MSG Team's other articles

11389 Store Design and Layout – Different Floor Plans and Layouts

Opening a retail store is no joke and requires meticulous planning and detailed knowledge. Location Make sure your store is in a prime location and is easily accessible to the end-users. Do not open a store at a secluded place. Floor Plan The retailer must plan out each and everything well, the location of the […]

11273 Signage – Meaning and its Role in Retail Industry

What is a Signage? Any visual representation which gives information to the customers about a store, any office, building, street, park and so on is called a signage. Signage helps the customers to easily reach their desired destination or locate a building by simply following the instructions displayed on it. Role of Signage in Retail […]

12593 B2B Exchanges Evolved Over Time

We are all familiar with the online buying on the internet. In fact with most people in developed countries, ordering groceries, online shopping as well as payment of utility bills and online banking has become a part of life. Internet we can say is a virtual global market. There are several types of businesses that […]

9946 Innovation and Product Management

Innovation is the name of the game as far as companies in the 21st century are concerned. To compete effectively in the marketplace of this decade, companies need to either innovate or perish. Hence, innovation is the latest buzzword among the corporates. The innovation cycle as applied to product management consists of three stages: The […]

10905 Why Some Firms Do Not Do Strategic Planning

Many firms do not engage in strategic planning and some firms do strategic planning that is poor and ill conceived. Some of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs in these firms are listed below: The first and foremost reason for poor strategy is the lack of experience in strategic management which is due […]

Search with tags

  • No tags available.

Often, people get confused with the concepts of brand management versus product management. They tend to think that both are the same since they deal with a specific product being marketed and hence managed from incubation to sales. However, there are crucial differences in the way product managers and brand managers operate. For instance, brand management is all about creating a mind space for the product whereas product management is concerned with features and specifications as well.

Further, brand management is often done in consumer product companies that have more products and product lines and hence the overall emphasis on the brand image is more. On the other hand, product managers operate in environments where they have to take care of a single product and hence bringing it to the market is their brief and so they tend to concentrate on the big picture.

Moreover, brand management is associated with consumer product companies whereas product management is associated with software companies. This is because consumer product companies need a top of the mind recall for their products and brands since they mass market them.

In other words, consumer product companies reach out to a larger audience and wider customer base whereas software companies typically have lesser numbers of customers to contend with. Further, brand managers have to “sell” the product by creating an overall image for the brand that consists of creating a value proposition based on the perceived value that the product or the brand offers. Product managers on the other hand (in software companies) have to concentrate on the value proposition that features and technology deliver.

Apart from these differences, brand managers have to plan for brand obsolescence which means that they need to bring in newer products to keep the product line replenished. Product managers on the other hand need to concentrate on upgrades and versions of the same product instead of trying to launch an entirely different product.

There is also the aspect of the lengthy product lifecycle from conceptualizing to bringing to market in case of software products whereas brand managers typically deal with shorter lifecycles. This makes the task of a brand manager harder in some cases where the urgency is more whereas the product manager has some more time.

In other cases, the brand manager can relax after the product launch since sales drive the brand management rather than the marketing and branding exercises that would have been completed by then.

Product managers on the other hand have to be edge after the rollout since they have to be on the lookout for glitches and bugs in the software that might derail the project the delay the customer experience.

In conclusion, brand management is more about perception and the perceived value whereas product management is more about tangible and measurable value propositions. This is expressed in the customer satisfaction surveys where brand users of consumer products rate the brand according to the perceived levels of satisfaction whereas product users in software rate the product according to the specific and measurable benefits that it brings to them.

Finally, brand management is a high stakes game because brands fail at an alarming rate and any consumer company with some seed capital can enter the market. In the case of software products, the products are launched only when the companies have deep pockets and can stay the course. Of course, the dotcom boom and the subsequent bust was all about software companies trying to market themselves like brands and the reason for the bust was that they forgot the basic rules of product management. More on this in later articles.

Article Written by

MSG Team

An insightful writer passionate about sharing expertise, trends, and tips, dedicated to inspiring and informing readers through engaging and thoughtful content.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Challenges in New Product Development

MSG Team

Post Product Launch

MSG Team

The Value of a Product Manager for Companies

MSG Team