Many retailers with famous brands are turning their brands into umbrellas to offer an ever-increasing assortment of products from a wide range of independent retailers and distributors through their marketplace marketing programs. I suggest that this can prove to be very detrimental to their own brand.
A company’s most valuable asset is its brand. It is a promise to the customer of exactly what they should expect in terms of price, quality, service, and company values. The dominant retail brands were created by defining a specific market strategy or niche and then curating an assortment of products that best fulfilled the customer’s wants and needs. This curating process is a primary responsibility of the companies merchandising staff.
What should a brand represent to the customers? First, it represents competence in that the customers know that the retailer knows how to satisfy its target customers. Secondly, the brand is an assurance of dependability knowing that this retailer always delivers what is promises. Finally, and most important, successful brands emanates confidence that assures the customer that this retailer has their back. All these factors lead to a trust relationship. This trust relationship is based upon past shopping experiences, peer group recommendations and will be increasingly influenced by ESG issues [ Environmental, Social, and Governance]
The reality with the marketplace strategy is that there is a rush to out assort the other marketplace retailers resulting in offering quantity but not assuring quality. There is no way that the retailer representing this umbrella brand can scrutinize every product in terms of quality, assure the customer they are getting the right price, and knowing that the product was produced in a respectable workplace environment. In other words, it is inevitable that the brand will be sullied by failure to guarantee competence, dependability, and confidence for its customers.
It is the retailer who resist the temptation to get into the race for quantity of products and focuses on taking ownership and doing the correct due diligence as they curate the right products and the right price for their customers that will preserve and build its brand.