Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

278 BRAND RELEVANCE
Delivering an offering consistently against expectations
over time often requires organizational commitment, assets, and
competencies that can be signifi cant barriers. IKEA’s design
and sourcing capabilities are crucial in their ability to deliver to
expectations.
Execution needs to be supported by the right culture and
values because they provide the motivation to deliver over time.
Zappos with its Wow! experience focus and Muji with its culture
and vision both inspire the organization to maintain its executional
excellence.
The details of making a new product or delivering a new
service may be known, but that does not mean that they can
be duplicated. Nordstrom created a service offering and brand
around its ability to deliver a high level of customer service in
its department stores. Its success prompted others to pursue a
doomed effort to copy. Competitors were missing or defi cient on
one or more key elements of the strategy such as the commission
reward system, people who were trained to roam the whole store
with clients, a staff empowered to deal with customer issues
(the one rule at Nordstrom about dealing with customers is that
there are no rules), a culture and values that put customer satisfaction
fi rst, and a heritage of stories about how customers were
delighted. The classic story about how a customer got a refund
for a used tire even though Nordstrom ’ s did not sell tires may
not be true, but it makes the point that it takes a special kind of
organization to operate the Nordstrom ’ s way.
Scale of Operation
A fi rst - mover advantage can generate an early market share
position. The market share leaders will enjoy scale advantages.
All fi xed costs, such as those pertaining to plant, systems,
staff, advertising, promotion, and sponsorships, will be spread
over a larger sales base. The result can be a decidedly lower
cost structure, the cumulative effect of which builds over time.
Scale can also trigger an experience effect: as an organization