The lovemarks

Branding has 3 categories.

The first is search brand, like FMCGs, which customers don’t care about the brand, they just buy it and consume it.

The second is experience brand, which a positive physical or psychological experience is necessary for repurchase.

The third is credence brand, which a high level of trust is necessary, that’s what we called the love marks.

As we know, ice-watch is a very young brand, which is become popular these years. People buy it, and gain a good experience about the brand, then they may purchase again or suggest others to buy it. So it’s an experience brand.

But for swatch, it’s definitely belongs to a credence brand, it becomes famous for a long time. As an entrance level brand of the Swatch Group, those luxury watch brands that can gives value to this entrance level brand. The value transfer can make this entrance brand more famous and gain lots of reputation that made customers highly trust it.

For example, after we proposed two watches to the customers and don’t tell them the brand, maybe they can be attracted by the outlook of the ice-watch in the first sight, but after show them what the brand is, most customers will choose swatch as their first choice. Even they don’t know that much the brand, but they know a “Swiss Made” watch can be more trusted. And also we can see that we let people to name 5 entry level watch brands, almost everyone mentioned the Swatch. The brand Swatch has already involved in peoples life.

And for the potential problem for the ice-watch. This brand never told customers where these watches are made from, and the price is averagely higher than Swatch. But when someday people knows that the ice-watch are made in china, does their customers still want to pay more to get “made in china” watch than a “Swiss Made” watch belongs to a luxury group? For a sustainable development thinking, I think ice-watch should take care of this issue and prevent it to become a crisis.

By: Haojun WU