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Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

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CHANGING THE RETAIL LANDSCAPE 95<br />

• Operations, critical to success, are diffi cult, requiring fi nancing,<br />

innovation, people with specialized skills who believe,<br />

and an inspiring vision and champion.<br />

• <strong>Brand</strong>s can carry the innovation message. The Geek Squad,<br />

for example, told the service story vividly with humor and<br />

personality. The “ 7 under 6 ” helped Subway communicate.<br />

• Green values and social programs are popular with a growing<br />

portion of most markets, and few organizations have<br />

credibility in the space. Whole Foods Market and Muji have<br />

broken through with visible substance and are seen as sharing<br />

the values, interests, and even lifestyles of an important<br />

customer segment.<br />

For Discussion<br />

1. Identify some highly differentiated retailers. What makes<br />

them different? How do they achieve and maintain that<br />

difference?<br />

2. Evaluate Best Buy ’ s decision to buy the Geek Squad instead<br />

of building a capability from within. What are the pros and<br />

cons of the decision? What was the key issue that drove the<br />

decision?<br />

3. Why didn ’ t other shoe stores create the Zappos model when<br />

Zappos started? Compare Zappos to Nordstrom.com as a<br />

shoe site.

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