The Value of Dependability in Marketing

The value of dependability means consistent in performance or behavior; financially sound; reliable.

Marketing Questions:

• What kinds of discussions occur on your team when mistakes happen? Is there finger pointing, or a thorough analysis to find the root cause(s) and determine how to prevent it from happening again?
• Who has the responsibility in your organization to ensure consistency of the brand experience?
• Is your business boring yet highly profitable? How can you turn your financial strength into a brand advantage?
• Are your offerings so reliable it’s affecting repeat sales? Before you consider the slippery slope of planned obsolescence, what if you built out this platform with ancillary products that leveraged the dependability of your core offering?
• What are you doing to improve or enhance your reputation of dependability next year? (P.S. Your competitors are already working on their plan!)

The Brand Power of Dependability

The auto industry has long evaluated and ranked vehicles for their dependability. For some consumers, it is the one value that will determine which vehicle they purchase.  The 2013 U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study is expected out soon and it will be interesting to see what has changed.

Last year, 25 of the 32 auto brands showed improvement in dependability. Impressive.

Why does this report matter? According to J.D. Power and Associates:

“The Vehicle Dependability Study is used extensively by vehicle manufactures worldwide to help design and build better vehicles—which typically translates to higher resale values and higher customer loyalty. It also helps consumers make more-informed choices for both new- and used-vehicle purchases.”

Clearly the value of dependability is a differentiating value for auto manufacturers. Therefore, as long as consumers continue to care about this value, we can expect to see continued improvements in vehicle dependability.

 

How can the value of dependability help you create competitive advantage?

 

Today’s value was selected from the “Fairness-Respect” category, based on the e-book Developing Your Differentiating Values.