Consumer Behaviour - Nescafe Brand - Essay Example

? Nescafe brand is owned by Nestle. The brand is worth 13 billion dollars. An estimated of 94 billion cups of Nescafecoffee are sold annually all over the world with 3000 cups sold every second. The Nescafe brand is most valuable in the coffee rank. This brand has improved over the years to become one of the best coffees. Nescafe word is a combination of nestle and cafe in Portuguese which means coffee. Its brand color is red which serves to show the drink’s energy. The brand name is a stimulus in itself because consumers in the U. K have already found a cultural identity. Consumer behavior gives an insight to consumer psychology towards a product and in this case, Nescafe coffee brand. Consumer concentrates of what consumers feel, reason, think about Nescafe compared to its competitors and how they are influenced by the environment in U.K. the limitations and decisions of consumers about Nescafe are controlled by the information they have. Consumer behavior in response to marketing strategy gives answers to why a consumer prefers Nescafe or why not, when they purchase Nescafe and how they purchase it. The most important concept in consumer behavior is why consumers prefer Nescafe and which marketing stimuli they respond most to. Nescafe offers the best coffee at low prices contrary to beliefs that quality is expensive. This is emphasized in the following Nescafe advertisement. The consumer behavior concepts that influence consumer decisions are cognitive, affective and behavioral responses that are determined by Nescafe’s marketing stimuli. Cognitive responses are influenced by the Nescafe advertisements that persuade a consumer to use the product. Nescafe advertisements trigger cognitive responses in a consumer’s brain which makes the consumer have appositive attitude about Nescafe. Advertisements influence cognitive responses in a big way because people mostly use mental images of advertisements when they are making purchases. Affective mix is evaluative and includes intentions, feelings, preferences and judgments whether favorable or unfavorable. Affective response focuses on Attitude as the main concept. Affective response towards Nescafe is affected by past experience as well as information. This information organizes beliefs and perceptions about Nescafe that are in the consumer’s mind and manipulates their decision. Marketing mix does a lot in product evaluation. Affective response depicts feelings whether positive or negative. Affective disposition is dynamic and a tendency to respond. Nescafe’s marketing mix affects buyer’s attitudes in making a choice about purchasing Nescafe. The attributes of Nescafe are determined by the marketing mix. Behavioral response to Nescafe marketing stimuli focuses on purchase behavior of the consumers. Marketing stimuli like advertisements play a role in affecting mannerisms towards purchase of products. The marketing mix elements of any company develop over years for any company’s product. It gives a clear picture of the company’s position in the market and what more there could be to offer. It studies the market effectively and gives the company an advantageous position. The marketing strategy used by the company gets to be scrutinized regularly. A strong marketing mix plan assists the company’s management to ask relevant questions like why, what if, how, where and who for the company’s strategy use. This mix helps in giving meaning to marketing elements so as effectively position the company’s offer. The marketing mix model is used to plan and roll out a new venture and in evaluation of an existing offer. The general purpose of the mix is to maximize the impact of the company’s product in the market. Consumer behavior gets influenced by the marketing mix stimuli. The marketing mix stimuli serves to have an effect on the consumer’s psychology of feeling, emotion and helps them select among alternatives. Some elements of the marketing mix stimuli help in consumer knowledge, motivation as well as decision strategies. The product’s marketing mix elements are used to improve the customer’s perception about the product and in this case, Nescafe. Consumer behavior influences marketing strategy and manipulation of the marketing mix elements (Solomon et al, 2006). Following the alternatives evaluation, the individual then makes purchase decision. After consumption, there is the post purchase evaluation of the product which involves evaluating if the product fully satisfied them or not. In this decision process, it is essential for one to note that there are a number of reasons for the steps that consumers will take before making the purchase of Nescafe. To understand the steps, it is critical to conduct consumer analysis. Consumer analysis has three main components, consumer affective and cognition and behavioral elements (Foxall et al 2005) Consumer psychology is the understanding of how individuals, as well as groups, involve themselves in consumer activities. It is also about how consumer processes affect consumers. Consumer cognition is the belief or thoughts than an individual has about a product. It is the state of mind structure about a product. In this case, it would refer to the thoughts a person has about Nescafe. Cognitive model of consumer choice of Nescafe, they assume rationality. The decision is based on beliefs about substitutes which are examined and contrasted. When the company produces the product for acceptance in the market, the cognitive decision making is attained by giving information that directs the consumer to have a preference or rebuff alternatives. Nescafe marketing stimuli affects buyer responses in terms of product choice, brand choice, retail choice, purchase timing, purchase amount and purchase frequency. Consumer affective responses refer to favorable or unfavorable responses that contrast in