Seven: Brand Value
In order to be meaningful and persistent, a brand can only promote qualities that are authentic. If the promises are not delivered upon, the brand loses credibility and ceases to function as a brand. A dishonest brand does not attract and retain customers, but repels them.
But at the same time, brand is about perception: you can be completely honest about yourself and others will tell legends about you. This is inevitable, and people generally distinguish between the things a brand says about itself and things that others say about it - they blame the brand if its self-professed qualities do not hold true, but are more forgiving when some legendary quality turns out to be a fiction.
Qualities of Brand
There's a brief passage in which the author attempt to communicate that the qualities or values of a brand are more than its functional benefit.
The core benefit is delivered by the product, and is expected of any brand of product. So functional benefits are not specific to any given brand and generally do not create any consumer loyalty. Customers expect milk to be potable, and the fact that a given brand of milk is edible is not specific to that particular brand.
The ancillary benefits are also qualities of the product, and while not all brands have the same ancillary qualities, neither are they unique to a given brand. A given brand of milk may be low-fat, an additional quality to which some customers attach value, but again it is not the brand but the product that delivers this quality.
The emotional value, however, is often unique to a brand: buying a brand of milk that comes from a company that claims to be humane to its livestock makes customers feel important, like they are contributing to society. This has nothing to do with the product, and everything to do with the brand. (EN: It's also not unique to a brand, as multiple brands may claim to have the same practices and offer the same emotional benefit.)
The conditional value is the value that using a given brand has in different circumstances. Customers place a great deal of importance on the brands that they are observed to use - so being seen to consume a given brand is important when they drink from a container in a public place or are heard to order a specific brand or when the package is seen in their home by guests - but if they are consuming in a condition in which brand is not visible (drinking from a glass in a restaurant) they are not concerned about the brand. (EN: This has nothing to do with the brand itself.)
The novelty value applies in conditions where a person is using a brand with which they are not familiar in order to satisfy their curiosity. Aside of testing the functional and ancillary benefits, they are experimenting and are more interested in the outcome of the experiment (a novel experience) than the benefits derived from using the product.
(EN: This section has been pretty sloppy and random. It's worth considering that customers are interested in more than functional benefits, but the author's coverage has been superficial and it is not likely to be comprehensive. The basic message is there, but the detail is underdeveloped.)
Value and Consistency
Brand is about consistency. The value of a brand, from the very beginning, was that it indicated to customers what they could expect of a specific product from a specific vendor. Later, when brand began to accrue other qualities, customers were attracted to the brand because they expected those qualities to be delivered.
So the value of a traditional brand is that it delivers the same quality, experience after experience, year after year, decade after decade. Brands that advertise they have been in business for a hundred years communicate a long history of consistent quality. Consistency with expectations is critical.
Human beliefs are based on consistency. When two things occur at the same time, we believe it to be coincidence and attach no special value to the correlation. But when two things occur at the same time, over and over, we create an association and expect the two to be correlated.
This is as true of brands as everyday experiences: a brand must be consistent to be meaningful. There cannot be the sense that what the customer gets the next time will be different from what they got the last time. Any change causes the customer to question the correlation, and to doubt that the brand has the qualities they expect - and for that doubt to become more generalized. If it packaging is different, there must be other things that are different about the product it contains.
Whenever a brand changes, it takes some time to adjust: customers are displeased when anything is different, and need to be reassured that the qualities they value about the brand have remained the same. Or when an unpopular brand changes, they must then convince customers who were disappointed in the past that things are now different and they should give the brand a second chance.
There's a bit of a diversion about inessential qualities: companies assume they know why customers buy their brand and are indifferent to any other aspect. But the concept of a brand, or any object, is the sensory stimulation. The customer cares not only about the taste of a food product, but it's scent and visual appearance as well - change any one thing, even an inessential quality, and customers cannot refrain from reconstructing their conception of the brand.
So in that sense, consistency itself is a value: knowing what to expect of a brand means that the customer doesn't have to reevaluate it each time they purchase. This reduces the effort (cost) of buying, and ensures that the benefit-to-cost ratio remains favorable to the brand.
What is Unimportant?
The author mentions the original Ford Model-T, which was available only in one color. It was assume that the color of the vehicle was an unimportant quality that customers didn't care about. Looking at the panorama of different colors in which cars are available today, it's clear that, while the paint has nothing to do with the core benefits, it is important to customers. A vehicle must be fashionable, as a declaration of the personality of the driver, in addition to serving as a mode of transportation.
In a world of commoditized products, where virtually any brand has the same functional value as any other, differentiation is based on characteristics that might be considered unimportant, and even those that have nothing to do with the product itself (the esteem of ownership is entirely separate from the product's actual properties).