Payless, Trader Joe's Break Away from Other Retail Brands

(MoneyWatch)  What retail brands are making an impression on consumers today?

According to the Breakaway Brands study, the two most prominent are Payless ShoeSource and Trader Joe's.

Landor Associates, a strategic brand consulting and design firm, placed Payless in the number six slot on the Breakaway Brands list and Trader Joe's in number 10. All names on the list have enjoyed steady, quantitative growth in their impact, which Landor weighed by analyzing brands exhibiting the greatest increase in strength from 2005 to 2008 in Young & Rubicam Brands' BrandAsset Valuator, an ongoing, consumer-based study. Each, Landor stated, can attribute its increased strength to an acute ability to perceive, capitalize on and even create trends while remaining true to a core brand promise.

Payless has strengthened its brand in the consumer mind by "democratizing fashion," Susan Nelson, Landor's executive director, told Bnet. Payless enhanced its appeal across consumer segments while remaining affordable. And, keeping its value orientation intact, it has upgraded store environments and introduced more fashionable lines and accessories. In doing so, she said, it has become the shoe store equivalent of the fast-fashion retailers like H&M and Target. Or their superior. After all, neither of them made the list.

Trader Joe's applies the control it exerts over its uniquely presented, private-label oriented retail brand, Nelson said, to enliven customer shopping visits. The retailer creates and maintains an atmosphere that provides harried consumers with an enjoyable but quickly accomplished shopping trip at prices that relieve rather than elevate stress.

Trader Joe's stores are able to establish a clearly defined identity by doing a better job executing on strategies that make them unique, Nelson said, noting:

It really is the experience. It's an advantage retail brands have over national brands. They have more power over their customers because customers are walking into a home, the retailer's home. [Trader Joe's stores] have unusual products mixed with things you need to buy, and they've been good at keeping the price/value relationship right. It gladdens the soul a bit.

Which may be a reason Trader Joe's has able to keep growing in tough times.

Excluding Payless and Trader Joe's, the Breakaway Brands list, delivered in order, begins with an occasional retailer, Apple and continues with Google, Haagen-Dazs, Hallmark, National Geographic TV, PayPal, Special K and Super Bowl.