Creating Profit Through Alliances - business models for collaboration E-book | Page 40

situation. For example, when spending the night in a
hotel you do not expect anyone to enter your room
unasked (privacy), that drinks in the bar are charged
to your account (convenience), and that there is
wake-up call service (efficiency). At higher-end hotels
you will expect a laundry or dry-cleaning service
(give me comprehensive solutions) and personal
attention.
The other aspect is the brand promise and how this is
fulfilled. If you want to have a meal, that need will
differ depending on whether you're alone or with
your family. A company's response to this may lie in
the right portfolio management of the products and
services it offers. It also makes a difference whether
you're in town or in an amusement park, and a
company's solution here lies in its distribution
management. And finally, in this particular case, you
do not have this need for a meal at each and every
moment. Thus, being relevant means that companies
must present you with their offer at the right time.
Marketing communications and personal sales are
important means to achieve this.
Businesses that deliberately invest in relevance also
try to flesh out that brand promise: by formulating
the promise, communicating the promise, and
especially also by living out this promise in different
ways. BMW uses the slogan “BMW makes driving
great”. The company tries to sustain that promise by
putting only truly well-designed products in the
market. For example, when all car brands had already
launched an SUV, BMW also had one in the pipeline,
but it wasn't thought good enough. It wasn't until
BMW had thoroughly developed the X5 that they
rolled it out into the showrooms.
According to a Booz Allan & Hamilton article entitled
„How to brand Sand‟20, you can differentiate your
offering through the product or through the service

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that you provide as a company. These company
service „promises‟ could be:




supply reliability,
applications knowledge
assuming responsibility, e.g. for part of their
supply chain process.

Christopher Lovelock, in his book „Services
Marketing‟21, gives 8 ways to differentiate on service
aspects:









Providing information (e.g. about the products,
how to apply them)
Advising customers (tailored to their specific
needs)
Making exceptions (handling special requests,
complaints, restitution)
Delivery (speed, timeframes)
Fulfilment (planning, flexibility, change orders)
Invoicing (EDI, clarity of the invoice)
Payment and payment conditions (local bank
account, payment term)
Hospitality (is the client welcome, how is he
treated)

Both with commodity products and unique products
you can apply one of these differentiators to become
a relevant supplier for your customers. This can lead
to differentiating brand promises such as: “We deliver
on time”, “Clear contracts”, “The best advice”.
Alliances can help achieve relevance for customers
more quickly. The value of alliances can best be
quantified by considering the costs your own
company would have to make to accomplish a
comparable boost in relevance. This is elaborated
further for the five basic forms of alliances that aim
to enhance customer relevance.