Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance - Case Study Example

Measuring and Interpreting Brand Performance Name Institution Course Tutor Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1.0 Executive Summary 3 2.0 Brand Performance 4 2.1 Brand differences and patterns 4 2.2 Repertoire market and subscription market 4 3.0 Brand awareness and salience 5 3.1 Brand salience versus Brand attitude. 5 3.2 Brand salience and pattern in table 2 6 4.0 Demographics and segmentation 7 4.1 Customer profile to Mar Bar brand and competition 7 4.2 Implications of Mars Bar marketing strategy: 8 5.0 References 10 1.0 Executive Summary The report below is focused on Mar Bar brand against other brands of chocolate category and how the strategy that is recommended will be used to influence the survival of the brand in the current market. The report is divided into three sections namely the brand performance, brand awareness and salience and demographics and segmentation. The first section explains how different brands used the different patterns to survive in the market and the main focus is on Mar Bar brand. There is also the difference in repertoire and subscription market which is explained in details. The second section explores on the brand salience and brand attitude. Brand awareness is also emphasized and a recommendation given on the cues that the brand should change during advertisement while maintaining the brand salience and retrival of the memory on the brand in any buying situation. The last section gives a comparison the various demographic tables in respect to the performance of Mar Bar as compared to the others and the competition from other brands. A recommendation is given on how Mar Bar brand can use the theory of competition theory so as to segment the targeted market with a greater impact. 2.0 Brand Performance 2.1 Brand differences and patterns The performance of a product is closely related to its properties and it can be measured in relation to how it achieves its intended purpose (Imam Widodo). Table 1 indicates that among the five chocolate brands, Mars Bar is the market leader by 34 units followed by Kit Kat, which seems to be its close competitor. Mars Bar is also leading in market penetration and this could be attributed by its attractiveness in the eyes of consumers in terms of quality and price. The product does not seem to perform well in frequency purchase and it losses to its closest competitor Kit Kat. The Mars Bar chocolate has very high customer loyalty compared to other brands. However, it is affected by the Double Jeopardy principle since the rate at which customers buy the product is low compared to Nestle Gold. Nestle Gold seems to be a new product and therefore it attracts customers who are interested in searching for variety of brands to test their suitability. Mars Bar has created customer loyalty that is why it is performing well in the market. Powerful brand equity helps the company to attract and retain its customers, offer quality services to them and in return make more profits (Rajagopal 2007). Mars Bar shows consisted in all areas, and this is very encouraging to the company. In terms of category requirements, Kit Kat is closer to Mars Bar and when looking at the buying rate its above Mars Bar by 0.4 percent. This trend should be uncomfortable for Mars Bar, Kit Kat being its immediate competitor. The principle of natural monopoly is applicable is the performance of the five products, as observed in buying rate trend. Smaller brands like Nestle Gold, Twix and Snickers are bought frequently compared to strong brand like Mars Bar and Kit Kat. 2.2 Repertoire market and subscription market Markets that have a competitive repeat purchase are divided into two categories: repertoire markets and subscription markets. In the repertoire markets, the number of solely loyal buyers is less since their category needs are spread across various brands. This implies that they can shift from one brand to another without a lot of ease. On the other hand, in the subscription markets, there are very many buyers who are solely loyal and most of them assign their category requirements to a particular brand, and they are not willing to shift to other brands at any timeframe. This is a practical distinction and it is believed that no market could be in existence between the repertoire and subscription market extremes (Byron Sharp et al 2002). There would definitely be a difference in brand performance in both the repertoire market and subscription market due to variations in sole loyalty. In a repertoire market, brands which have low market penetration suffer most, especially where the double jeopardy pattern exists. This is because not only do less people purchase such products, but also their customers are not loyal. The trend is measured by the level of solely level buyers, category share requirements and the average purchase frequency, which is usually low compared to brands with high level of market penetration. However, in the subscription market, customers are associated with a single brand for a considerably long period of time and they will always want to allocate their category requirements to a single provider. In this case, such products have very high solely loyal customers, and the polygamous loyalty pattern manifested in the repertoire markets is non-existence. Examples of subscription markets are banking services, insurance services, medical services and utilities like the supply of gas and electricity. From the analysis of the two markets, Mars Bar operates in a subscription market. This is because its sole loyalty is very high implying that most customers are attached to the brand. The brand has also high share of category requirements and this explains why it has a dominant market share and more market penetration. 