Boston Market and Big Mac under the same roof. Do you think this is a good idea? My intuition says no. Logically, two brands, one store, one lot, twice the traffic, means more money. Then my intuition kicks back in.
I live in a small town. We have one of those co-branded KFC/Taco Bell/Conoco/TCBY stores and I don't like it. It doesn't feel like anything. Since we have no "real" Taco Bell, I'll go there if that's what someone else suggests, but I rarely suggest it. It feels wrong. It feels like nothing.
What will McBoston feel like? I'm not sure. Of course, McDonald's hasn't felt like the McDonalds of my childhood for a long time. What do you think?
CHICAGO (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. is planning to open a Boston Market chicken restaurant under the same roof as one of its namesake hamburger outlets in its first test of co-branding, the company said on Friday.
Is it "too much there there" or "no there there"?
Posted by: Peter Davidson | June 16, 2004 at 12:12 PM
You're absolutely right. It seems like the classical Michael E. Porter effect of being "stuck in the middle".
Even when his theory was already proven wrong for couple of times, specially in brand management it still finds its best friend.
Being one thing AND also the other (maybe even a third thing) - know I remember thsi post from Jennifer Rice about focusing in the message - the customer doesn't understand anymore, what the whole thing stands for. Therefore he/she will choose something else, something simplier and more secure.
Like a lot of people are discussing now about which half of the brain makes the decision (or what ever), in this case it means, that for not being clear, you make the customer uncomfortable which leads more than everything else to bad/swammy feelings which leads again to a negative decision.
Posted by: Arnold Seefeld | June 04, 2004 at 02:19 PM