strength. In general affect involve to emotions like anger, love, feelings of dissatisfaction like frustrations etc. consumer affective and cognitive helps in developing adequate information on marketing stimuli like products and advertising. It helps in helping the company identify how to choose the best product from alternatives. It evaluates how consumers memory has an effect on the decision making process. The question of how the environment, as well as behavior influence consumer cognitive and affective, gets to be answered. Consumer cognitive and affective responses enable the consumer to interpret information on marketing stimuli like advertising and how marketing strategies used by the company have an influence on consumers’ affective and cognitive reactions. Consumer behavior is particularly critical to study because only through its understanding can there be profits made because of having a proper understanding of the consumer (Evans M. et al 2010). Nescafe brand focuses on its marketing mix in the effort to provide the best services that meet the customers’ requirements and needs. In its product mix, branding and packaging have been emphasized to the extent that the brand and the package remain the most conspicuous among the competitors. For its branding, Nescafe knows that a sturdy and attractive brand name goes a long way to ensure a customer that the product is safe for consumption, has been able to comply with all requirements and boast of high quality standards. Nescafe is one of the most prominent brands in the entire world. Nescafe is one of the world’s most accepted coffee brands. It is available in a number of different tastes for example, the Nescafe classic to Greenblend. All its brands offer different benefits and have different tastes that the customers search. The Nescafe brand has gained its popularity mainly because it has been in the market for an extraordinarily long time, 1938. The brand has been evolving over the years to contain more natural aroma and quality. Its excellence in aroma, flavor, convenience, quality and natural goodness serves to influence consumer cognitive and affective responses. It influences consumer cognitive response because it most people have knowledge about this product developed from experience from it s consumption over the years. This brand has been in the market for a long time; hence have an experience once or more of this product. Nescafe packaging prides in winning several awards due to its outstanding packaging designs that have given it a competitive advantage. Some of the awards include the Silver Star, Best Packaging Innovation leading a significant reduction in household waste etc. There package is attractive to the market, this is a strategy that they have remained to use to attract and maintain customers. Nestle boasts of a revolutionary packaging that it been a ground breaking design that had not been in the market before. This design attracted many customers because of its uniquenesss. Nestles promotion methods are popular in the market and their advertisements remain as one of the most striking in all media. This has always created a compelling picture in the mind of consumers and potential market. Nescafe has been promoted through personal selling, advertising, and the internet being the most recent strategy. Nescafe brand is promoted through personal selling in UK areas that are geographically concentrated. These are areas that have large markets. It includes door to door techniques and telemarketing. Nestle also gives sales promotion like giving every day eating coupons codes as well as discounts for customers who shop on Nescafe. The point of purchase display for Nescafe includes the display shelf on the supermarket, supermarket shelf advertising and floor displays, outdoor advertising LCD displays etc. These points of display for the products show act to catch the eye of the customer once they enter into a retail shop for shopping. They try to influence product purchase from a consumer. Customers always have innate preferences for products like coffee, but advertising will trigger the need to gain information about Nescafe and even try it to see if it matches their needs. Nescafe is known to have one of the most eye catching colors with an impressive package that would attract customers to it. The aesthetic stimuli of an impressive point of purchase display trigger cognitive and affective responses of the consumer because they serve to evoke emotion or feeling of the customers toward Nescafe. These displays point has an effect on consumer behavior. They draw consumer interest and motivate them to find out more about the product. The mystery and clarity of these displays contributes to the customer’s perception of the product. Nescafe always have always had a way to evoke emotion and feeling, cognitive and affective responses from customers and potential clients. Their displays are pimped with color and always have a way of evoking aesthetic response. A customer gets to feel that they would love to try the Nescafe coffee. The coherence, complexity and legibility influence a person’s preference about a product. The stronger the factors are the stronger their influence on customers. Customer response is likely to be positive if the point of purchase display has worked its magic of positively reinforcing the product’s message. The Nescafe brand popularity explains its publicity, which the company, does through interviews of Nestle’s managers. Nescafe brand gets publicized in new product launches and annual sales reports. These promotion methods affect cognitive, affective and behavioral responses in that they alter a customers’ way of thinking about the Nescafe product and end up purchasing it for trial. Promotion leads to making the consumer believe that Nescafe is the better product and led to change of behavior. Their perceptions get