Effectiveness of Carling Marketing Campaign - Coursework Example

? Effectiveness of Carling Marketing Campaign Executive Summary In this paper, the researcher will briefly discuss the market research proposal that would be used to analyze effectiveness of the advertising campaign that has been launched by Carling Beer. In the first section, the report has highlighted marketing challenges faced by Carling Beer and the existing significant business opportunities for them in UK alcoholic beverages industry. Defining key problems regarding measurement advertising effectiveness will be discussed in the second section. In the later sections, the study has summarized the justification behind selection of quantitative research mode and issues such as sampling techniques and data collection procedure. Calculation of market research project cost and project time schedule has also been incorporated in the paper. Table of Contents Introduction 4 Background Section 4 Part A- Marketing Environment of Carling 4 Part B- Theoretical Aspects 9 Problem definition and Research Objectives 10 Research Design 11 Costs and Timetable 13 “The issue of quantifying the returns to marketing activities in financial terms is one of the greatest challenges facing marketing and brand managers today” -Mizik and Jacobson (2008, p. 15) Introduction The above lines are not only mere scholarly phrase from two renowned research scholars but core essence of this piece of work. According to the above phrase of Mizik and Jacobson (2008), modern marketing managers face challenges regarding quantifying the outcome of marketing effort such as promotional campaign, advertising campaigns etc. Nias (2013) reported that Carling has launched ?10m campaign of “refreshingly perfect' strapline” on 1 June, 2013. Molson Coors Brewing Company (UK) Ltd is parent company behind the Carling brand (Carling, 2013a). In the next section, the researcher will shed light on background of the research problem in this piece of work. Background Section Carling has launched a new advertising campaign, which has budget estimation of ?10 million, and they have hired a professional market research agency in order to conduct consumer research regarding the effectiveness of the campaign. In the background section, the researcher will not only try to understand alcoholic beverages market of UK in order to understand competitive positioning of Carling but also try highlighting theoretical aspects like how advertising works/how advertising effectiveness is measured. Part A- Marketing Environment of Carling Major market for Carling is UK hence the study will analyze the marketing environment of Carling in context to overall market for alcoholic beverages of UK. Collis, Grayson and Johal (2010) reported that UK households spend ?15 billion/annum for consuming alcoholic beverages. Hence, total market size of alcoholic beverage industry of UK is ?15 billion. UK based consumers spend at least 15% to 18% of their total expenditure food and drink on alcoholic beverage consumption. Carling is known for their beer products while UK government has imposed tax duty in the range of ?5.09 to ?19.12/ hectolitre on beer products depending upon the extent of alcohol (HM Revenue & Customs, 2013). Collis, Grayson and Johal (2010) pointed out that price elasticity for Beer products lie in –0.25 to -1.00 which shows that beer is seen as substitute of alcohol by British customers and price plays significant role forecasting the demand for beer products. Price elasticity of beer products in UK for last 50 years can be depicted in the following manner. Figure 1: Price Elasticity of Beer in UK (Source: Collis, Grayson and Johal, 2010) It is evident from the above econometric estimation, demand for the beer decreases by two fold by one fold increase in price. As UK is still struggling with lag effect of previous economic recession and sovereign debt crisis, price of the beer products has significantly increased which negatively affected demand for beer products. Stagnant sales growth of UK alcoholic beverages industry can be depicted in the following manner; Figure 2: Alcoholic Beverages Industry Growth UK (Source: Anderson, Suhrcke, and Brookes, 2010)Such stagnant demand growth rate for alcoholic beverages is cause of concern not only Carling but also for other alcoholic beverage manufacturers. Figure 3: Alcoholic Beverages Market Share in EU (Source: Anderson, Suhrcke, and Brookes, 2010) UK is the second most important alcoholic beverage market in EU after Germany but demand for beer is pretty low in UK. In case of UK, demand for alcoholic products containing high level of spirit concentration exceeds the demand for beer which is perceived as mild alcoholic item (Collis, Grayson and Johal, 2010). Carling brand of Molson Coors Brewing Company faces competition from alcoholic beverage companies like Beverage Brands, Diageo, and Halewood International etc. Hastings (2010) reported that alcoholic beverage companies along with top 4 alcoholic beverage players, such as Molson Coors Brewing Company, Beverage Brands, Diageo, and Halewood International etc., spend ?800m per year on adverting in order to move ahead in the hypercompetitive market. Carling faces advertising challenge from alcoholic brands such as Lambrini, Sidekick, Smirnoff and WKD because, in UK, majority of population identify an alcoholic beverage company through the popular brand (Hastings, 2010). Hastings (2010) also reported that every alcoholic beverages companies in UK run at least 3 to 5 advertising campaign per year while in case of festive seasons such as Christmas and Halloween, frequency of advertisement increases. In such context, it will be challenging for Carling to create an advertising campaign which can help them to create distinctive brand image among consumers and also help to move ahead in the competition. Part B- Target Market for Carling Carling focuses mainly on beer segment which is generally perceived as light alcoholic drink among Britons and drinking beer and people of UK prefer to drink while watching TV, enjoying entertainment activities, attending sports events etc (Beer Academy, 2013). At present, there are almost 25 million beer drinkers exist in UK and out of which, almost 70% belong to the younger segment of the society. There are more than 3000 beer brands are available in UK while there are more 200,000 licensed premises exist in UK, where beer lovers can enjoy their drink (Beer Academy, 2013). Careful consideration of the marketing strategy of Carling reveals the fact that the alcoholic beverage giant targets two types of customers such as retail and institutional. UK based alcoholic beverages company spend ?38.2 million Sports and Music related sponsorship while Carling is also engaged in various sporting event and entertainment event sponsoring activities such as English FA Premier Football League, live music concert, Northern Ireland's IFA Premiership etc (Beer Academy, 2013). In case of institutional customers, Carling targets large retailer, pubs, bars and off-licence in order to sell their beer vending kit. Beer vending kit of Carling can be depicted in the following manner. Figure 4: Product Offering for Institutional Customer (Source: Carling, 2013b) Company website of Carling Targets advertises its wholesaling and supplying verticals to institutional Clients. For retail customers, advertisement of Carling generally targets younger section of the society. Figure 5: Clip of the Advertisement (Source: Nias, 2013) Collis, Grayson and Johal (2010) revealed the fact that college student, bachelors, young professionals, sportspersons; couples are major target market for beer companies like Carling. Carling also uses young fellow and youth icons in their advertisement in order to engage young beer drinkers of UK. Carling offers only those product portfolios such as spirits, lagers, ales and ciders which are pretty much popular among young section of UK (Carling, 2013b). Generally, young college students, professionals visit pubs, bars frequently hence by targeting institutional client; Carling easily reaches the younger population of UK. Part B- Theoretical Aspects Rawal (2013) stressed on AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) in order understand how advertising works/how advertising effectiveness is measured. Attention- designing the logo or tagline of the advertisement which can grab the attention of respondents, 2- Interest- offering benefits in the advertisement or using emotional statement in order to generate interest among viewers of the advertisement, 3-Desire- an advertisement should be designed in such a manner that can convert interest of viewer into a strong desire of purchase and 4- Action- advertisement should be able to convince customers to take the purchase decision or making them inquisitive to know more detail about product benefits and in many cases, advertisers use scientific proofs to encourage viewers of the advertisement to take requisite actions (Rawal, 2013). Implicational use of AIDA model can be depicted in the following manner: Create attention grabbing advertisement by designing eye-catching visuals or catchy audio notation. Relate the advertisement with personal aspects of the viewers or conduct survey in order to understand need of the customers and then address the need via advertisement. Advertisers should precisely specify benefits of using a particular product and services to customers through the advertisement in order to generate desire to purchase among viewers. Highlight the instant benefits of purchase such as sales discount, gift, and time limitation of particular offer in order to encourage customers to make purchase decision. Problem definition and Research Objectives It has been already mentioned that Carling has launched advertising campaign worth of ?10 