Consumer Brand Beliefs

Lowell D'Souza — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:32:43 +0000

The other day, I was thinking about perceptions and what shapes them. The Gates-Crowley incident (with our President having a say too) led me to think about this. However, I channeled my thinking further into what shapes the beliefs and ideas about a product or service.

Belief

Function: noun
Date:12th century

1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

2: something believed ; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group.

3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

Concept :

Simply put, a person’s belief about a brand or product influences his buying decisions. If he is of the opinion that a certain brand or product doesn’t meet his satisfaction standards, he will settle for something else, and, at times even settle for an inferior brand.

When blind taste tests were conducted for DietCoke and DietPepsi, the respondents were equally split in their preferences for either brand. But, once the blindfolds were taken away, they preferred Diet Coke by 65% and Diet Pepsi by 23%. So, brand beliefs do play a critical role in product choice.

We, as marketers, are very interested in the beliefs that people have about our products.

Beliefs exist in our heads specifically our memories. A memory is a network of stored information and connected links. The stored information visual, verbal, abstract or contextual is recalled when a link to which it is connected or associated is triggered. So, a brand like Apple or Apple’s iPod will associate words like innovative, creative, hip, trendy, cool or new within a consumer’s mind.

The associative network memory model which is shown above shows memory as a network of nodes and connecting links. By studying the memory networks of different consumers about their perception of a brand, it’s possible to map the associations linked to that brand and their relative strength and frequency. For. e.g. The Wii in most people’s heads would be linked to creative, fun, fun for all, exciting, easy to play. The Prius would be environmentally friendly, trendy, noiseless, good for the future, eco-concious etc.

Another association with a brand can be the country of origin. Certain countries have a reputation for certain goods. Japan for consumer electronics, the US for soft drinks, movies, toys, jeans, cigarettes, France for wine, perfume, food especially cheese. The drawback of someone’s beliefs is that if they’re biased towards a country then it affects their overall perception of all the products manufactured in that country. For e.g. In the Middle East, Danish food products are perceived to be of high quality (though the furor over the Danish cartoonist drawing an insensitive religious cartoon did affect the sales of all Danish products for a while).

Perceptions can be modified, if addressed or if changes take place that convince the consumer that the product has improved for the better. Take South African and Chilean wines; today they’re considered to be close to the world ‘s best after putting together a world class infrastructure in place to create excellent wines after shrugging off tumultuous and political legacies. These industries have also been helped by the fact that their current governments have embraced democracy and have market driven economies. This has helped shape a positive opinion of both countries and their products are welcome not only in stores, but inside the head of potential consumers.

Caveat :

Sometimes, if the product is generic in nature, its country of manufacture does not matter even though the country might not be, say a democracy or a bastion of fair trade. China is one such example. Even though the country’s reputation was tainted by the Tienanmen Square and Tibet conflicts, as time has gone by, people have largely forgotten about this and so, many durable products sold in stores in the US today and made in China have successful sales.

How to map the brand beliefs about my product ?

This is a good exercise in qualitative research. The idea is to obtain an understanding of how your brand is perceived in the marketplace by its users and once you know that, you can use those learnings to improve the product’s performance, expand the product’s features, identify additional needs (if they come up) and anything else.

Work hard on the questionnaire. Ask questions of the thought process the product buyers follow when they buy the product. Get some competitive insight – understand why they don’t buy a competitor’s product and what would compel them to. List the brand’s attributes and ask specific question on how they matter in your buyer’s purchase decision. Test their brand loyalty – is it just price that has driven them to you, is performance equally important? How has this product improved their lives? What would make it better. Once you have the questions down, then spend some time getting a good sample size of respondent. Group sessions wont work here. Focus groups are not the way to go as group think will skew any individual thinking. This is a one-on-one interview process. Once you’re finished your interviews, you’ll have enough data to map the results of the same graphically and not only will you have a product perception map but also have attributes that differentiate your brand from the competition and an understanding of individual customer preferences.

This is a neat exercise and is a forward-moving step in your progression as an intelligent marketer. We, as marketers should be consistently thinking of how we can continue to add value to out customers, our products, our firms we work in and finally, ourselves. This is a good place to start.

Marketing Bones » brand beliefs

Consumer Brand Beliefs