Managing brand images and building brand portfolios are difficult challenges even for the most seasoned executives. This is particularly true in hard economic times when consumers are prone to forego known names to buy less expensive store brand substitutes. The recent example of Pampers diapers illustrates many of the challenges and some of the opportunities available to marketers to increase the value of their brand franchise.

The Case of Pampers

When you think Pampers you think of what-diapers of course-expensive diapers at that. These rather narrow associations were not helping the Pampers brand.

Although the brand commands a 24% share in the diaper category, it was and is now under siege from lower priced counterparts, particularly in the wake of new and improved store brands that have greatly upped quality. The economic recession doesn't help-particularly since Pampers' price is 50% higher than that of store brands. Nor did Pampers' advertising which, since 1961 had changed relatively little and tended to talk down to mothers. Pampers (and other diapers) are also in some sense responsible for their own slowed growth as improvements in diapers means fewer diaper changes (see Emily Nelson, Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2001, B1).

How can companies build and enhance their brand franchise-both deepening the meaning of the core brand and insulating the brand from price-based competition? Attention to a few simple concepts provides a start.

Brand Longevity through Line Extensions

Keeping customers around as long as possible is a problem for products like diapers since parents' desires for potty training force even loyal users to give up the product after a few years. Natural aging make the product obsolete among core customers-fueling expensive attempt to garner new customers.

Pampers' line extensions however, are aimed at keeping customers initially happy with the Pampers brand loyal for as long as possible. Different lines are offered for boys and girls and diapers are offered for different stages of kids' development. Diapers for newborns offer extra absorbency, toddler diapers have stretchy sides for crawlers and pull on pants type diapers are offered for toddlers and preschoolers who can't yet make it through the night.

Market Development through Brand Extensions

While retaining customers through line extensions is a no brainer, a much more difficult decision is how the brand franchise can be built through brand extensions. A brand extension is a management strategy in which a well known brand name (e.g., Pampers) is used to promote a new brand in a different category (e.g., Pamper's bibs).

Marketing academics have identified two basic strategies for engaging in brand extensions-(1) extend the brand to product categories that share similar features to the parent brand or (2) extend the brand to product categories that serve similar goals to the parent brand. The two strategies offer very different insights into potential extension options.

Extensions Based on Similar Features

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Debbie MacInnis

Dr. Deborah J. MacInnis is the Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, and a co-author of Brand Admiration: Build a Business People Love. She has consulted with companies and the government in the areas of consumer behavior and branding. She is theory development editor at the Journal of Marketing, and former co-editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. Professor MacInnis has served as president of the Association for Consumer Research and vice-president of conferences and research for the American Marketing Association's Academic Council. She has received the Journal of Marketing's Alpha Kappa Psi and Maynard awards for the papers that make the greatest contribution to marketing thought. She is the co-author of a leading textbook on consumer behavior and is co-editor of several edited volumes on branding.