3.0 Brand awareness and salience 3.1 Brand salience versus Brand attitude. Brand salience has been historically well thought-out as brand in cases where the product sort is used to prompt reclamation commencing memory. It is reflected in the quality and quantity of information in people’s memory (Holden & Lutz 1992). Brand is the assortment of ideas, symbols and images representing any producer in an economic field. Brand attitude explains the reactions of people towards a product or a service, evaluating whether it satisfies the need of consumers and get an estimation of how much is required to answer their needs. This knowledge is of great importance in planning an institutions advertisements and performance. To better the understanding of a product is by conducting follow up questions by asking what the like paramount concerning the product. The same case applies to the consumers by telling about the uniqueness of the product and giving the advantages of it. Academic practitioners based on marketing have realized the significance of consumer’s attachment towards brands (Chaplin & John 2005). Measures are taken upon in both the attitude and salience. These measures have great effects on the profit assessment. This will be both internally and externally (Miller & Cioffi 2004). The measuring of the outcomes and manifestations of the brand in various terms for instance the marketing activity will by involving profiling consumer knowledge configuration. Marketers should focus on creating their own distinctive structures for memory rather than using the common ones that have been repeatedly used following consumer’s attitudes. This will be a chance to increase the salience of the brand. This will work out if only the number of consumers is increased hence a big challenge (Kevin 2007). 3.2 Brand salience and pattern in table 2 Brand salience is connected to how the brand is perceived and ultimately noticed by the user of the product when purchasing that particular product (Daye 2010).Mars Bar has emerged to be a strong brand as compared to the others and this means that it has a strong salience while Nestle Gold can be said to be a weak brand thus the weakest salience. The Mars Bar can be said to be the brand that stands out on the thoughts of the buyer and has created a top of mind awareness this meaning that the buyer will be in a position to recall the Mars Bar first as compared to Kit Kat, Snickers, Twix and Nestle Gold as the other brands that are competing in the market (Alba and Chattopadhyay 1986).However, the brand awareness is mainly achieved through advertising as it is when a customer will first think of Mars Bar as the favorite when he thinks of these products in this entire category. This shows that brand salience and brand awareness is used interchangeably so that Mars Bar brand is not only thought of by the customer but also remain at the top of the mind of the customer. The Snickers brand had brand salience meaning that recalling the brand also is a measure of the brand awareness. This shows that the customer does not only rely on the category of the product but also the link of the name of the product. The brand is at the average as compared to the others as well as appealing and maintaining the customer base amongst the other brands. As the different brands are compared, it shows that Snickers and Twix had same salience level and a close range in comparison on the brand awareness while Nestle was at the bottom has many customers still having the thought to buy the brand despite many not being aware of it. According to Romaniuk and Sharp (2004), the brand salience is built in the quality and the quantity of the memory structures of the buyers. The latter dictates that the cues enable the thought to consider the brand as first before anything else. It reflects that once the buyers have the brand in their memory, the more they will have the thought of it while in the buying process. The quality is dependable on the strength in terms of value and attributes of the brand. The brand salience is thus the maximum times the buyer will have the thought of the brand in the many times they are in buying situations of these brand. The brand recognition attempts to use advertisement to enhance the awareness in order to build brand salience. In the process, the memory is prompted to searching the brand and this is strengthened by the brand recall while the customer tries to look for feedback on the brand that in being advertised. Recalling gives the customer the ability to remember the product from the memory when given a cue (Keller 2003).Therefore brand awareness usually measures attributes associated with a brand and not necessarily category cues while only a wide variety of cues can measure the brand salience. This will then mean that the main cues that will be adjusted on the Mar Bar chocolate mainly on the logo of the chocolate brand, the packaging so as to make it more desirable. A more appealing colour of the brand can also be developed so as enhance retaining of the chocolate brand on the customers eyes from the advertisement. 