Squaring customer demands, brand strength, and production requirements: A case example of an integrated product and branding strategy

As part of a product management strategy, companies face the challenge of integrating customer needs on the one hand with company and production requirements on the other hand. While approaches exist that attempt to transform the 'voice of the customer' into the 'voice of the engineer', these invariably do not explicitly convey issues of brand management. Yet branding is of pivotal importance to the company as well as to the reception of its products and services by customers. Therefore, we propose an integrated approach to product and branding strategy by identifying important brand drivers, and identify a process of how such knowledge can be transformed into production requirements. Using a combination of brand performance approach and quality function deployment, we use a case study from the automotive industry to exemplify the applicability of this integrated approach. Specific focus is on the decisions needed during implementation with regard to use of analysis methods as part of the decision-making process of an integrated product and branding strategy.