Mars bar chocolate
Measuring & Interpreting Brand Performance Report
Prepared for Buyer & Consumer Behavior team
University of South Australia
Cameron Lau Ming Cham
Undergraduate student
25 May 2012
Executive Summary
This report examines Mars bar chocolate Brand Performance; Awareness and Salience; and Demographics and Segmentation.
Brand performance part showing that the difference between subscription market and a repertoire market, although chocolate industry is most commonly in the subscription market but Mar Bar have extremely high Sole loyalty to denied this rule. Light buyer is the essential factor for marketers due to the theory Pareto Law, strategy such as increase penetration but not increasing
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Big brand are often make up by huge amount of light buyers, in table 1 Mars Bar chocolate’s Sole loyalty has become a strong evident to prove this rule, although light buyer switching brands very often. 2.1 Brand Salience
It has been acknowledge (Romaniuk & Sharp 2004) that Brand salience can be defined as the propensity of the brand to be thought of by buyers when they are in a buying situations. A brand awareness strategy depends on how well known the brand is, Brand Salience is forming image to refresh their memory about the brands that can linked to consumer mind as well as the quantity and quality of the cue to brand links (Olson & Peter 2005), it is very important that consumer can connect to their mind as many cues as possible . The level of consumers’ brand awareness necessary to induce purchase varies depending on how and where they make their purchase decision for that product category or form. The brand attitude is focus on evaluating the brand, according to Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) “attitudes are relevant to purchase behavior are formed as a result of direct experience with the product, word-of-mouth information acquired from others, or exposure to mass-media advertising, the internet, and various forms of direct marketing”
A brand is a portfolio of qualities associated with a name, which in turn invokes certain images to individuals and hold values beyond the benefits of a product (Iacobucci, 2018). Brand association occurs when customers make a cognitive or emotional association with a particular brand. For instance, when a customer sees a certain color, symbol, logo, or name they automatically can make a connection to a particular brand. Brands start with a name that conveys information, suggest their benefits, or can even be named after their founders (Iacobucci, 2018). In the marketing perspective marketers can control the brand which they are marketing by using catching logos, colors, slogans, or even the products shape and appearance. In marketing a marketer can control the message they are trying to convey but cannot really have control over an individual’s association with that particular brand. Once a customer has an association with a particular brand they may favor the brand based on a past experience or even that individual’s sense of style or they may dislike a brand because of an association they
With the increasing trend in healthy diet preference, the underlying drivers of change of competition in premium chocolate industry at the strongest level are the buyers’ preferences for differentiated, refined products, instead of standardized ordinary products that are no longer demanded. In addition, baby boomers - generation with their disposable income are spending a lot on high quality premium chocolates.
Rogers’ Chocolates is not using its core competency of strong retail sales ability and its distinctive competency of producing a wide variety of high-quality, hand-wrapped chocolates to attract a sufficient market niche of worldwide tourists and high-income, middle-aged couples that are mainly empty nested or child-free, so that they can maximize their market share and profit volumes in a rapidly growing market in which globalization, product innovation toward a more health-conscious product, and growing buyer preferences are major driving forces. Their tremendous ability in retail sales, in which their 11 stores accounted for 50% of total sales, and financial leverage have not been utilized to expand Rogers’ to profit
The brand must be distinct and stand out in ways that relevance to consumers’ needs so as to be chosen by the consumers among thousands of brands in the market. However, before consumers respond to the brand’s communication efforts, the brand must be understood and understood correctly. That familiarity leads to a strong, positive consumer-brand connection.
M&M’s biggest competitor is Hershey’s brand like M&M candies. The competition is fierce among the chocolate industry. Hershey and Mars are rivals and want the opportunity to gain more of the market share. In 1954, Hershey-ettes were introduced to compete against the similar M&M’s. However, they were not successful and are generally only available for consumers around the Holiday season. By the millennium, Hershey extended the popular Hershey Kisses brand in creating the Kissables. Hershey intended for direct competition to M&M small candy coated round tablet of chocolate in multitude of colors. The candy factories started in standard size packs and by the 70’s moved into standard size candy boxes. In the current year and season, you will find M&M’s in candy canes to small snack sizes and inside ornamental objects. The chocolate world becomes difficult to present as it becomes difficult to come up with new ideas in the candy business. As more companies release products similar to the M&M’s, it will become increasingly difficult for Mars to continue to command the level of market share in the chocolate candy industry and the product has a potential to get lost in the supermarket aisle.
