Kit Kat and Mars Bars Brand Performance - Case Study Example

BUYER AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR REPORT Executive Summary After collecting data, categorizing the data into various tables makes it easier to study and provide an overall summary of the findings. When it comes to brand performance metrics, Kit Kat is performing above average and above the competition with an exception being in the category buying rate which falls slightly below the expected average. This means that consumers are purchasing a lesser amount of Kit Kat bars than expected. This category buying rate in return affects the sole loyalty that Kit Kat gets to enjoy since lesser people are purchasing the brand. Looking into the awareness and salience metrics, Kit Kat needs to improve on its brand salience. This is because it has a slightly above average salience which is not good for the market. For a brand to be considered as a strong brand, it has to have a high salience level. This is something that Kit Kat should aim to establish for its brand. On the demographics and segmentations, the tables reveal that Kit Kat is not a bad performer when it comes to this aspect though there needs to be a slight improvement in their marketing strategy so that it can performer higher than the average. In general, Kit Kat should not compare itself only to the competition average provided. It should also compare its performance with that of its biggest competitor in the market and that is the Mars Bars. This means that it should benchmark its performance with Mars Bars so that it can come up with better marketing strategies that will increase brand awareness and salience. This in return will increase the brand’s sales in the market. Section 1: Brand performance Mars Bars is clearly the largest competitor in the market followed closely by Kit Kat then Snickers, Twix then Nestle Gold. According to the data, Kit Kat is up against Mars Bars since its performance is better than all the rest. Mars Bars is way above average compared to the competition in the market and the also to its competitors. Kit Kat is also above average compared to the competition in the market. Knickers brand is almost at per with the competition levels in the market though it is performing lower than the first two brands. When it comes to Twix and Nestle Gold they are performing poorly compared to the competition average level provided and the other brands. This means that they should look for better marketing strategies to improve on their sales and also on their market salience. Kit Kat does not perform as expected on the brand performance metrics. Being the second highest competitor it does not have such a great difference with the largest competitor. When it comes to average purchase frequency there is a noted tie with Mars Bar. In the category buying rate, it is actually at a higher position compared to Mars Bars. As for the share category requirements there is a slight variation in the two. These figures imply that Kit Kat is not fairing badly with the competitor but yet again we see that it does not enjoy a great market share. Further, within its own market share, it lacks a large number of loyal customers which means that it is losing its customers to the other competing brands. The category buying rate of Kit Kat is lower than that of Twix brand. This should not be a big threat to the Marketing Director of Kit Kat since Kit Kat has a higher sole loyalty level compared to Twix which has zero loyalty. This indicates that it is easy for Twix consumers to make use of other brands and so Kit Kat should find means and ways of attracting these consumers and maintaining them. This means that with further improvement of the loyalty of their products, their category buying rate will improve since the loyalty will also improve. The product Kit Kat is operating in a repertoire kind of a market. This is because as seen in the figures, the brand does not get to enjoy 100% loyalty from its customers but rather it tends to enjoy polygamous loyalty. The sole loyalty that they are receiving is very low compared to the market share that they have and also compared to their biggest competitor the Mars bar which has the greatest market share and the greatest sole loyalty level. There are several differences that arise between a repertoire type of a market and a subscription type of a market when it comes to brand performance metrics. For starters, a brand in the subscription market will enjoy a 100% loyalty and the managers in this market will tend to focus on correcting any defects of their products since they have little to worry about the customers ceasing to purchase their products. The managers also focus on looking for ways to make the loyal customers buy other products that they are selling in the market. This will not be a difficult task considering the level of loyalty to the already existing products. The managers will also look for the factor contributing to the loyalty and try to induce it to other buyers in the market. When it comes to the repertoire market, the brand tends to enjoy polygamous loyalty. The managers in this sort of market tend to focus on increasing the brand loyalty. This means that they focus on the share of category requirements in a bid to increase loyalty of their product. In the process of focusing on the loyalty aspect, they easily fail to detect the defects in their products. A good strategy that can be instilled by Kit Kat brand in order to grow the sales level, is to concentrate on the heavy buyers of the brand. This can be beneficial since the heavy buyers tend to make a high margin order then disappear (Class notes). This is good for the brand’s sales level since they tend to buy large numbers that would not have been realized with the light buyers who purchase the brand few times and over a period of time. It is also noted that the light buyers are indeed sensitive to price changes and if the prices shoot up, they will tend to