Brand Differentiation
A brand outperforming rivals on one or more features so that customers become less sensitive to its other features.
What it is
Byron Sharp and John Dawes saw it as appearing mainly through distribution and awareness, occasionally design, with functional differences at brand level less common because competitors match them (Journal of Marketing Management, 2001). On this site it is read alongside Perceived Differentiation and Points of Parity and Difference.
In effect
Set beside the entry-point view in the article's two-sided section.
What it does not say
It is not the same thing as Perceived Differentiation, which sits close to it on this site but describes a different part of how people decide. It also does not say that the finding reaches every product, buyer or setting; where this page goes beyond the cited research, the step is an inference and is labelled as one.
Sources
- The author of [[How Brands Grow]], and the person who turned [[Andrew Ehrenberg]]'s research programme into a prescription that marketing departments actually read.
- Position as the book states it, at page ix. Professor Byron Sharp, Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University of South Australia. The Contributors page says he has published over one hundred academic papers, sits on the editorial boards of five journals, recently co-hosted a conference at the Wharton Business School on the laws of advertising, and co-edited the 2009 special issue of the Journal of Advertising Research on laws of advertising with Professor Jerry Wind. The book does not say what his degrees are or where he took them.
- From the public record, which fills that gap. Born in New Zealand.