muthaiga, Nairobi use entry fees to position themselves in the market. We associate Nairobi club with high net worth people because of the price of membership.
Charging a premium price
In this way it is the service itself that is priced highly or lowly so as to convey a brand message. For instance, there’s no difference in cost for a caesarean-section at pumwani as would one at Nairobi women’s hospital. The reason the former charges sh.10, 000 and the latter sh.120, 000 is because price signals brand value. It is therefore possible to use branding as a basis of charging separate prices.
c) Use of publicity and advertising
Publicity and advertising such as advertisements for airlines is done via all medium but for certain professions such as lawyers, advertising is still prohibited in Kenya. This does not mean lawyers have not been ‘advertising their services’.
Lawyers have been known to provide pro-bono services especially for cases that are likely to ensure them positive media coverage. Nairobi women’s hospital has also used it as a way of advertising themselves.
d) Use of Colour schemes
In order to reduce intangibility and increase familiarity for service consumers, providers have developed colour schemes that aid the memory of clients. For instance;
Red-KQ
Orange-Fly 540
Blue-UoN
Green-NGO’s in the environment sector.
The colour scheme does extend to the use of uniforms at the work place. Hotel, airlines have for ages used uniforms as a distinguishing mark. You may have noticed that lawyers tend towards dark suits as a mark of “reassurance or authority”.
e) Segmentation
Services such as transport are easily segmented depending on preference of clients. For instance, uses of 1st class, Business, Economy are strategies of segmentation that enable covering the entire scope of the market.
f) Use of people/Employees
It is noted that human beings play a big role in the provision of services. As such, customer perception is shaped by their interaction. While the earlier strategies can be copied and replicated, the brand value developed around people is distinctive and unique to an organization.
Example; KISS100 is synonymous with Caroline Mutoko, Classic Fm with Maina Kageni and Churchill.
These presenters have high brand value that they can shift with their client base. Whilst they possess such value, the danger is, unless they are paid well, they can switch occasioning losses to the company.
In the music industry, singers have branded themselves by way of dressing and lifestyle. This has had won them many loyal fans. Such relationships continue to guarantee them music sales even barring the quality of the music. Use of trademarks such as ‘dreadlocks’ is an attempt to distinguish themselves from other musicians.


BRANDING PROCESS.

Steps:

· Identify the business core values.
These are qualities, which an organization deems most important. For instance, an organization or business may identify its core values to include: honesty, integrity, excellent communication and client satisfaction.
These values are usually never revealed to the public, they are evident in every aspect of the organization’s business routine, form customer service, to direct marketing, to website design, to teleconferences, to the treatment of employees and strategic partners.
· Conduct an objective research.
To ensure a successful outcome, comprehensive and objective research involving at the minimum, brands strengths and weaknesses, the target audience and the competition will be conducted. If the resources are available research should also involve extensive observation in to the brand’s industry, its history, the current market picture and potential growth and direction.
· Developing a Brand statement (Brand Proposition)
The brand statement is a promise. It stated that if you use our services, we promise that this or that will occur, whether it is the satisfaction from wearing well-designed clothing, to the comfort of choosing service of a particular financial planner.
The brand proposition must be clearly understood, engaging, presented in the right context of relevancy, and offer a solution to the target audience’s current wants and needs.
Providing a brand proposition that is engaging easily understood and offers an emotionally positive solution to the needs and desires only serves to enhance the current customer perception of the brand and will get new customers to look your way. Following through with an excellent service and customer support will put an indelible mark in the memory of your existing customers; one that will create brand loyalty through good and bad times; a sure sign of a brand’s strength.
· Deliver the unexpected
When developing a brand proposition, never let your brand’s promise be one that is already expected, this is a sure way to NOT stand out from your competitors. Advertising efforts that utilize adjectives like “good” or “nice” are sure to fail when seeking to be both engaging and unique. Consumers already expect “good service” from you. This message therefore does not lead towards a strong positive emotional relationship.
· Winning their hearts and minds
An important aspect of brand development is to create a positive emotional attachment to the brand, which creates a response in its audience without the audience directly experiencing the service.
Positive emotional bonding comes from a mutually beneficial relationship built on intrigue, trust, understanding and support. These are qualities that often separate colleagues from friends, and friends from family. A firm’s brand promise should be built on the basis that the service would deliver positive, relevant and unique emotional qualities.

