Brand Irritation

Are poor services irritating you? Is less and wrong information given about the products or services by the marketing people made you angry? If your answer is yes for both the questions and it affects negatively your next purchase decision in choosing that particular brand and its sister brand or sub-brand then the company is suffering from brand irritation. Brand irritation means a negative image created about a particular brand or company in the mind of a customer due to his/her bad experience with products or services or sales personnel behavior and it reflects his/her decision in not buying other product/services of the same company or brand under the umbrella.

After industrial revolution we have gained a lot of insights into business management. Present business model is based on the extensive research of the society and its needs. We have came across the various marketing strategies right from the Production concept, Sales concept, Marketing concept and a new concept of Co-creation. All these concepts have shown the paradigm shift from business owners' choice to customers' choice. Due to this paradigm shift and increasing competition we are not only talking about satisfaction of the customer but talking about the customer delight. On the practical ground most of the companies are not even able to satisfy the customers. Just recruiting bulk marketing personnel and push them aggressively to capture market may give you instant growth in numbers and market share but in long term always lead to hell. A leading financial group in India is the best example of the same.

During my stint with the same group as a sales person I experienced so many victims of aggressive sales, who are not at all satisfied with the services of home loan division, credit card division, life insurance division and banking division. This irritation with the brand ends my sales interaction with many customers on negative note. I met so many people who are not satisfied with the particular service of a particular service provider brand and afraid of taking product/service of its sister concern brand, because parent brand name is associated with it. It also leads to the negative publicity of the whole brand.

Factors lead to Brand Irritation:

• Poor services and poor product mix of the company
• Lack of knowledge of sales personnel about the products/services due to lack of proper training
• No customer care dept./ Outsourced customer care
• No or improper after sales service
• Mis selling/Hiding of important information/Misguidance
• Lack of commitment from the sales personnel

Brand irritation concept is based on my experience and study of service sector and specially financial sector, its impact on FMCG and other sectors is yet to be identify. I will be back with some more insights about Brand Irritation based on the intensive research.