Week 10 - Applied Brand Management

Brand Portfolio & Brand Architecture

  • Brand Portfolio: All brands sold by a company in a product category.
  • Brand Architecture: An organizing structure of the brand portfolio that specifies brand roles and the nature of relationships between brands.

Managing Brand Portfolio Goal

  • Clarify awareness.
  • Improve brand image.

Helps With:

  • Determining what products to introduce.
  • Determining what brand elements to apply to new and existing products.

Each Brand Should:

  • Have a different positioning.
  • Contribute equity.
  • Not overlap or harm the equity of other brands.
  • Add more coverage.

Approaches:

  • Brand hierarchies.
  • Brand architecture spectrum.

Brand Hierarchies

  • A graphical representation of organizing all company’s brands into a connected hierarchy.
  • Displays the number and nature of common and distinctive brand elements across a firm’s products.
  • Example:
    • Corporate brand (General Motors)
    • Family brand (Buick)
    • Individual brand (Encore)
    • Modifier (GX)
    • Descriptor (Subcompact SUV)

Brand Architecture Spectrum (Continuum)

  • Branded House: Corporate brand is dominant.
  • House of Brands: A collection of independent brands.
  • Endorser Brands: Brands endorsed by a corporate brand (Corporate-Product).
  • Sub-branding: Corporate and product brand are co-branded (Corporate-Corporate-Product or Corporate-Product-Product).

Possible Special Roles of Brands in the Portfolio

  1. Attract a particular market segment not currently being covered by other brands of the firm.
  2. Serve as a flanker and protect flagship brands.
  3. Serve as a cash cow and be milked for profits.
  4. Serve as a low-end entry-level product to attract new customers to the brand franchise.
  5. Serve as a high-end prestige product to add prestige and credibility to the entire brand portfolio.
  6. Increase shelf presence and retailer dependence in the store.
  7. Attract consumers seeking variety who may otherwise have switched to another brand.
  8. Increase internal competition within the firm.
  9. Yield economies of scale in advertising, sales, merchandising, and physical distribution.

Line vs. Category Extensions

Line Extensions

  • Less likely to fail.
  • But bigger potential for brand equity damage.

Category Extensions

  • Less likely to succeed.
  • But little to no damage to parent brand in existing category.
  • Beware of resource drain and loss of focus.

Measuring Brand Equity

  • Through Marketing Research.

Marketing Research vs. Market Research

  • Marketing Research: Study of the marketing processes and functions as well as outcomes in the market (e.g., new product test, advertising effectiveness, brand equity, customer satisfaction).
  • Market Research: Focuses on specific segments of the market (e.g., aged consumers, house husbands, nursing mothers, arts market).

The Brand Research Process

  1. Determine Research Scope.
  2. Select Research Method.
  3. Data Collection.
  4. Data Analysis.
  5. Interpretation and Insight.

Research Scope

  • What do you want to know about your brand equity?

Setting the Research Question

  • Defining brand research problem including:
    • Brand awareness.
    • Brand Imagery.
    • Brand Feelings.
    • Brand Resonance.
    • Brand Financial Value

Research Question Determines Scope

  • Who, Why, How, When, Where, and What.

What to Measure?

  • Brand Awareness: E.g., When you think about a smartphone, which brands come to mind?
    • TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness).
    • Unaided.
    • Aided.
  • Brand Meanings: Performance and imagery.
    • Perceptions of specific performance and imagery attributes and benefits.
    • Descriptive thoughts.
  • Brand Responses:
    • Judgements and feelings.
    • Purchase intention.
    • Likelihood to recommend.
  • Brand Relationships (Resonance):
    • Behavioural loyalty.
    • Attitudinal attachment.
    • Sense of Community.
    • Active engagement.

Research Methods

  • Quantitative Methods: Using mathematical models to explain and predict marketing behaviour.
    • Goal: To explain and predict (what and how).
  • Qualitative Methods: Using interpretive techniques to understand marketing behaviour.
    • Goal: To understand (why and how).
  • Sometimes, a brand needs to use the two methods together.

Quantitative Methods

  • Design:
    • Surveys (Direct, Mail, Telephone, Online).
    • Experiments (e.g., New Product Test).
  • Techniques:
    • Awareness Measurement:
    • Unaided/TOMA.
    • Aided.
    • Attitude Measurement:
    • Associations/Image.
    • Response/Behaviour.
    • Tracking Studies:
    • Collecting same data over regular intervals.

Sample Brand Tracking Survey

Areas Covered:

  • Brand Awareness and Usage.
  • Brand Judgments.
  • Brand Performance.
  • Brand Imagery.
  • Brand Feelings.
  • Brand Resonance.