When the company began more than one hundred years ago, it was granted immediate success with its low-cost, high quality milk chocolate. Though one of Milton Hershey’s founding principles that has persisted over the years is to “make and sell a high-quality product at a fair price” (CSR Report 7), another threat Hershey contends with is changing consumer preference. “The company is experiencing changing consumer trends toward premium and trade-up product segments (SWOT 4).” In order to adapt to the changing marketplace, Hershey will have to continue to constantly develop, produce and market new products.
With an increasing number of comparable products, the power of the buyers rises simultaneously. Most consumers are indifferent towards brands, especially when it comes to chocolate for baking or cooking. They are able to buy a different chocolate bar each time when entering the shop. Due to the fact that chocolate is a luxurious product, price determines demand and consumers are able to switch easily between brands.
As said by key (2015), “The Hershey Company (HSY) is the largest producer of quality chocolate in North America. It is a global leader in chocolate, sugar confectionery, and chocolate-related grocery products, operating under 80 brands in 70 countries worldwide.” The US confectionery market consists of gums, chocolates and sugar confectionery and the largest segment prior to this market in 2013 was the chocolate segment. The main players in this market are Hersheys, Mars and Nestle with Hershey’s leading the market (31.2%) followed by Mars (29.2%) and Nestle (5.2%) in 2014.
The research in consumer behavior and psychology shows that the brand related information determines the probability if the customer will select a particular brand (Mitchell 100). Companies have learned to play with the psychology and emotions of consumers and have succeeded in attracting even those consumers that were not motivated by the traditional advertisements. Companies these days are focusing on the basic psychological principles to understand how to plan and execute the advertisement.
Earlier companies use to concentrate on making a brand image is to only entice new customers but these days theories have turned around. Maintaining the brand has become one of the prime targets’ for marketing professionals in order to gratify existing customers.
Day Chocolate ltd.’s main strategic aim is to bring premium quality fairly traded chocolate to the mainstream British market to raise awareness of Fairtrade. Cacao growers in Ghana own one third of Day Chocolate ltd and are represented in the Board of Directors. With cooperation of Kuapa Kokoo, the cocoa growers can actively take part in the leadership and
It is suggested to the company should introduce more and new flavour into the market. Through survey analysis, only chocolate flavour is only available in market.
Brand salience refers to brand recall and how quickly a brand is thought of when the consumer is presented with a visual reminder of the brand identity, as well as how quickly it is thought of over its competitors. Faster recall = higher brand salience. In this study it was found that visual merchandising cognition was a predictor for brand salience.
There are certain questions to be imposed in order to build and identify brand salience. These questions are used for the development of the brand by depicting the brands value and identity. The manager or the negotiator will be able to identify the brand and ensure that the particular brand meets the customer satisfaction (keller, 2016). In the customer perspective, a brand is to be well advertised for its awareness among the people and the brands knowledge is to be known by providing an association or link between the product category and the brand. Basically salience ensures in creating brand awareness that refers to how easily a brand is recognized and what the importance is given to that brand when compared to other brands. salience also refers to the same thing which also includes how is the brand popularized and how the customers find the product and purchase it by themselves. The level of salience can be determined by the extent and dimension or breadth of the brand. Here extent refers to the knowledge of the customer that is how easily a customer is able to recognize the product or brand. Dimension refers to the ability of the customer that happens when a purchase is made. This is the basic and foremost step that is to be followed in the brand pyramid
In the past decade, many researchers have paid attention to impact of advertisement on brand awareness and customer behaviors. Building an awareness of brand in the market is a goal of every organization; it offers the prosperous benefits for firms including larger profit margins, higher brand extension opportunities, greater intermediary cooperation (Ranjbarian, Abdollahi and Khorsandnejad, 2011). The strong brand images provided by the companies through advertising add recognition and value to company’s products and make it different and unique from its competitors. As known for decades, advertising has been always an imperative tool as well as one for the main strategies used for introducing and promoting a new product in the market by creating an innovative idea though media to attract the intention of the prospective customers. “Advertising is important tool in creating awareness among customers” (Hamdee, 2013). The fundamental purposes of advertising is to inform the potential customer about an emergent product and to persuade consumer to purchase some specific goods and services (Scutaru, 2010). The high availability of the media channels such as television, radio and internet play significant role to boost advertising in order to creating image brand and awareness among the customers and public. According to hierarchy of effect model created by Lavide and Steiner explain that there are six steps for perceiving a product advertisement.