ساختن اظهارات پیشنهاد ارزش برند: یک بررسی ادبی سیستماتیک Constructing brand value proposition statements: a systematic literature review

Introduction A well-articulated brand value proposition is one of the most widely used sales and marketing communication tools that enable buyers and sellers to create a shared understanding of the benefits of a brand. The importance of a strong brand value proposition in the sales process was first written about by Hanan (1970) in Consultative Selling and remains a fundamental part of this sales technique through eight editions of this popular book, grounded in what he termed the Profit Improvement Proposal. The brand value proposition was further conceptualized by McKinsey in the early 1980’s as ‘‘a decision and commitment to deliver a specific combination of resulting experiences, including a price, to a group of target customers, profitably and better than competition.’’ (Lanning 2000, p. 2). This practitioner-developed concept slowly entered the marketing scholarly literature in the 1990’s (Hughs and Chafin 1996; Maklan and Knox 1997) and has recently begun to finally receive attention from a wide number of international scholars (Anderson et al. 2006; Frow and Payne 2011; Payne and Frow 2014a, b). However, brand value proposition is barely mentioned in some of the most popular marketing textbooks (Kotler and Keller 2016; Armstrong and Kotler 2017). Moreover, to date, no systematic review has been conducted on the concept of communicating the brand value proposition in the marketing literature. The concept of the brand value proposition is essential in developing marketing plans. The fundamental domains of marketing strategy include the creation of marketing objectives, the selection of appropriate target market segments, the development of a brand value proposition that highlights the benefits of an offering to the customer, and the allocation of resources to deliver and communicate the value of offerings to the customer (Slater 1997). Indeed, the expression of the value proposition as a message is usually communicated via the web site. Over the years, the ubiquitous ‘‘About Us’’ page has served as the place for mission statements, biographies of founders, background information on the history of the organization, and perhaps its core values. It is an imperfect location for articulating the value proposition. A convenience sample of the top 25 financial planning firms in a large U.S. city uncovered a hodge-podge of approaches to clearly and concisely communicating the brand value proposition. Approximately 16 of the 24 had no identifiable brand value proposition. Most of their assertions were focused on the company itself, using page navigation such as ‘Our Company,’’ ‘‘Our Philosophy,’’ ‘‘Services,’’ ‘‘Who We Are,’’ or ‘‘Our team.’’ A few used ‘‘Our Mission,’’ yet mission is quite different from brand value proposition because it is an organizational construct that articulates why you are in business. A small minority of our sample had clear navigation that contained the value proposition. Navigation buttons such as ‘‘Our Pledge,’’ ‘‘Our Promise,’’ and ‘‘Our Commitment,’’ and ‘‘Why Choose Us’’ are much more customer-focused on the benefits of engaging with these firms.