Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance - Case Study Example

MEASURING AND INTERPRETING BRAND PERFOMANCE by (Name) The Name of the Class (Course) Professor (Tutor) The Name of the School (University) The City and State where it is located The Date Executive Summary Analysis of brand performance is an important yardstick used in the evaluation of a company in the market relative to its competitors. Successful brands improve their performance by ensuring that there is trust between their customers and the brand. Having this trust will result in a brand retaining it consumer base especially in markets where there are many competitors and whose products have little difference from one another. Therefore, it is crucial for marketers to come up with strategies that seek to reinforce the trust built and also appeal to new customers. In evaluating the success of a brand, analysts look at the brand’s awareness and salience. These two factors are often assumed to be the same. However, research has shown that indeed each has its own role to play in the success of a brand. Salience is the ability to recall a brand from top of mind memory. Brand salience is a good indicator of how successful the marketing of a brand is as well as it indicates the perception of a brand by consumers. Brand awareness is made possible by aggressive marketing and advertising strategies. Another aspect of marketing and brand performance is how a brand deals with a wide market. Successful brands choose a strategy that segments the market into smaller groups with the same characteristics in order to be able to deliver efficiently. Market segmentation is, therefore, an important aspect to consider in terms of improving a brand’s performance. MEASURING AND INTERPRETING BRAND PERFORMANCE Introduction In order for a company to be successful in the market, its brand needs to be well recognized and illicit a positive attitude from the market. The success of a business organization depends heavily on its branding and advertising, which, in turn, results in increased sales and higher revenue generated. Therefore, it is pertinent for any business to invest heavily in promoting its brand whilst ensuring that their products are the best in the market. Achieving this will guarantee business success. Successful brands are those that trigger something positive in the memory of the customer. For example, phrases such as ‘Just do it’ and ‘So much more’ by Nike and South Africa’s DSTV Multichoice respectively immediately identify their respective customers with the brand. These two companies have remained hugely successful due to the excelling performance of their brands. Another company that has remained a success since its inception is Weet-Bix, the Australian cereals company that remains the leading brand globally. This research paper looks at the Weet-bix brand, measuring its performance and looking at how it impacts the various age groups in the market. Brand Performance Brand performance is an important yardstick used in measuring the performance of a company. Whereas marketers will focus on sales to improve the revenue of the company, forging trust between a brand and its customers guarantees continued success. More than ever before, customers are now buying from those brands that they trust. Hence, customers build an emotional connection with a brand they trust. By so doing, they remain loyal to a particular brand for a long time. Trusted brands are known for their competence, efficacy and effectiveness in delivering their promise (Dawson, 2012). Trusted brands are also consistent in their delivery even when it is not going to deliver profits to the brand owners. Trust is also built on transparency on the part of the brand owners. Honesty, integrity and sincerity drives trust between the brand and its customers, especially when information shared is accurate. The fact that Weet-bix was voted the most trusted brand by Australia’s Reader’s Digest survey in 2013 goes to show how the company is viewed by the market. This level of trust improves the brand’s image, spreads the brand’s reach, and consolidates its position relative to its competitors. In measuring brand performance, the brand value chain is one of the major tools that are used. This tool assesses the sources and outcomes of brand equity as well as how the marketing strategies help build the brand’s value. A successful brand is able to operate in the market while incurring less operational costs that it is normally required to. This can be exemplified by reduced marketing costs due to the reach of the brand. Weet-bix, for example, due to its popularity does not have to spend a fortune to attract new customers and expand its market compared to other companies in the cereal making business have to spend. This is an indicator of a brand’s good performance in the market. Another component of brand quality is the perceived quality of its products. Successful brands are perceived to have unquestionably high quality products compared to its competitors (Aaker, 2013, p.45). This perception is more often than not a reality and can be seen clearly in the mobile phones industry where Apple enjoys majority of the market due to of its quality products. The same can be said of Weet-bix in the cereals industry where their high fibre cereals are the leading in that market Brand logos and their recognition by consumers is also a good indicator of how successful a brand is. Other visual elements associated by a brand also help to further a brand’s cause. Marketing strategies such as the use of famous national athletes in advertisements promoting Weet-bix has proved a success with the younger generation. This helps build the general brand performance and boosts sales driving up profits, which is an indicator of the brand’s equity. Brand Awareness For a brand to be considered successful, its awareness campaign needs to be aggressive to ensure its target market knows of its products. It is, therefore, a major goal of marketers to generate and maintain brand awareness especially in low involvement situations. Awareness drives up sales as customers are more comfortable buying that product from a brand they have heard of. It also gives a perceived influence with customers’ operation on the notion that, since they have heard of a certain product, it must be good. Repetitive advertising is used to maintain customers and ensure their products remain high on the consumers’ minds. Research has found out that a high brand awareness results in a high purchase intention from the consumers (Macdonald & Sharp, 2000, p.5). The Weet-bix brand has a successful brand because of the fact that it has a higher awareness than its competitors do. Majority of people who use breakfast cereal have heard of Weet-bix or Weetabix as it is known in the northern hemisphere. This level of awareness is of great benefit in terms of success of the brand since it contributes to the sales and profits of the brand. Improving brand awareness needs aggressive sales promotion, advertising and other marketing activities. The