Marketing Strategy Of Non Competitive Brand Strategy Alliance

The definition of strategic alliances is very different now.

At present, there are two most representative views.

One view is that strategic alliances consist of powerful or normally competitive companies or partnerships and competitive alliances.

This view emphasizes that strategic alliances are cooperation between competitive companies with large scale strength.

Another point of view, as Michael Porter thinks, is that the alliance is beyond normal.

Strategic alliances can be divided into competitive alliances and non competitive alliances based on potential conflicts of cooperative enterprises.

Competitive alliances mean that enterprises may become competitors in the market, such as the alliance of similar enterprises.

The most fundamental characteristic of traditional strategic alliance lies in that it is a competitive cooperative organization, and the potential conflict between cooperation and competition has become the core obstacle of strategic alliance.

However, in recent years, Non- competitive Strategic Alliance, which shares resources and avoids competition, has begun to appear and has been innovatively developed and applied.

The formation of a new form of non competitive alliances is a non competitive brand strategic alliance.

In April 23, 2009, the champion alliance of China's Pan home industry, announced in the Great Hall of the people, is a typical innovation case.

Innovation of non competitive brand strategic alliances

1., create a brand new alliance.

The traditional strategic alliance enterprises cooperate on the basis of maintaining their own brand independence, but can not create an alliance brand.

For example, WAL-MART's supply and marketing alliance, IBM's alliance with suppliers, Microsoft's alliance with Intel, or Lenovo's alliance with Coca-Cola, Erie and Lenovo during the Olympic Games.

These cooperative alliances either exist upstream or downstream supply relationships, or use a market opportunity to convey common aspirations, but they will not create a brand new alliance brand for the alliance alone.

Non competitive brand strategic alliances, partner enterprises are often not in the same industry and equal status, they create an alliance brand for the common strategic alliance, and rapidly enhance the visibility and influence of the member brand in the whole industry through alliance brand.

In this way, the members of the alliance have also innovatively exploited and utilized the brand resources of their partners in the use of brand and market resources.

Although it comes from different industries, alliance members can refine the core elements of partner brand, and combine their own characteristics and advantages of the brand in an innovative way to fit together and form a resultant force in market promotion, bringing the market effect that can not be achieved by relying solely on their own brands.

Take the current China Pan home industry strategic alliance champion league as an example.

One of the biggest differences between the Champions League and other domestic alliances is that it has created a brand new strategic alliance.

It is a non competitive brand alliance in the pan household industry, and formed a complete brand image at the beginning of its establishment.

The champion league designed the standard brand visual identity, and publicized it with a unified alliance image.

This enables each home brand to enhance its brand position in the consumer's mind by borrowing the brand size effect of the alliance and the popularity and reputation of the partner brand in the consumer's mind.

2. third party organization operation management.

There are many organizational forms of strategic alliances, including joint ventures, technology research and development alliances, product alliances, and marketing alliances. However, the mode of operation is generally the establishment of the docking project department.

After a contract is reached between the two parties on a project, the two parties will set up a separate project department for each project.

Such a form of operation has great disadvantages.

First, there is a quantitative restriction of alliance.

Such a mode of operation management applies only to less members of the alliance.

Secondly, communication costs are high and decision-making efficiency is low.

If there are as many as four or five members in the alliance, a unified agreement must be reached between every two member enterprises on a certain matter, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the time span of decision making and delays in the best decision timing, resulting in a sharp rise in the opportunity cost of decision making.

In addition, if an enterprise leader controls the alliance, the other alliance members will not cooperate or make difficulties in major decisions in order to strive for equality of status, resulting in the dissolution of the alliance.

The non competitive brand alliances are organized by the third party organization outside the joint project department.

At present, the champion league's non competitive brand alliance's specific operation is to select a brand member elected the champion league's secretary general and a member brand to be responsible for the championship alliance's financial management, these two alliance organizations are all in rotation for one year.

At the same time, the third party advertising consulting company should be entrusted to carry out the specific management and operation of the alliance, and be responsible for the implementation of the alliance brand promotion, alliance terminal promotion and other activities.

A number of alliance activities planned by the third parties each year are jointly executed by a member brand and third party advertising consulting companies.

Alliance brand is a contractual organization without capital cooperation, and its members are in an equal position, and there is no possibility of a single member brand being in the position of leadership control.

The operation of the third party organization eliminates the shortcomings of the alliance's lack of leadership and avoids the single enterprise's control of the leading alliance. At the same time, it also solves the disadvantages of high communication cost and low decision-making efficiency.

3., the unity of strategic objectives.

The formation of non competitive brand alliances is to strengthen the competitive advantage of enterprises in order to obtain new resources, so the goal of alliance enterprises is very clear.

The essence of its strategic goal is joint marketing and brand marketing. The specific alliance operations are mostly joint member sales channels for joint sales and brand promotion.

For example, in the two years of the "Champions League", the main operation of the "champion alliance" is also the promotion of brand image and terminal marketing.

In the promotion of brand image, the "national designer Salon", "China Japan Japan and South Korea designer contest", participate in the Boao real estate forum, the introduction of green home Handbook and other activities.

In the terminal marketing, there will be a large sales promotion activity featuring "100 cities, 1000 stores, 100 million yuan Shenghui", "very 5 plus 1", "thousands of cities and thousands of shops and thousands of rituals", "hundred regiments war" and "champion group buying happiness".

