Buyer and Consumer Behavior: Mars Bar Chocolate - Assignment Example

Mars bar Consumer Behavior Executive summary This research has been able to come up with two metrics tables and three demographics tables all which have valuable information regarding the market for Mars Bar. From the information and the patterns in the tables, it is evident that Mars Bar operates in a repertoire market where consumers have much freedom to choose their brand of choice and as such there is no great brand loyalty. Brand salience for Mars Bar is also very high as compared to other brands meaning the brand enjoys better chances of being bought by consumers whenever they are in a buying situation of chocolate bars. The demographics seem to have similar trend across the brands and so the brand does not have much to do to change that. The findings indicate Mars Bar is currently doing very well in the market since it enjoys the top position of the repertoire market and the benefits that come with that. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Brand Performance 3 3 Brand Awareness and Salience 5 4 Demographics 8 5 Conclusion 8 References 9 1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discus the figures and patterns that emerge from brand performance metrics, awareness and salience metrics, and demographic data for Mars Bar chocolate. The three sets of information provide an important pointer to the characteristics of the market which the brand operates in which will enable one to describe the type of market and how market strategies can be formulated and work for the brand. The analysis will also make it possible to analyze the performance of the brand so far as it may interest the management of the producing company. This report is structured into three main subjects; Brand performance, Brand awareness and salience, and demographics and segmentation. The paper will seek to exhaustively cover the subjects under the respective headings in this report. 2 Brand Performance From table 1, we can see that the market share at 34% for Mars Bar is higher than that of all the other brands. Kit Kat follows closely at 24%. Three out of the three brands have a market share above 20% meaning the market is quite competitive and customers are majorly shared between the three brands. Mars Bar indeed has more customers buying the brand. Brands with lower penetration have suffer not only from low penetration below the average of 49% but also the few people that buy the brands are not loyal as can be seen from the average purchase frequency, share of category requirements and the solely loyal buyers percentage. In fact Nestle Gold and Twix each have zero percent loyalty. No brand is able to satisfy more than 50% of its customer’s category requirements. Mars Bar and Kit Kat remain to be the dominant brands but Mars Bar is very strong with 22 % loyalty as compared to kit Kat’s 7.7 %. Repertoire markets are characterized by a few solely loyal buyers since most buyers in the market allocate their requirements across the competing brands in the market in quite a steady fashion as noted by (Ehrenberg, Uncles, & Goodhardt, 2004). On the other hand subscription market has many solely loyal buyers since most customers allocate category requirements almost entirely to a single brand (Escalas, 2004). Unlike in repertoire market, in subscription market customers do not make regular purchases from a variety of brands but rather show loyalty to a particular brand fro a long period of time (Ehrenberg C. , 2000). In subscription markets brand many brands satisfy the Customer’s category requirement which is usually more than 50%. Brand loyalty is also very high with more than half the brands being above the average brand loyalty level. Market penetration does not necessarily go hand in hand with loyalty and satisfaction of share of requirements as it is the case with repertoire market. Meaning there is a deviation in the double deviation pattern clearly visible in repertoire market (Blackwell, 2003) Mars Bar can be rightfully be considered to be operating in the repertoire market considering that Mars Bar enjoys a higher market penetration which serves to benefit other aspects of the brand such as loyalty and market share and satisfaction of customers share of category requirements all of which are higher than those of smaller brand. There is a double jeopardy pattern in the market affecting small brands which have lower level of market penetration consequently having lower customer loyalty. These characteristics are contrary to subscription market which has a higher brand loyalty in all market brands and a deviation in double jeopardy pattern. And also all the brands satisfy at least 50% of customers share of category requirements (Macdonald & Sharp, 2003). In a repertoire market it is a good idea to get as many light buyers as opposed to getting heavy buyers. The reason for this is that such a market does not have the mechanism to get customers into a subscription system whereby they will be loyal to a particular brand. Customers chose from a repertoire of brands and the only way to boost sales is to get them buying your brand as frequently as possible (Joyner, 2009). Some of the best ways to get light buyers is to constantly advertise to position the brand as the brand of choice by constantly reminding people of the main benefits of the brand (Fedorikhin, Whan, & Matthew, 2008). Light buyers almost make their decisions subconsciously, highly relying on advertising messages or appearance of the brands in aspects such as color and packaging design. Having a good distribution network too ensures higher rate of light buyer frequency (Schiffman, 2007). 