What are brand variants and what are their benefits

Businesses strive to establish themselves and find growth in several ways. Once a brand has become famous, it can capitalize on its market position and popularity in several ways. when a company has found enough growth and achieved a sufficiently strong market position and brand image, it can offer a family of brands or several types of products under the same umbrella. Another effective strategy is to offer various variants of the brand. While this will enable the brand to target the preferences of various customer segments, it will also allow to retain loyal customers. Offering extra options to customers can also prove highly profitable given customer preferences can vary from one group to another.

What is a family of brands?

A family of brands generally means a group of different but related products sold by the same company. For example, automobile manufacturers like BMW or Volkswagen offer a large range of products including Sedans, SUVs, sports cars and bikes. Similarly, a personal care or beauty brand offers a large range of cosmetics, soaps and other beauty and personal care products. Brands seeking to expand their business size offer a family of brands. Often customers buy more products from a brand that they trust. They will buy more products from the family of brands, if they rely upon that particular company. The crucial thing for the businesses is to build trust and prove that their brands meet customer needs better compared to the other businesses.

What are brand variants?

Brand variants are different from a family of brands. A family of brands can include different types of products under the same umbrella. However, brand variants mean different variants of the same product. Such examples of variants are quite common across the automobile industry. Take the BMW brand for example. It offers an entire X series that includes a large range of variants of its BMW X brand. Examples of variants are also quite common in the food industry. Food brands offer different variants of the same product which may vary slightly based on calorie content, color, taste, and/or quality. Lays chips come in several variants that differ in terms of flavor but are offered at similar price level.

If you look around, you will easily come across examples of brand variants. For example, there is Unilever, a famous FMCG brand. It offers a vast family of brands including several iconic brands that are best sellers in their segment. Unilever’s products including the Dove beauty bar and the Axe deodorant come in several variants. In this way, Unilever caters to the needs of various different customer segments whose preferences or taste might vary a little. The core products is the same but offered in different variants.

What are the benefits of offering different brand variants?

There are several benefits of offering brand variants. Several of highly successful companies offer variants of their most successful products. Even the largest tech brand Apple offers several variants of its iPhone. What is the benefit of offering these variants? Brand variants of Apple’s iPhone are differentiated in terms of price. All the iPhone variants are not priced equally. The price difference between the lowest priced and highest priced variants is also quite remarkable.

The main benefits of offering brand variants include higher profits, larger market share, and increased brand loyalty. A larger number of variants often indicates that the product can meet the needs of diverse customer segments with diverse preferences. Many times, businesses are able to build upon the success and popularity of their core product and grow their profitability by offering variants. However, in most cases, the variants are priced equally or there is a small pricing difference.

In the cases, where the price difference is rather remarkable, companies can find customers gravitating towards the lower priced variants. It is still not the case always. You will find that if the higher priced variant is differentiated or offers superior features and quality, it will still find a large number of customers among the affluent class. Whether it is a higher priced variant of HP Envy or Apple’s iPhone, the case is still the same. Companies that are offering variants at different price levels will be able to attract customers successfully by offering superior features, quality and performance.

A few last words:

Brand variants are the variations of the core product that are differentiated in terms of quality, flavor, content or in other terms and sometimes including pricing. Companies offer brand variants building upon the popularity of the core product to satisfy the needs and preferences of different customer segments. Once a core product is highly popular and a business experiences increased demand in the market, it offers variants to attract more customers and to sustain the loyalty of existing customers. It helps improve sales and profitability. If people trust a business, they are also more likely to buy from its family of brands or try different variants of the same product.