There is no cross between technical knowledge and supply relationship among members of non competitive brand alliances. The goal of alliance is to share the alliance members and tangible market resources and intangible brand resources of alliance brands, so as to expand the sales and brand impact of their products, and make greater use of existing resources without increasing costs.

The operation of non competitive brand strategic alliances emphasizes the importance of cooperation, that is, we must participate together to get the value-added effect of resource input.

Therefore, the non competitive brand alliance exists as a consortium on specific cooperation projects, and the goal is easily unified.

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4., the number of members of the alliance innovation.

In theory, strategic alliances refer to two or more than two enterprises with certain advantages in order to achieve their strategic goals in a certain period, while maintaining their independence, and form long-term and dynamic consortium through equity participation or cooperation agreements, so as to achieve the purpose of resource mutual compensation, risk sharing and benefit sharing.

But in practice, most alliances are cooperated by 2 brands.

This is in order to facilitate the operation of the alliance. Deep level is due to the lack of a unified alliance brand management.

Non competitive brand strategic alliances, without competition among members, are in an equal position and have a brand new brand alliance. This form of cooperation can break through the bottleneck of the number of alliance members.

At the same time, the non competitive brand strategic alliance is composed of multiple members, which can form the scale effect of the brand.

5., avoid learning competition among members.

The traditional upstream and downstream supply relationships or strategic alliance for reducing risks are members of an industry that share common knowledge and technology base. For this reason, both sides will try to learn the core technology and knowledge of each other to achieve the goal of pcending or competing.

Partners in non competitive brand alliances come from different industries, and products and services are quite different.

This leads to a great difference in the knowledge base they rely on, and the core capability of a partner firm is not needed by another partner enterprise.

Among the members of the Champions League, Optima belongs to the furniture cabinet industry. The nature concentrates on the floor, the thunder belongs to the luminaire, the Vanward belongs to the gas appliance category, Dongpeng belongs to the ceramic industry, the core competence and the knowledge base of each enterprise's development depend on each other very much, and the trade barrier is higher, the parties do not want to enter the other side industry, so one side has no motive for learning the other party's core competence and knowledge.

Therefore, the non competitive brand alliances can avoid the fact that enterprises in the traditional alliance want to absorb and learn the core competencies and knowledge of alliance partners on the one hand. On the other hand, they are reluctant to reveal their core competencies and knowledge to the other side.

Challenge of non competitive brand strategy alliance

1. coordination of operational management.

Brand promotion projects are more difficult to integrate.

As a non competitive alliance, its brand belongs to different industries.

It will be more difficult to choose brand promotion methods and public relations activities that are suitable for many different industries.

For example, the brand promotion campaign of the champion league - "national designer Salon" is not very compatible with some members of the alliance.

Multi brand collaborative communication barriers are difficult to eliminate.

The management mode of the third party organization for specific management and operation can save management cost to a large extent, but this mode of operation can not completely solve the problem of coordination and communication between multiple brands.

Third party organizations need to be recognized by a number of alliance members for each specific alliance activity. In this process, every member brand needs to communicate through many times.

In this way, the time cost of communication operation is very high, which leads to the challenge of the operation coordination of the whole alliance.

2. the profit balance of alliance brand members.

First of all, there is a risk of "picking up sesame and losing watermelon" on brand income.

One of the strategic objectives of alliance strategy of non competitive brand strategy is to enhance the brand image and status of each member with the help of alliance brand, so as to achieve the purpose of brand marketing.

The non competitive brand strategy alliance has a brand new alliance brand, and each member brand will be the sub brand of the alliance brand by consumers.

When the alliance brand is used as a whole for brand promotion, consumers can easily remember the alliance brand, but they will forget the brand members of the alliance.

Second, alliance brand members' income is not balanced.

Alliance profit refers to the degree of realization of the expected strategic objectives of each strategic alliance.

The formation of strategic alliances is planned and designed from a strategic height, in order to improve long-term business environment and operating conditions, occupy and develop a certain market and maintain competitive advantage for a long time.

Therefore, the stability of the alliance should be based on the "win win" of the members of the alliance, rather than "some wins and some shortages". But the fact is that the joint marketing and joint brand promotion activities of the alliance can not match all the members' brands because of the combination of different industries.

3. strategic change affects alliance stability.

Non competitive strategic alliances, cooperative enterprises are often not in the same industry, and there is no upstream and downstream relationship in the traditional supply chain. Therefore, the essence of the cooperative strategic objectives of the alliance is joint marketing and brand marketing. Such cooperation determines that all parties in the alliance will not have high expectations for the long-term development of the alliance, nor will they plan for the long-term development strategy of the alliance.

Moreover, the development strategy of different enterprises or leaders in different periods is not necessarily consistent.

The alliance itself is a dynamic and open system. It is a dynamic form of organization. When the opportunity arises, when the coalition parties gather together to fight and lose opportunities, the alliance parties will go all the way, which brings great uncertainty to the coordination and control of the alliance.

The non competitive brand strategic alliance is internally non competitive. The alliance members have low risks in the process of alliance and there is no conflict in resource utilization, so their alliance structure has a very stable character.

This innovative cooperation can be embodied in brand building and marketing, as well as in the development and design of new products.

This new form of alliance provides a new way of thinking for enterprises to integrate external resources and strengthen their competitive advantages in the process of development, and has broad application prospects.

At the same time, we should also note that there are some developmental obstacles in the application of non competitive brand strategic alliances, which should be perfected in practice.