The Power of Brand Names
Welcome to our continuing series of Credit Educations Courses for Opticians.
This course has been approved for one hour of credit by the American Board of Opticianry. No fee is required for ABO credit.
Learning Outcomes:This course is presented at a beginner level and is designed to give eyecare professionals stronger strategies for buying and inventorying and to help them weigh the value of branded vs. non-branded product. At the conclusion of the article, the participant will:
1. Better understand the history of brand names in the United States and why consumers first relied on them.
2. Know the value of brand equity in terms of monetary value, intangible value, and perceived quality.
3. Determine the advantages and disadvantages of carrying brand name product.
4. Better understand the increase in branded product that's available to today's ECPs and their end customer, the consumer.
Test procedures: Read the article and then click on the "Take The Test" button at the bottom of the page. This will open a new window with a test consisting of 15 questions. To receive ABO continuing education credit, respondents must correctly answer 12 of 15 test questions. Simply click on the best answer for each question and click the submit button at the end of the test. Your test answers will be automatically sent to Seiko Optical and we will send your CEC or notify you of test failure within 7 to 10 business days.
Note: Some states do not accept home study courses for continuing education credit. Check with the licensing board in your state to see if this course qualifies.
The Power of Brand Names
Introduction
Do you know what brand of sneakers you wear? Of course, you do. Branded products are everywhere, from the department store to the grocery store.
What can using brand names mean to your business? It can mean a lot, or a little, depending on how you use it.
In today's economic times, it is important to keep reaching out to your patient base. Featuring branded frames and lenses is certainly a way to show your patients that you can provide them with quality products from name brands they already know. Whether it is fashion, electronics, or accessories, tying into a well-known brand can be a great "silent salesman."
This course examines the history of brand names, and how you can use them to support your business. It shows how using branded products can actually help your patients make better and more informed decisions about the eyewear you are recommending.
Brand names have become a dominant factor in consumer marketing of a myriad of products, ranging from potato chips to refrigerators to tennis shoes. In looking at the historical development of brand names, Coca-Cola was one of the first nationally recognized brands to come along. The Coca-Cola Company printed its first consumer calendar in 1891. Another early national brand name was Gillette razor blades. King Gillette invented the first disposable razor blade in 1903 and rapidly set out to tell the world about the benefits of throw-away blades. Vaseline was first used as a name for petroleum jelly in 1899 and registered as a U.S. Trademark in 1925. Hershey's Kisses, first registered in 1923, have maintained the same look for both the brand name and the product to this day. The Wonder trademark was first used in 1921 and has been expanded for bakery products ranging from bread to tortillas. Those trade names represent major assets for their companies today.
The use of brand names in America began during and after the Industrial Revolution. Their use was prompted by the Trademark Act of 1905, which encouraged the use of brand names by manufacturers because of the powerful protection the U.S. government provided to properly registered brand names. Brand name advertising began in newspapers, but later influenced every other media as well, including the Internet.
What is a brand?
A brand is a product name or logo that, when consumers are knowledgeable, immediately brings to mind a specific product or service. When you see or hear the word "Coke," it conveys an image to your brain. On a hot summer day, the word can even invoke an overpowering thirst.
Think of the word "McDonald's" at certain times of the day and many people get an urge to climb in the car and head for the nearest outlet. It took a lot of advertising to create those images, but they are now entrenched in the public's mind.
Another way of explaining the impact of branding is that a brand might also be considered to be the personality of the product or service. An effective brand will tell the customer what to expect from the product and even how it will impact or benefit their lifestyle.
Subliminal impulses produced by brand names only happen when consumers have been pre-informed about the benefits provided by the brand. It usually comes with heavy consumer advertising, but can also result from word-of-mouth communications. To make this happen, the benefits provided by the brand must be strongly defined and well understood or sales of the branded product will not be affected.
There are many instances where brand names become so recognized that they actually become a generic name for that type of product. For example, when covering a cut, most people ask for a Band-Aid, although the actual covering used may not be that brand. Other examples of this include brand names such as Kleenex and Xerox.