million and the campaign was created by Creature which is advertising agency (Nias, 2013). The advertising was designed in synchronization with classic commercials of Carling such as "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label" which was broadcasted during 1980’s and 1990’s (Nias, 2013). In the latest advertisement, Carling brand focuses on the “refreshingly perfect" strap line which shows that the brand is trying not only to highlight refreshing drinking feeling of the beer but also trying to engage young customers with the perfect blend of Carling (Nias, 2013). While doing market research for understanding the effectiveness of above mentioned campaign of Carling, the researcher will use following research problem statement; To understand the appeal of the new advertising campaign of Carling among customers of UK in measurable manner and identify key elements of an advertisement which can increase engage level of customers. Specific problem indices for measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaign for Carling can be briefed in the way, 1- How many customers has seen the advertisement, 2- How many customers can recall the advertisement, 3- How many customers believe that advertisement synchronizes with their personality, 4- How many customers felt the urge for purchasing Carling beer after seeing the advertisement. Research Design The market researcher will use quantitative research in order to address pertinent research problems. Close-ended questionnaire survey will be used as a research instrument in order to collect primary data from respondents while secondary data will be collected from historical database of the client organization. Client organization (Carling in this case) will be requested to provide results of previous campaigns and also reports regarding financial variables associated with the newly made campaign. Such types of historical data will be used for conducting the secondary research and also understand the background of the newly broadcasted advertisement campaign. Close ended questionnaire would be designed with Likert scale, dichotomous scale, and multiple choice questions and there will be separate section for collecting demographic information of respondents. London will be the base location for research because London has maximum no. of beer pubs in comparison to other cities in UK, hence, probability of finding respondents will be greater while selecting London as research base (Beer Academy, 2013). A pre-test will be conducted in order to know which pubs in London are selling Carling beers and 10 pubs will be selected for study where maximum no. of beer drinkers visit. Disproportionate stratified sampling will be used as part of probability sampling in order to select respondents (remember, each pub do not possess same level of importance in terms of customer visit hence disproportionate stratification is needed). According to Beer Academy (2013), 25 million beer drinkers visit 200,000 licensed premises in UK hence using unitary method reveals the fact that each licensed premise has more or less 100 to 125 beer drinkers. Taking such assumption true, there will be 1000 to 1250 beer drinkers in 10 selected licensed premises in London. Hence sample size would 1,000 respondents. Design of the close ended questionnaire can be briefed in the following manner; Table 1: Design of Questionnaire Sections No. of Questions Nature of Questions Analytics Tool Demographic and Generic Data 5 Close ended multiple Choice and Dichotomous Descriptive Statistics (Mean, median, Variance, Standard deviation etc. Relational Matrix between consumer perception about the advertisement and effectiveness of the Advertisement 3 Likert Scale Questions Inferential statistics bases on correlation, hypothesis testing, logistic regression Personality-Advertising Effectiveness Congruency 3 Likert Scale and Dichotomous Scale Questions Multivariate analysis (MANOVA and MANCOVA) Important appealing factors in advertisement 3 Likert Scale Questions Principal Component Analysis (PCA) MS-Access will be used for storing the collected primary data and composite keys will be used in order to go by concepts of relational database management (RDBMS). Using the composite key will help the researcher to connect tables and maintain the security and integrity of data set. Data analysis and Reporting Predictive statistical model will be used in order to analyze the data. It is evident from the research works of Veloutsou and McAlonan (2012) that effectiveness of an advertising campaign depends on multiple factors such as whether the advertisement can signify personality of views, whether the advertisement address the need of customers etc. In such context, the researcher will use logistic regression model in order to predict relationship between pertinent research variables with dependent variable such as effectiveness of advertisement. Zaman, Rousseeuw