Is your supply chain performance part of your branding?

Editor’s Note: Norman Katz, president of supply chain consultancy Katzscan Inc., writes a monthly column for Supply Chain Management Review. Katz’s column appears on the third Monday of each month.

Reflecting back on the commercials from Super Bowl LVIII, the memorable ones—notably, the ones that make us laugh—are really the ones that don’t have much or anything to do with the products that they are pitching but seem to just rather try and implant the brand in our brains.  As such, the ads are a success. These marketing campaigns are making a statement about the brands, capturing our attention and getting us talking about the advertisements.

In one humorous Super Bowl LVIII advertisement, a credit card company mentioned the fact that all of their customer support was based in the United States. Significant? Quite possibly, especially for people who are not getting quality customer support from their current credit card companies where it is outsourced. As readers of my writings know me for saying: In a commoditized world, execution is the new competitive edge.     

Another way—in my opinion—to make a statement about your brand is to highlight its supply chain capabilities. Brands, especially smaller ones that sell B2C (business-to-consumer), like to promote the regional and national retailers and grocers they sell through on their websites. And why not? It really is a big deal and are badges of recognition. And they help point consumers to where they can purchase their products since these brands don’t sell direct-to-consumer (D2C). 

But why not also highlight how well your brand is fulfilling consumer orders too? You can aggregate the supply chain vendor compliance metric key performance indicators provided by your retail or grocery partners and showcase them on your website. Highlighting your order fulfillment rate and order-to-ship times gives consumers insight and sets an expectation. You know: not everyone needs their stuff the same day or the next day. Honesty and transparency should be part of your branding too.

Consumers—and you and I are included—have a myriad of choices for so many of the products that we purchase and will purchase. Promoting the performance measures from your retail or grocery partners may just help to sway a consumer to purchase your product by building confidence in your company and its brand, especially if your competitors are not doing this. It’s a bit risky, I grant you that, and you’ll have to keep your supply chain performance bar high, but aside from keeping the chargebacks (financial penalties for non-performance) low, leveraging your metrics to build brand awareness makes the internal investments additionally worthwhile.

SC
MR