abandon the brand and go for the alternatives that are offering their products at a cheaper price. Section 2: Awareness and Salience Brand salience is the extent in which a certain brand is thought about or even noticed by a customer when he/she is in the process of purchasing things. A brand that has a high salience can be categorized as a strong brand. A brand that has a low salience or no salience at all tends to be categorized as a weak brand. If no consumer thinks about your product or even remembers your product at the moment of purchasing, chances of your brand ever getting noticed are very slim. On the other hand, top of mind awareness is a totally different concept when it comes to brands. Top of mind awareness simply means which brands comes to the consumer’s mind when he/she is asked to name brands that fall within a certain category of brands. The difference that arises between the two is that while in top of mind awareness the product is only linked to the memory, brand salience is further linked to other important memory structures and there is the mindfulness of the product during the buying situation. According to Romaniuk and Sharp (2004, p. 2) brand salience is all about the quantity and the quality of the memory structures’ network that the purchaser holds about the brand. In their own words (2004, p.8) brand attitude can be defined as “a lasting evaluation that can act as a mental reminder to act.” Brand attitude does not have a strong influence on the future behavior of a consumer since they are frequently not remembered and even when they are remembered, they only act as very weak motivating factors. This means that brand attitude does not have a strong impact on the buying behavior when it comes to the brand choice. This is where the difference between the brand attitude and brand salience arises since brand salience has a very strong influence on the brand choice. It is very important for a firm to produce brand salience for its products. The main advantage is that brand salience increases the sales levels of a brand. This is due to the fact that the higher the brand salience, the higher the chance of the consumer purchasing the particular brand and this will in return raise the sales of the brand. According to Keller (2001, p.4), there are four steps that are involved in the process of building a strong brand which has a high salience. One is establishing the extent of the brand awareness in the market. This in other words, means establishing the brand identity in the market. Step two involves creating a strong brand meaning. This can be done by associating the brand with strong favorable and unique brands that are already in existence in the market. This will help the brand gain some form of salience since it will be linked to the big brands in the market. Step three involves arousing positive responses from the consumers. This means that the firm has to come up with better ways of presenting their products and improving them so that they can get into the good books of the consumers. Once they are in their good books their brand will gain a higher salience than it had before with the consumers. The final step is to convert the brand response into a strong and loyal relationship between the consumers and the brand. Daye and VanAuken (2010, p.1) give two approaches for building brand salience. One includes focusing on communicating and defining different cues against a common equity. This means that the firm has to conduct a consumer research so that they can have a leverage on which cues are important and relevant to their brand. Once the relevant cues have been defined form the research, it is up to the marketing directors to execute the brands against the cues. This helps in maximizing the number of memory structures association. Another step brought forward by the authors is to increase the quality and quantity of executional memory structures. These structures help in creating a foundation that helps the consumers remember your brand more easily. In table 2 the figures show that Kit Kat has a moderately low brand salience since its salience is low compared with the general product awareness found in the market. Within the whole sample, Kit Kat does not perform as expected. This is because there is a high brand awareness of the product but a very low salience of the same product. Within its customer base, there is a notable good performance as expected since there is a high level of salience within its customer base. It is important to evaluate salience for brand users separately so that the brand manufacturers can identify whether they have a strong brand salience or not. If the brand salience is low they can come up with ways of building and establishing brand salience for themselves. 10 cues that can be executed against a chocolate advertisement include: “crunchy all the way”, “tastes as chocolaty as it looks”, Section 3: Demographics and segmentations According to tables 3-5, the customer profile for Kit Kat is not that different from the competition. This is because the figures that represent Kit Kat are not that different from those that represent the average that is found in the market. The few variations from the average are not that alarming since the data shows that Kit Kat is mostly slightly lower than the average and in some instances performing higher than the average expected. This implies that Kit Kat has to look for a marketing strategy that will put them in a better position, which is, being higher than the average. The strategy should also ensure that they improve in the areas where they are lagging. These are the areas where they are falling too low form the average. References Keller, KL 2001. “Building Customer-Based Brand Equity.” Marketing Science Institute. P. 4 Daye, D & VanAuken B. 2010. ”Brand Salience: Why it is important for your brand. P.1 Romaniuk, J & Sharp B 2004. “Conceptualization and Measuring Brand Salience.” Sage Publications. P.2 Ibid. P.8 Read More