altered by the advertisements such that they get motivated to try the product. Advertising gets to motivate purchase intent of any product. This happens mostly in cases of sales promotion and offers techniques. The price is considered an odd marketing mix because it is the revenue earner. Nescafe has been priced in accordance with the market segments needs in UK, purchasing timing, delivery frequencies, and services contacts among other factors. According to David Jobber the price of any product is dependent on 3 main factors, cost, market and competitor. Nescafe has been priced according to the competitor prices disregarding other factors. In this case, Nestle prices are favorable compared to the competitors. For example, Nescafe Gold Blend Freeze Dried instant retails at 6.11 while Kenco Really Smooth Freeze Dried is at 6.39. Nescafe Alta Rica Freeze Dried Instant Coffee 100g is sold at 3.99 while its competitors like Italian Coffee Multiserve are sold at 5.49 and Douwe Egbert’s Pure Gold Freeze Dried is sold at 6.58. As seen, Nescafe has put its prices at lower than its competitors. This would not necessarily mean that their quality is inferior, but it serves to show that they mind about the customers and provide the same product at slightly the same or lower prices. In addition, Nestle is an innovative company, and it wants to recover its costs from the prices it charges. Nescafe ads have an emotional appeal on consumers. The packaging style in the U.K appeals to the customer with a “just for you” appeals for individualistic consumers. The ads convince consumers that Nescafe is of better value than competitors like Starbucks. Nescafe offers quality coffee at a lower price compared to that of competitors. Price influences the purchase decision in the decision process. Price makes customers hold different perspectives about a product. Price is a stimulus for behavior in that it is used as a screening tool for elimination of alternatives. Consumer behavior gets influenced by price patterns. Prices affect the cognitive response in that it triggers pre-existing thoughts about price, influences, elaborate and incorporates the price information. Affective response is the triggered by cognitive process whereby the customer gets to experience the feeling that either prompts them to perform an action or rebuffs them. High prices effect on a customer depends on their social class. The low and middle income earners will rebuff high Nescafe prices terming it as expensive while the high income earners will see it as a sign of quality of the product. High prices will negatively influence the affective response of low and middle income earners because their cognitive makes them believe that high prices are not favorable for them. Their belief is that they can only be able to take Nescafe at a lower price. This behavioral response can be attributed to experience and their normal behavior on Nescafe consumption. For the high income earners, their affective response about Nescafe will drive them to believe that high price Nescafe means higher quality than the rest. Their cognitive response is driven by beliefs of pricing on products. In turn, their behavioral responses get influenced by the feelings and beliefs on Nescafe prices. In summary, the price of a product contains different meanings to different people. There are those who shun high priced products regardless of the price, and there are the consumers who prefer high priced products considering them high priced. For this reason, has a line of brands that serve to meet the needs and expectations of its consumers in the market. Both high and low end customers. Nestle place strategy of the covers channels of distribution, coverage, locations, transportation of the product, inventory and logistics. Nestle uses the consumer marketing channel which is used to connect Nescafe product form the producer to the product. Wholesalers and retailers are used to reach customers. In addition, Nescafe is e-marketed to enable it reach its consumers from the producer directly. The distribution channels that are used by Nestle to distribute Nescafe across UK is determined by degree of control wanted, channel flexibility, distribution costs and distribution costs needed. UK is an intense market and therefore, there a maximum number of retailers used to distribute the product. Nescafe is available in a number of retail shops all over UK. In addition, Nescafe brand has an e-shop that promotes Nescafe and other of Nestles brands online. In the UK, the distribution network is so intense that u would not miss Nescafe in leading and minor retail outlets all over the UK. The wide distribution eases access of the product to the consumers. Nestle has controlled compound pallet tons for the whole of UK. The wide delivery channels make Nescafe available to all its customers wherever they are. Ease of access of Nescafe increases its consumption because consumers will use the product that is easily available at the stores they visit. Cognitive and affective response is highly dependent on the presence and availability of a product. Information accessibility of a product intensifies the strong feeling a customer has about a product. This marketing strategy raises the chances of a consumer buying Nescafe. Accessibility increases positive affect. Place element of the Nescafe is one of the most fundamental aspects of the product because it ensures that the product reaches the customers. Without reaching them, how will the product reach and benefit the consumers as well as the company? In conclusion, Nescafe is a product that has been influenced by a number of the marketing mix influences. Theses influence then affect the decision making process of the consumer on Nescafe. Consumer behavior gets influenced by the marketing mix stimuli that the company uses. 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