This is considered to be a hazardous situation by manufacturers since it implies that all brands of adhesive bandages and/or tissues are of equal value, certainly not what the manufacturers of Band-Aids or Kleenex believe.
Brand Equity
As important as the brand name is the brand equity. Brand equity can be defined as the perceived worth of the brand and its image, along with the ability of the brand to convey this message to the marketplace. Brand equity is comprised of several factors, including:
Monetary value. Branded products command higher prices than their generic counterparts. Consumers expect branded products to be of higher quality and, therefore, accept the fact that these products cost more.
Intangible value. This is value associated with a product but not accounted for by price or features. This is also known as a brand's image. Many companies use celebrities or star athletes to promote their products, and this marketing image creates demand for the product. People buy the product because they believe the product has the same attributes or qualities as the athlete or celebrity.
Perceived quality. The overall perception of quality and image attributed to a product can be independent of its physical features. The names of certain cars, for example, are synonymous with high quality and luxury. Consumers perceive these cars as providing superior quality to other brand-name automobiles, whether this perception is based on facts or not.
For manufacturers, brand equity incorporates the ability to provide added value to allow changing price premiums, lower marketing costs, and offer greater opportunity for customer purchase.
Conversely, negative brand equity means that potential customers have such low perceptions of a particular brand that they feel the product has less value than they would if they objectively considered all of the product's attributes or features.
Brand recognition is the extent to which a particular brand becomes known for specific attributes. Brand recognition is separated into two categories: Aided and unaided. Unaided recognition is the ability to identify a particular brand simply by its name or logo. This adds greatly to the value of the brand name. Aided recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized when presented with a list of brands from which to choose.
Logos and slogans contribute to brand recognition. For example, the slogan, "Just do it" immediately brings to mind one particular famous sneaker manufacturer.
Brand Names And Eyewear
The basic components of eyewear are frames and lenses, but the two categories have been influenced by branding in quite different ways. We'll review how they differ.
Frames. In the frame category, brand names have long been a dominant factor. The beginnings can be traced back to the introduction of the Harlequin frame in 1940. That year, Lord & Taylor, a famous department store in New York City, presented a design award to Altina Sanders for designing an eyeglass frame shaped much like a theatrical harlequin mask. The cat-eye frame sold exclusively in a few New York City fashion boutiques, but set off a craze for upswept frames that was widely copied over the next 30 years.
In 1955, American Optical enticed an internationally-recognized dress designer named Madam Schiaparelli to design the first designer frame. It was a rimless mounting sold only in exclusive optical shops. The exclusivity-focused pair of events launched the trend for brand names on frames.
Today, hundreds of frame collections carry brand names. Some are well-known designers, some carry names of celebrities, and some even use names connected with motorcycles or athletic shoes. The connection between the name and the product may sometimes seem tenuous, but the brands have been successful. Brand names have dominated the frame market for the past 20 years.
Lenses. It took longer for brand names to impact ophthalmic lenses. Two of the earliest lenses to earn recognizable brand names were introduced nearly 70 years ago. One was Polaroid sunglasses and the other was Ray-Ban sunglasses. Both brands still exist.
In the mid-1960's, Corning introduced photochromic glass lenses that became a worldwide brand name. In 1991, the first plastic photochromic lens created another widely recognized trade name. Currently, there are a number of consumer-recognized brand names influencing the lens market. More on this later, but first let's review the advantages and disadvantages of brand names.
Brand Name Advantages
The value of brand names is they provide consumers with a point of reference. A recognizable brand name can convey an image of high fashion or high quality or greater value. Here are examples of how brand name frames help eyewear consumers in today's marketplace.
The patient comes into the dispensary and sees a display of anywhere from 800 to 2,000 frames. How can they make the right decision with so many choices? Brand names give patients a reference point from which to start. The name of a glamorous film star may be where they start looking. For someone else, it might be the name of a hot designer that catches their eye.
Brand names in a frame display tell knowledgeable consumers that this dispensary is fashion conscious. With a cosmetic product like eyewear, this can be important. When they see familiar names, they feel more comfortable. The right brands can also convey value or reliability. A well-known name gives the impression that the product will deliver what it promises. Take the use of famous cartoon character names for children's frames, for example. These provide parents with confidence in the frame and give children an incentive to wear the glasses.
