Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

DEFINING AND MANAGING THE CATEGORY OR SUBCATEGORY 251
premium bus category that would remove the stigma on busses
as inferior modes of transportation.
Branding is often the key component in establishing a premium
subcategory because it is the brand that represents the
necessary credibility and supports the delivery of social and self -
expressive benefi ts.
New - Generation Offerings
An attractive position for a new category or subcategory is that
of the new - generation offering that represents a breakthrough
innovation, representing an option that makes the existing
brands and offerings either obsolete or demonstrably inferior. A
new - generation offering has the advantage of being potentially
newsworthy, worth talking about, and having a credibility, a reason
why its claims are true.
One challenge facing fi rms with a new - generation offering
is to convince customers that the risk of buying into a
new approach is either minimal or controlled by programs and
procedures. As the breakthrough difference is emphasized, the
perceived diffi culty of overcoming the associated change and
risk is also increased. Salesforce.com provided a new generation
of software delivery and promised much, but they did have
to address the perceived security and reliability risks that were
associated with cloud computing.
Another challenge — communicating a new generation in
a cluttered media environment — is illustrated by Sharp and
Samsung, both of which had new - generation TV sets. Samsung,
one of the leaders in fl at - screen TVs since 1999, came out in
2007 with a new - generation light - emitting diode (LED) television,
the Luxia TV. The Luxia has an array of LED lights behind
the screen, resulting in superior contrast and brightness, a longer
screen life, lower power consumption, and a thinner housing
that is used to justify a 50 percent to 100 percent price premium.
In 2010 Sharp introduced what promised to be another