and Orhan (2001) pointed out that researchers should calculate the residue statistics in order to address the heteroskedasticity problems. Hence, using the robust regression model will help to estimate variability in responses regarding advertising effectiveness. Factor analysis based on Eigen value concept will be done in order to indicate important factors that might influence effectiveness advertisement campaign. SPSS version 20 or Statistical Package for the Social Sciences will be used for data analysis. At the end of the research, the market research firm will produce a written report of the project and two copy of the report will be submitted to client Carling beers. Costs and Timetable The whole project will be of 3 months and calculation of the duration of the market research activities has been done on the basis of Critical Path Method (CPM) and Network Diagram concepts. The Market research project will be start on 2/9/2013 and closes on 29/11/2013 (Survey and research will be done from Monday to Friday in every week considering no other holidays). Following Gantt chart might be used to calculate time duration of the project. Table 2: Gantt chart Months September October November  Week Numbers  1 2 3 4 5  6 7 8  9 10 11 12 Activities       Conducting the pilot test to find research location       Designing the questionnaire and testing the validity of questionnaire through pilot test       Collecting data from respondents through sample survey       Preparing RDBMS model of the data       Analyzing data and comparing the result of data analysis with previous research results of advertisement campaign for the client       Preparing the final report and submitting the report to client       Table 3: Cost of the Project Activities Cost Street Interviewing (?30-?45)/respondent *1000= ?30,000 to ?45,000 Additional Cost ?10-?15/respondent*1000= ?10,000 to ?15,000 Recruitment Cost ?300/day*2*25= ?15,000 Historical data research: ?650 per day*6 Days= ?3,900 Data Analysis and final report preparation ?1000 per day*10 days=?10,000 Total Activity Cost ?68,900 to ?88,900 VAT @ 20% ?13,780 to ?17,780 Total Market Research Project Cost ?82,680 to ?1,06,680 [Note: Street interviewing model will used and ten recruits will conduct the respondent survey of 1000 people, 20 respondents will be surveyed by each recruit and there will be 2 recruits. Hence, 1000/2*20= 25 days will be needed for the survey] Key Researchers 2 market research executives will be appointed for conducting the survey (both having more than 5 years of experience in market research survey and having master’s degree in management). One DBMS programmer having more than 7 years of work experience in database management will handle data base related section. Data analysis will be done by group of three statistician having masters degree in statistics and more than 10 years of work experience. A separate market research team guided by research manager (having more than 10 years of work experience and successfully handled more than 30 research projects) while the research manager will report to senior market research manager who is having 15 years of market research experience and successfully handled more than 50 projects of renowned clients. Reference List Anderson, P., Suhrcke, M. and Brookes, C., 2010. An overview of the market for alcoholic beverages of potentially particular appeal to minors. Beer Academy., 2013. Beer Market UK. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Carling., 2013a. Contact Us. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Carling., 2013b. Would You Like to Sell Our Beer? [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Collis, J., Grayson, A. and Johal, S., 2010. Econometric Analysis of Alcohol Consumption in the UK. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Hastings, G., 2010. An Analysis of Internal Alcohol Industry Advertising Documents. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. HM Revenue & Customs., 2013. Alcohol Duty. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Mizik, N. and Jacobson, R., 2008. The Financial Value Impact of Perceptual Brand Attributes. Journal of Marketing Research, XLV (February), pp. 15-32. Nias, S., 2013. Carling launches ?10m campaign with 'refreshingly perfect' strapline. [online] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Rawal, P., 2013. AIDA Marketing Communication Model: Stimulating a purchase decision in the minds of the consumers through a linear progression of steps. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 29 August 2013]. Veloutsou, C. and McAlonan, A., 2012. Loyalty and or disloyalty to a search engine: The case of young Millenials. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29 (2), pp. 125-135. Zaman, A., Rousseeuw, P. J. and Orhan, M., 2001. Econometric applications of high breakdown robust regression techniques. Economics Letters, 71(1), pp. 1-8. Read More