Building meaningful consumer brand-relationships in a platform economy

Abstract

Building a relationship between brands and people is a concept that has been around for a while. It is a way for marketers to raise brand equity and favourably increase customer engagement, brand differentiation and customer loyalty. However, the way customers interact with brands and how brands themselves Crete value is changing. Digital platforms have established themselves as digital mediator between customers and brands. Within a platform economy, value is not merely created by the product or services made by the brand, but the network of participants creates it on the platform. Incorporating this changing economy into brand strategy is vital as 75% of the time, only one platform prevails. The exploration within the field of brand relationships and platform business strategy holds great value to maintain a competitive brand positioning. The thesis aims to answer the following question; How can the use of new insights and knowledge contribute to creating meaningful customer brand relationships within a future platform economy in the Dutch market? The project is done in collaboration with PwC’s Experience Center. At their Experience Center, they help their clients create innovative product and service offerings with the focus on creating a great customer experience. The exploration of this topic will allow them to be better equipped for upcoming client needs regarding the development of new experiences that help their clients form meaningful relationships with their customer. Through a literature review, a basic understanding is created of the topics of brand-consumer relationships and platform business model, which aims to establish the domain for future exploration. Through desk research and expert interviews, 176 insights were gathered. Through clustering and a generative session with design students, 12 clusters were identified. These ultimately led to 4 future scenario’s. Through further analysis, one future scenario was chosen for further exploration with the following vision. The interaction between the platform, consumer, and brand should work like a robust ecosystem where all stakeholders live in a symbiotic relationship, each serving their purpose and bringing value to the ecosystem. This led to the creation of the following 6 design principles aimed to enhance the brand experience for brands operating in a platform economy. (1) Relationships are not built overnight. (2) Collaborate or die (3) No such thing as a virtual hug (4) Branding is 99% emotion. (5) Doing good for society is doing good for branding. (6) Actually, start to listen. These design principles serve to guide the Experience Consulting team and other strategic designers in the creation of new products and services while deepening the relationship with the customer.