loyalty of consumers is reliant on the level of awareness a particular brand has, and it is directly proportional to the awareness. The recent increase in market share by the Korean cellular company, Samsung, is attributed increased brand awareness it has experienced in the last few years. Its marketing strategies have been immensely successful so much so that the brand has replaced Nokia as the market leader in most of the African continent, as well as gaining market share in the rest of the world (Aaker, 2013, p83). It is for this reason that Weet-bix recently decided to embark on a new strategy; using famous athletes from across all sports to attract new customers into its fold. Brand Salience Another aspect used in interpreting and measuring brand performance is brand salience. Brand salience is defined as the propensity of the brand to be noticed or come to mind in a buying situation (Sharp, 2008). Salience relies on the memories of consumers based on the brand in question. Salience looks at a number of cues sampled, as well as a sample of brand, unlike awareness, which only focuses on the name of product category associations (Sharp, 2008). Brand salience, however, has been overlooked or in some cases grouped with brand awareness as most marketers focus on evaluation as part of the buying process. On the contrary, brand salience should be considered as a stand-alone concept in marketing more so. This is because it is now coming into prominence as an outcome of advertising. Brand salience can best be witnessed in a supermarket where, for example, in the cereals section, despite there being a wide variety of cereals and brands, it often takes a short duration for a consumer to pick Weet-bix as their choice. The consumer is able to recall their favourite brand from the top of their mind and make a fast decision on what to pick based on that memory and the positive attitude towards it. That propensity to be thought of in a buying situation puts one brand above the rest as most consumers are always bombarded with different cues at once in a buying situation, and, as a result, they resort to that brand that pops up in their memory as opposed to vetting the various brands and choosing the best alternative. This retrieval from memory also gives the customer a sense of how much information they have about a particular brand. Hence, this increases the chances of it being chosen the next time round (Romaniuk, 2004, p 62). There is no one way of measuring brand salience as it has been observed that consumers use different cues at once or differently in purchasing situations. Some of these attributes used as cues include benefits, functional qualities and/or consumption situations. It is important, when measuring brand salience, to consider the competition rather than focusing singly on one brand. Only by doing so does a company know its position and the effects its competitor’s product has on his brand (Romaniuk, 2004, p.69). Demographics and Segmentation In order to penetrate effectively a market, marketers have to come up with strategies, which will prove successful in promoting a brand to the highest level. Marketers, therefore, divide the market into segments and device methods of tapping into the various segments to achieve the goal of acquiring customers. These segmentation groups the broad market into smaller groups of consumers whose demands and priorities are similar in nature. According to Sanner and Zekeriya (2013, p.5) a market segment is a subgroup of people or organization sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs whose purpose is to increase marketing efficiency by focusing marketing efforts to a particular group. Market segmentation enables a company to deliver products effectively to a smaller group of consumers and maintain their trust as opposed to mass production of products hoping it will satisfy all in the market. The smaller the group, the easier it is for a brand to satisfy it fully. Segmentation of the market into demographic segments also saves the company expenses and facilitates a lean production process. Age, gender, religion, education, social class, occupation and nationality are some of the different segments marketer can come up with when planning to push their products. For example, marketers dividing the market into segments based on gender work on the notion that different genders have different attitudes and behaviour. Therefore, they shape their marketing strategies to appeal to males and females differently. This strategy will enable a brand to attract both genders using different methods, but the end is to arrive at a common goal (Sanner and Zekeriya,72013, p.8). On the other hand, market segmentation can involve dividing up the market into segments based on age. It is perceived that different age groups have different needs and that one’s needs changes with changing times. Brands, therefore, strive to deliver different products that look to satisfy the different age groups. A good example is in the mobile phone industry where brands target the older generation because of their resistant to changing technology with landline phones whereas the younger generation tend to drift towards the trendy and more sophisticated mobile phones. This type of segmentation is also common in the food industry where there are different products for different age brackets. For example , Weet-bix came up with a brilliant idea of introducing Weet-bix kids and adult Weet-bix, which increased sales by splitting up the normal Weet-bix. As a result, families were forced to buy both products although the difference in the new products was inconsequential. Conclusion In conclusion, brand performance depends on several factors: brand awareness, salience, demographic and awareness. Hence, it is important for a brand to evaluate and measure the level of performance in the market and come up with strategies to improve the brand and attract more customers. Brand awareness and salience are important for the success of any brand as consumers are more likely to purchase from a well-known brand without necessarily it being the best brand in terms of quality. References Aaker, D., 2013. What is brand equity and why is it valuable? New York, NY: The Free Press Dawson, T., 2012. How brands build trust [Online] Available at: http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2012/11/how-brands-build-trust.html#.U5PXcXJi7zI [1 Jun. 2014] Macdonald, E. K. & Sharp, B. M., 2000. Brand awareness effects on consumer decision making for a common, repeat ourchase product: a replication. Journal of Business Research, Issue, 48, pp. 5-15. Romaniuk, J., 2004. Conceptualizing and measuring brand salience. New York, NY:Sage Publications. Sanner, A. & Zekeriya, N., 2013. Demographic segmentation and its effects on customer satisfaction. International Journal of Contemporary Business Studies, 4(2), pp 3-9 Sharp, B., 2008. How to measure brand salience, [online]. Available at: http://byronsharp.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/how-to-measure-brand-salience/ [7 Jun. 2014] Read More