Cooperative brands: The importance of customer information for service brands

Abstract

When most people think of branding, they automatically think of high-profile product brands like Coke and Nike. Service brands, such as those in financial services, telecommunications, or utilities receive somewhat less attention. However, these are the brands for which communication is changing the face of customer relationships, changing the way in which information secures-and more important, retains-customers and market share.Service brands operate essentially on the promise of an experience, and consumers choose one brand over another in the expectation that the experience it delivers will be a good one. In many service sectors, there is no difference between the products themselves; they are commodities, such as phone calls, supplies of gas or water, or bank accounts. The technologies these sectors rely on are mature. It is not a novelty to have a phone that works, everyone wants to give you a credit card, and in most societies electricity can be relied upon. For service brands, therefore, the key differentiator is the quality of the relationship promised to the customer. Because this promise is extended through information communicated through print or digital media, or the spoken word, that information becomes a huge determinant of the quality of the relationship. It might make sense, then, to think of service industries as information industries, because, although product brands tend to represent a trade between money and objects, service industries are a trade that is based mainly on money and information. MARKETING F ocusing on a critical aspect in the relationship with consumers,Rob Waller and Judy Delin urge designers to create "cooperative" communications-media that are relevant, clear, concise, truthful, and informative. These attributes strengthen brand and build loyalty. Ignoring them causes confusion and doubt, weakening the connection with customers. Violating them-a "final straw" experience-can end the customer relationship.

Multimodality and Genre

“…Customers are also increasingly making decisions on the basis of their impression of the companies that they deal with: and unfriendly documents are part and parcel of the entire image that a company creates for itself (cf. Waller and Delin 2003). In the chapters below, we will see how a proper consideration of the communicative intent of such documents can lead on the one hand to far more effective deployment of the visual modes available and, on the other, to a focused language for voicing critique.…”