Conclusion:
A brand proposition should convey a message that is:
I. Aligned with the brands core values.
II. Clear, engaging, unique and relevant to the target audience.
III. Able to incorporate an element of positive emotional attachment that it is better than just “good”.
IV. Echoed within your business, internally and externally.
V. Echoed by strategic partners.
VI. Continually reinforced within the organization so that the employees consistently deliver what is promised.
VII. Consistent across multiple marketing and advertising mediums (print, online presence etc)/
VIII. Able to adapt to a changing market place.


CHALLENGES OF SERVICE BRANDING

Branding of both products and services is a challenging task. The services world is evolving. To earn and retain customers in today’s highly competitive environment, an organization must evolve to deliver higher value service offerings.
The challenges in branding services are even more real due to the nature of services.

· Intangibility if the service.
Clients cannot see or touch services before they purchase them. This makes services difficult to conceptualize and evaluate from the client’s perspective, thereby increasing uncertainty and perception of risk. From the firm’s perspective, service intangibility can make services difficult to promote, control quality and set prices.

A service is a deed, process and performance (Zeitaml and Bitner). It is intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. It cannot be standardized. Services cannot be displayed as "tangible" products can. It is therefore difficult to communicate even the basic benefits and attributes of a service.
The success of any brand lies in consistently delivering "value" over a period of time. Such consistency is possible in the case of a "tangible" product that is homogenous, standardized, readily displayed and communicated. But how does one manage this aspect of consistency when the product in question is intangible or a "service"?


· Simultaneous production and consumption
Services are produced and consumed simultaneously. This creates special challenges in service products can be used and sampled before they go out to development. If they have quality problems, this can be fixed but the same cannot be done for services.

· Trust establishment
For a service branding to be effective, some level of trust in the organization and it people must be established before clients engage in purchasing services. To establish a level of trust to convince consumers that a certain price should be charged for a certain brand value is challenging.
· A service is essentially delivered through an interaction between the service provider and the customer. When you brand a service you are essentially branding this interaction. A service is also displayed and communicated through such interactions. The attributes and benefits of a service are also manifested through these interactions. How does one control these as one would for a tangible product? Further, how does one add further "intangible" values through branding (brand associations, values, culture, personality, et al) to this?
Human interactions carry with them all the behavioural implications that are difficult to manage. And here we are talking of 3 aspects that will affect a customer's experience of a service.

• Behaviour of the service provider
• His own behaviour
• Behaviour of other customers (Irate co-passengers on a delayed flight, well-heeled, genteel people sitting around you in the coffee shop of a 5 star hotel)
Each such interaction or experience is either going to reinforce the brand's core values or negates them.
· Lack of internal alignment
A brand is the perception people have of you. Actions change perceptions but words and images rarely do. Everyone in the organization should understand and deliver on the promises made or implied by the brand; otherwise nothing will change with branding.

The term "branding" is so overused today, people lump it together with "advertising," "public relations" even "a nice brochure." But be advised: none of those equates with branding. Branding requires a concerted effort, which incorporates every element of marketing.










References:
1. Chernatony, C. and Malcolm, M. (1998) Creating Powerful brands in Consumer, Service and Industrial Markets. Biddles Ltd
2. Keller, K.L. (1998) Strategic Brand management: Building Measuring and managing brand equity. Prentice-hall Inc.
3. Kotler, P and Keller, K. (12th Edition). Marketing Management. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.
4. http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand
5. http://www.whillsgroup.com
6. http://www.imdr.edu/faculty/branding_services.htm