Without brand names, consumers have only two ways in which to choose frames: Either find a frame that looks good on them or base their choice solely on price. Here is how brand names can help patients:
1. Convey value. In general, patients perceive brand-name products as providing higher quality or better value. Consumers know branded products are more expensive, but the overall impression is that branded products provide greater value.
2. Build loyalty. One reason patients like branded frames is because their friends also know the name. It informs the world of their good taste or judgment. They tell their friends and family, and that word-of-mouth creates referrals. Patients are more likely to return to the office or practice because they have a sense of the kind of products they use. It costs a lot more to attract new patients than it does to keep current ones.
3. Build pride. Employees like working in an environment that uses consumer-recognized branded products. A dispensing staff that offers top-of-the-line branded products displays enthusiasm that is rapidly transferred to the patient.
4. Instill trust. The right brand name instills trust in the product and the office. It is a maxim of modern marketing that consumers have greater confidence in branded products and more faith in their performance.
The use of brand names for ophthalmic lenses did not develop as rapidly as with frames. There were good reasons for this. Patients rely on their eyecare professional to determine and recommend which lenses will best serve their needs. The problem today is that there are too many choices for the patient. It's not as confusing as frame selection, but is a growing concern.
Explaining the benefits of aspherics, anti-reflection coatings, photochromics, polarized sunlenses, progressive addition lenses, and computer glasses can totally confuse the patient. The situation is helped by growing consumer awareness of brand names for lenses. There are lens brands today that generate consumer recognition rivaling that of Hershey's Kisses or Gillette razors.
Some lens brands earn consumer recognition because of extensive consumer advertising by the manufacturer. Others inherit consumer recognition because the lenses are produced by companies with highly recognizable brand names in other fields. For example, the patient is informed their new lenses will be Brand A lenses. They recognize the name because they own a camera with the same name. The parent company has a worldwide reputation for quality and value and patients assume the lenses will have these same qualities. And other recognizable brands include familiar names that a few manufacturers have licensed.
The lens world is a mysterious place for patients. They depend and count on their eyecare provider to advise what will work best for them. When the recommended lens carries a brand name they know, it simply provides added comfort. Many times it also helps make the cost more palatable.
The Downside of Branding
There is a downside to brand names, but it's a relatively minor one. Most consumers understand that branded products tend to be more expensive than unbranded products. In spite of this, the majority of consumers buy brand names. The logic is that buying branded products produces more predictable results.
Think about this in regard to your own experience. When you shop, you know the store's house brand detergent will be cheaper than one you saw advertised on TV. You buy the branded detergent because you know what it will do. You also know the branded product will perform exactly as it did the last time you purchased it. Repeatable performance is a key factor with branded products.
An optical fashion boutique in Beverly Hills may choose to display nothing but well-known brand name frames, and this could work well for them. Most dispensaries, however, prefer to carry both branded and non-branded frames. Brand names are a key marketing tool, but there are still consumers who avoid brand names and look for generic products as an economy measure. For these people, displaying branded products serves a purpose. Brands establish the office as fashion-oriented and this enhances the generic products as well.
Brand Reliability
There is one key facet to branded products that is basic to their use, no matter what field they fall in. Owners of brand names go to enormous lengths to preserve the reputation and performance of products carrying their brand name. They cannot afford to let anything detract from their branded product's reputation.
This economic fact virtually guarantees that consumers will get reliable performance from the product. Confidence in performance of the product is the heart of successful product branding. It is as true of optical brand names as any other branded product.
Brand names are only of value if the consumer (patient) knows they are available. Most branded products, both lenses and frames, provide well-designed point-of-purchase materials to display in the dispensary. These both inform and educate patients and are a valuable marketing tool in the dispensing area. They help establish the ambiance of a dispensary.
Many branded products include backup warranties that guarantee performance of the product. These should be explained to the patient at the time the product is discussed. They add to the value of the product. Branded lens and frame products encourage patient referrals and improve responses to patient recalls. Those two benefits alone should encourage the use for branded frames and lenses.
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