Radioshack Case Summary

Conclusions From analyzing RadioShack's brand struggle, a few important managerial lessons should be addressed: The importance of brand equity measurement, balancing new and old customer segments, and brand strategy alignment. Brand Equity Measurement: The main problem regarding RadioShack's 2014 new branding strategies (e.g. Fix it Stations, RadioShack Labs, focusing on its original brand identity) was not solely brand implementation. Essentially, RadioShack's marketing managers and top management failed to recognize problems with brand equity early on. The process of "Building-Implementing-Measuring" had not occurred, because the company rushed to implement new strategies without determining the brand equity, carrying the implicit assumption

RadioShack had fallen into the common trap of believing that "If we built it, customers will come", and this serious mistake prevented the brand from determining the large disparity between its identity and image. Originally, RadioShack's convenient and plentiful locations enabled high brand awareness during its time as a "hardware problem solver". Eventually, this high awareness did not translate to brand usage and evaluation because either (1) Former customers were disgruntled by unfulfilled brand promises, or (2) New customers were confused by conflicting subjective and objective brand associations-notably, what products RadioShack still sold, and what services they offered (e.g. phones or technology kits). Consequently, the brand ignored problems that customers were facing in the brand journey: Although RadioShack had lower brand awareness compared to competitors (e.g. Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart), this was not the main issue; customers abandoned the brand at the brand knowledge-liking-preference stages. If RadioShack's marketing managers conducted a thorough measurement of brand equity (prior to repositioning the brand towards complete mobile product-focus), the company may have been able to diagnose this