3 Brand Awareness and Salience Brand salience can be defined as the degree to which your brand top in the mind of a consumer whenever the customer is in a buying situation. Essentially brand salience reflects the quantity and the quality of the network of memory structures buyers’ hold about the brand (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2004). Brand salience is mainly drawn from a social psychology point of view where the general contention is that brand salience is the ability of an item to stand out from the rest in its environment (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2004). Krech and Crutchfield(1948) argue that saliency refers to the fact that not all man’s beliefs stand out with equal prominence in his cognitive field; he may be aware of some certain beliefs more than others. These beliefs he is more aware of enter his conscious thoughts more readily. Strong brands have high brand salience as compared to weak brands explaining why strong brands have a larger market share and more sales than the smaller brands which have low saliency or none at all. There is a slight difference between top of the mind contention in some quarters and brand salience. Top of the mind is what brands come into the mind when a consumer thinks of a product. Brands salience is what comes top of the mind of a consumer when in a purchasing situation (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2004). Brand attitude on the other hand is a lasting evaluation that can act as a mental reminder to act (Krech & Crutchfield, 1948). Attitudes have weak influence on future buyer behavior because they are not often recalled (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2004). Attitude influence on a consumer depends on what is the attitude being remembered and how motivationally strong the attitude is to the consumer when in a buying situation. As summarized by (Whan, Maclnnis, Priester, Eisingerich, & Lacobucci, 2010) Attitude is about evaluating the brand but salience is largely having a chance of being thought of. Attitude can be considered a function of salience in that salience is what makes first the brand to have a consideration in the mind of the buyer. The reason it is important to focus largely on building brand salience and not attitude is simple; if a brand is more salient then it is most likely going to be positively evaluated. It is highly unlikely that a consumer will dig up all the attitudinal data he has stored in his memory when purchasing a product but will rather be influenced by the brand that is prominent in the thoughts of the buyer at the purchase time (Whan, Maclnnis, Priester, Eisingerich, & Lacobucci, 2010). Customers are affected by a range of internal cues and external cues when buying. They have limited time mostly to be influenced by attitude and are rather taken by salience when making decision to buy especially consumer goods. It is therefore important to build brand salience as opposed to attitude since by building the former, the latter falls into place effortlessly (Sharp, Wright, & Goodhardt, 2002). From Table 2, Mars Bar is clearly on top of the mind of consumers, it tops the overall buying awareness in consumers at 89. The brands salience is above the rest too in the whole sample category and in the users’ requirements category although slightly above Kit Kat in the users’ salience ratings. This means that the brand has been able to perform as expected amongst its customer base since many consumers have it in mind when buying the product as compared to rival brands. Brand salience can be built and enhanced through proactive actions by marketing functions that yield results mainly in the long run and not in the short run. Two ways to approach it through marketing strategies are (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2004): Focusing and communicating different cues against brand equity by identifying the most important equity of the brand. After this a research should be conducted to list the most appropriate cues to benefit the brand in marketing. These cues will then be used creatively to maximize the number of memory structures associated with the brand to increase prominence in mind when the consumer is in a buying situation. Creating distinctive executional memory structure like authentic colors and messages on the brand that help consumers remember your brand when making a purchase decision. Some of the ten cues I would expect on a chocolate advert are: “Recharge” “It gives you energy” “Out of this world” “So sweet you can get enough” “Good things come in small packages” “Light up your day” “A moment of happiness” “Less fat great fun” “50% less fat” “Tell her you love her with chocolate” 4 Demographics The customer relationship profile of Mars Bar is not very different from that of its competitors since the customers are not largely influenced by brands when it comes to the choices each relationship group makes. It is the same trend when it comes to household incomes since the average prices of the brands do not defer so much. Females buy more of chocolate than males and this is reflected across all brands. 5 Conclusion Mars overall marketing strategy has been able to achieve the company’s objective of gaining a larger market share since it also affects customer loyalty and brand salience. As can be evidenced from the tables and the discussion above, Mars Bar has shown overall good performance as compared to its competitors in the industry. However, the company will have to dedicate a lot of time and resources in developing promotional and competitive strategies to counter the threat posed by Kit Kat which is giving the brand tough competition as can be seen in all tables. References Blackwell,R., 2003. Consumer behavior, 9th Ed, Harcourt Ehrenberg, A.S.C., Uncles, M.D. and Goodhardt, G.G., 2004. Understanding Brand Performance Measures: Using Dirichlet Benchmarks, Journal of Business Research, 15(2), pp. 89-103 Escalas, J., 2004, Narrative Processing: Building Consumer Connections to Brands, Journal of Consumer Psychology,14 (1–2), pp.168–79. Ehrenberg, A.S.C., 2000. Repeat Buying - Facts, Theory and Applications. Journal of Empirical Generalisations in Marketing Science, 5, 392-770. Fedorikhin, A., Whan, P., and Matthew, T., 2008. Beyond Fit and Attitude: The Effect of Emotional Attachment on Consumer Responses to Brand Extensions,Journal of Consumer Psychology, 18 (4), pp.281–91. Joyner, M. 2009. Integrating Marketing: How small businesses become big businesses and big businesses become empires. John Wiley and Sons. Krech, D. and Crutchfield, R.S., 1948. Theory and Problems of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Macdonald, E. and Sharp, B., 2003. Brand Awareness Effects on Consumer Decision Making for a Common, Repeat Purchase Product: A Replication, Journal of Business Research 48(1), pp. 5–15. Romaniuk, J., & Sharp, b. 2004. Conceptualizing and measuring brand salience. Marketing theory 4(4) ,pp. 327-342. Schiffman,L.G., 2007. Consumer Behavior, Prentice Hall Sharp, B., Wright, M., & Goodhardt, G. 2002. Purchase loyalty is polarised into either repertoire or subscription patterns. Australian Marketing Lournal 10(3) , pp.7-20. Whan, P., Maclnnis, D., Priester, J., Eisingerich, A., & Lacobucci, D. 2010. Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude: Conceptual and Empirical Diffrentiation of Two critical Brand Equity Drivers. journal of Marketing 74 , pp. 1-17. Read More