4.0 Demographics and segmentation 4.1 Customer profile to Mar Bar brand and competition The demographic information from the three tables is divided into relationship status, household comes and gender. The table exhibit how the brands are consumed in various status in life, total house hold income and the last table is on gender. Demographic profile is the sufficient information that is given regarding a group of people and thus giving a picture of the general information supplied. The three tables thus give the demographic profiles on the basis of the three subsets. In table 3, there is a great competition on the customer profile of Mars Bar brand and it experienced high competition from Snickers brand which is consumed by a high number of divorced or separated people. This has been marked by a high deviation of 4.2 on the same group as compared to the rest and consequently leads to an average deviation of 2.8 which is still the highest average MAD. In table 4, the Mar Bar brand was consumed by those of total household income both in the category of less than $50,000 and that of $50,000-$70,000. The deviations from all the categories were high apart from the >$70,000 deviation that was the lowest in its category and thus a big difference as compared to its total. In table 5, Mar Bar brand recorded the highest performance from both genders. However, the other brands maintained a close range both in the deviations and in the average MAD. The female deviation recorded the lowest deviation but it maintained to emerge strong as reflected in the average MAD. This shows that the Mar Bar brand did not face a stiff competition from the other brands except from table 3 where snicker brand was highly preferred. 4.2 Implications of Mars Bar marketing strategy: According to Thomas (2004), market segmentation can be referred to the subdividing a market through determining its similarity and its commonality. As shown from the tables 3-5, it can be seen that all the brands were consumed by different people shown by their different relationship status, the total household income and the gender across the entire targeted market. Given the three tables, it is easy to analyze that except for the demographic table 3 which had no much difference in its deviation as compared to the average MAD. Table 4 made a big difference on its deviation of 5.5 to its average MAD of 2.6. Table 5 also made big difference in deviation from 4.0 to an average MAD of 1.6 thus this shows that Mar Bar brand did not penetrate the market well. Conclusively, it’s evident that Mars Bar brand was the most popular brand and it can be seen that this brand concentrated a large percentage of the entire population but it managed to penetrate a smaller segment of the market. I recommend the Mars Bar brand to understand the particular market segment which will be significant in achieving its financial performance. The strategy employed must be on market segmentation theory and thus must provide the criteria that will ultimately justify why the brand should specificically target the same segments but in a different way. 5.0 References Alba, J, W, & Chattopadhyay, A. (1986). Salience effects in brand recall, Journal of Marketing Research, 363-369. Brand Equity (2007), Prentice Hall India. Chaplin, Nguyen and Deborah Roedder John (2005), ‘’The Development of Self-Brand Connections in Children and Adolescents,’’ Journal of Consumer Research, 32(1),119–29. Derrick Daye, 2010, Brand Silence: Why It’s Important for Your Brand, Retrieved 2013 May 24 Holden, S.J.S. and Lutz, R.J. (1992) ‘Ask Not What the Brand Can Evoke; Ask What Can Evoke the Brand?’, in J. Sherry and B. Sternthal (eds) Advances in Consumer Research, pp.101–7, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research. Keller, K, L, (2003) strategic brand management 2nd edition, Pearson education Singapore Kevin Lane Keller, “Strategic Brand Management-Building, Measuring, and Managing Miller, A, & Cioffi, J, (2004). Measuring marketing effectiveness and value: The Unisys marketing dashboard. Journal of Advertising Research, (September), 237-243. Rajagopal, (2007), Brand Metrics: A Tool to measure Performance. Romaniuk, J, & Sharp, B, (2004). Conceptualizing and measuring brand salience. Marketing Theory, 4(4), 327-342. Sharp, B, Wright, M, & Goodhardt, G, (2002). Purchase Loyalty is Polarised into either< i> Repertoire or< i> Subscription Patterns. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 10(3), 7-20. Widodo, I, D, Subagyo, A, E, & Sugiyanto, (2008), Product Performance Measurement: A Simple and Integrated Model. Proceedings of the 9th Asian Pacific Industrial Engineering & Management Systems Conference. Read More