Evidence concerning the importance of perceived brand differentiation

The credibility and vibrancy of any discipline depends on a willingness to question even the most strongly held beliefs. Our research challenges the central importance of differentiation to brand strategy. We provide an empirically grounded theoretical argument that differentiation plays a more limited role in brand competition than the orthodox literature assumes. We then present empirical data, spanning many categories and two countries, showing that there is a low level of perceived differentiation across competing brands. However, despite this lack of perceived differentiation, customers are still buying these brands. This leads us to question the importance of perceived and valued differentiation and to instead place distinctiveness at the centre of brand strategy - where a brand builds unique associations that simply make it more easily identifiable. We discuss the very positive implications for marketing management and call for research on being distinctive and getting noticed.