Harvard Business Review: “Where traditional brands focus on positioning their brands in the minds of their customers, digital brands focus on positioning their brands in the lives of their customers. Furthermore, they engage customers more as users than as buyers, shifting their investments from pre-purchase promotion and sales to post-purchase renewal and advocacy.”
“Purchase brands focus on creating demand to buy the product, while usage brands focus on creating demand for the use of the product … Purchase brands emphasize promotion; usage brands emphasize advocacy … Purchase brands worry about what they say to customers; usage brands worry about what customers say to each other … Purchase brands try to shape what people think about the brand along the path to purchase; usage brands influence how people experience the brand at every touchpoint.”
“The simple view would be that traditional brands are purchase brands and digital brands are usage brands. But there are exceptions, including brands like Visa, FedEx, Lego, and Costco, which exhibit many of the characteristics of usage brands … They think of customers less as one-time buyers and more as users or members with an ongoing relationship … Purchase brands focus on the ‘moments of truth’ that happen before the transaction, such as researching, shopping, and buying the product. By contrast, usage brands focus on the moments of truth that happen after the transaction, whether in delivery, service, education, or sharing.”