Example Questions:

  • What brands of coffeehouse chains are you aware of?
  • At which coffeehouse chains would you consider visiting?
  • Have you visited a coffeehouse chain in the last week? Which ones?
  • If you were to visit a coffeehouse tomorrow, which one would you go to?
  • What are your favorite coffeehouse chains?
  • When I say Starbucks, what are the first associations that come to your mind? Anything else?
  • How favorable is your attitude toward Starbucks?
  • Starbucks Is… (Innovative, Knowledgeable, Trustworthy, Likable, etc.)
  • How well does Starbucks satisfy your needs?
  • How likely would you be to recommend Starbucks to others?
  • How good a value is Starbucks?
  • Is Starbucks worth a premium price?
  • What do you like best about Starbucks? Least?
  • What is most unique about Starbucks?
  • I consider myself loyal to Starbucks.
  • I buy Starbucks whenever I can.
  • Is Starbucks a coffeehouse chain that you can visit at a variety of different times of the day?
  • To what extent does thinking of Starbucks bring back pleasant memories?
  • Does Starbucks give you a feeling of… (Warmth, Fun, Excitement, etc.)

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

  • Measures customer loyalty.

  • Question: How likely is it that you would recommend brand X to a friend or colleague?

  • Scale: 0-10

  • Categories:

    • Promoters (9-10): Loyal enthusiasts.
    • Passives (7-8): Satisfied but unenthusiastic, vulnerable to competition.
    • Detractors (0-6): Unhappy customers who can damage the brand.

  • Net Promoter Score == % Promoters - % Detractors

Qualitative Methods

  • Design:
    • Personal Interviews.
    • Focus Groups.
    • Market-Oriented Ethnography (Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994).
    • Personal Case Studies.

Qualitative Methods Techniques

  • Interviews:
    • Projective Techniques (e.g., laddering, collage, card sorting).
    • Free Associations.
    • ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technology).
    • Brand personality and value.
  • Observation:
    • Participant (e.g., Store visits, Home visits).
    • Non-participant (e.g., videography, consumer-taken pictures and videos).
  • Netnography (Kozinets 2002).

Projective Techniques

  • Designed to uncover the true opinions and feelings of consumers when they are unwilling or unable to express themselves on certain topics.
  • Researchers present consumers with an incomplete or ambiguous stimulus and ask them to complete it.

Examples:

  • Maxwell House vs. Nescafe Case.

Interview Techniques

  • Free Associations: The simplest way to profile brand association.
    • Question: What comes to your mind when you think of … (e.g., Samsung)?
  • ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation):
    • Prior to the interview, participants are informed of a research topic and asked to collect/bring a set of images from their sources.
  • Brand Personality and Value:
    • Asks human characteristics that consumers can attribute to a brand.
    • Question: “If the brand were a person, what would it be like?

Data Collection

  • Primary Data.
  • Secondary Data.

Primary Data

  • Data that is originally generated by the brand.
  • Internal or External (Research Agencies).
  • Methodology Decisions.
  • Sampling Decisions.
  • Budget Decisions.

Secondary Data

  • Already existing data, available from both internal and external sources.
  • Government Sources (e.g., Austrade, Australian Bureau of Statistics, ACCC).
  • Industry Reports (e.g., IBISWorld, MarketLine).
  • Internally Generated Data and Reports (e.g., Company database, CRM, Sales Data).
  • Competitor Intelligence.
  • Customer Generated Content.
  • Brand Valuations (e.g., Interbrand, BrandZ, Brand Finance, etc.).

Data Analysis

  • Process of synthesizing collected data.
  • Quantitative:
    • Statistical Analysis (e.g., Excel, SPSS, R).
    • Descriptive Statistics.
    • Correlations.
    • Regressions.
    • Factor Analysis, etc.
    • Analytics
  • Qualitative:
    • Content analysis using Thematic Coding (e.g., Nvivo).
    • Hermeneutics.
    • Meanings of experiences, events, and stories.

6 Steps to Doing a Thematic Analysis

  1. Gather your data.
  2. Read all your data from beginning to end.
  3. Code the text based on what it's about.
  4. Create new codes to encapsulate potential themes.
  5. Take a break for a day.
  6. Evaluate your themes for good fit.

Interpretation and Insight

  • Key learning that addresses the research problem/question.

Key Takeaways

  1. Research is the key tool in measuring brand equity.
  2. There are many research approaches, but the best one should be determined by your research question (brand problem).
  3. Research findings must be turned into insight.
  4. Measuring equity should be a continuous and life-long brand activity.

Next Week

  • Managing Brands Over Time.
  • Read: Chapters 12 (Keller 2013) for next week.