Real Estate Case Study: Security Captical Pacific Trust

Real Estate Case Study: Security Captical Pacific Trust

1. The lack of branding in SCPT?

There are several reasons that explain the traditional lack of branding in the real estate industry. One of the most important reasons is that the real estate industry has been seen as a commodity business for hundreds of years; the main focus was on the property ' and so the product was considered as a tangible aspect only ' not about the customer. E.g. SCPT did not even know who its customers were (Fournier & Thorp, 2001). There was almost no information on their key customer segments, the key drivers of customer choice, preference and satisfaction. Also, branding is seen as a natural process, what assumes extra attention to branding is not necessary. Besides, because competitors neither focus on branding, and organizations tend to imitate each other (Levitt & March, 1988), branding seems less important. Hence, real estate businesses can be seen as financial organizations, in which it is difficult to come up with a look and a feeling. These are essential to position a brand and to create a certain brand image in the consumer’s mind. Moreover, this look and feeling are needed to create a clear brand identity and purpose in the employee’s mind. By mainly focusing on the tangible aspect itself, the unique selling points (USP’s) can be communicated clearly, while the emotional selling points (ESP’s) are often forgotten. For the creation of a branding strategy, these ESP’s are most important (De Pelsmacker et al., 2004). With the addition of emotional aspects, the consumer will get a certain feeling or emotion towards the brand and its products, while with the use of USP’s only, this goal of setting a certain brand image will be almos...

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.... To realize this, SCPT should focus on the relationship and level of personal identification their customers have with the brand. When SCPT has realized this, their customers are willing to invest time, energy, money, or other resources into the brand (Keller, 2001).

References

Fornier, S. & Thorp, S. (2001) “Security Capital Pacific Trust: A Case for Branding.” Harvard Business School: pp. 1-30.

Keller (1999) “Brand Mantras: Rationale, Criteria and Examples,” Journal of Marketing Management, 15: pp. 43-51.

Keller (2001) “Building Customer-Based Brand Equity”, Marketing Management, 10: pp. 15-19.

Levitt, B., March, J.G., (1988). “Organization Learning”, Annual Review of Sociology, 14: pp. 319-340.

Pelsmacker De, P., Geuens, M. & Van den Bergh, J. (2004) “A European Perspective”. Journal of Marketing Communications . Pearson Education Limited, pp. 185.