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Brand Reflection Report
Contents
Introduction.
Discussion.
Brand Awareness.
Brand Associations.
Conclusion.
Reference list.
Introduction to Brand Awareness Analysis
Branding is a powerful business tool that serves as an asset to a company. For an organization, branding holds immense importance as branding reflects a marketer’s intent in ensuring that whatever value proposition, they make to their customers they deliver it, thus inducing the believability by buyers in the brand (Davick, Vinhas da Silva and Hair, 2015). The degree of variation in terms of the strength and value of a brand in a marketplace varies greatly. While some brands are not so known to consumers, others have a global recognition (Davcik, Vinhas da Silva and Hair, 2015). The following report aims to analyze two specific brands from the toothpaste market in the FMCG industry of Australia, where one brand (Colgate) is widely recognized and popularly known and the other (Pronamel) is not so known familiar to Australian consumers. The report will focus on concepts on brand awareness and brand associations specific to the chosen brands following up with a conclusion that summarizes the key findings from the report on the two chosen brands.
Discussion on Brand Awareness Analysis
- Brand Awareness – One of the fundamental elements of customer-based brand equity model is brand awareness. Brand awareness is the degree to which the customers are familiar with the brand. To build the brand equity the company has to make the customers aware of the brand which can further impact the choice of product and purchase decision made by them (Eslami, 2020). Towards building brand awareness, companies lay strategic focus on elements such as knowledge around the brand, the attitude a brand will reflect, elements of recognition and recall and instinctive awareness of the brand features. Brand recognition and recall are the two important components of building brand awareness (Sürücü et al., 2019). Brand recognition is the familiarity a customer has with the brand based on past exposure. The customer may not have heard of your product or even know what it does but somehow the brand is in their mind (Sürücü et al., 2019). For instance, by looking at the Golden Arches from a far distance a customer may be able to recognize McDonald's without any further information (refer appendix for visual understanding).
Brand recall is when a brand comes to a customer's mind when they intend to purchase a product. For instance, if a person intends to purchase a car, the first brand that comes to their mind (like Ford, Porsche, BMW) would be based on brand recall.
While building brand awareness in terms of recognition and recall, a critical aspect that companies must focus on is that the brand must not only have a good brand recognition but a better brand recall. If a customer recognizes the brand but does not recall it at the time of making the purchase then this impacts in lowering the brand equity for that product (Shahid, 2017).
In today’s competitive environment when umpteen number of companies with several business ideas are aggressively competing against each other and fighting to gain market share in their respective fields and industries, it has become imperative for these companies to mark a place for the products/services by differentiating the brand and laying emphasis on the brand equity of a product/service (Eslami, 2020). To gain further insight the report will extend the discussion on two important factors of brand equity – brand awareness and brand association for two Toothpaste brands in the FMCG industry Colgate and Pronamel.
Colgate:
One of the oldest known FMCG brands with a predominant hold in of market share in the toothpaste industry, Colgate is one brand that is at a stage where it does not need much introduction (Colgate Australia, 2019). Colgate serves the perfect example of a company that has consistent efforts in quality maintenance and formidable value proposition has immensely strengthened its brand equity.
In terms of the breadth and depth of the brand, Colgate shows promising results. Depth of a brand refers to the ease with which a customer can recall the brand and recognize it without any aid. According to survey reports (refer appendices), 94 per cent of people were able to recognize Colgate brand easily while 75 per cent of the people were able to recall the brand in the first instance indicating unaided top-of-mind awareness.
The breadth of a brand refers to the range of purchase and consumption situations in which the brand comes to mind (Foroudi, 2019). The survey indicates that nearly 38 per cent of the respondents purchase Colgate 3 to 4 times in 6 months which is a reasonable consumption pattern for a toothpaste brand with the average consumer brushing 2 times a day for personal oral hygiene, removal of bad breath or on dental prescription besides other reasons.
Pronamel: In comparison to Colgate, the other toothpaste brand chosen is Pronamel (Pronamel, n.d.). In comparison to Colgate Pronamel’s brand equity is not relatively strong. This was reflective in the negligible brand awareness (none of the respondents was familiar with Pronamel) and the brand does not appear in the recall list of the respondents while they intend to purchase toothpaste. As a consequence of poor recognition and recall for the brand, the purchase and sales volumes of the toothpaste are also affected which is why Pronamel does not feature in the present Top 10 list of best toothpaste brands in Australia where Colgate ranks among Top 5 in the same list.
- Brand Associations – Another very important concept that helps in building brand equity is brand associations. When a customer makes up a mental image of a brand in his mind and combines certain attributes (either positive or negative) with that brand, in that case the customer is said to be building brand associations (Vriens, Chen and Schomaker, 2019). Every customer is different and may have different associations for a particular brand. That is why, a brand has several associations to it and they may be responsible for either aligning a customer towards the brand or drawing him away from the brand (Vriens, Chen and Schomaker, 2019). A higher positive brand association is likely to induce sales and market share for the company. The use of logos, symbols, colours, advertisements etcetera by marketers plays a strategic role in building a brand association that triggers positive attributes in customer's mind and helps in building stronger brand equity for the company (Jayswal and Vora, 2019). Brand associations are not formulated upon the immediate conception of the product. Marketers work over several years to gather meticulous details of how a customer perceives or feels about the brand and work on those attributes to strengthen associations. Brand associations are essentially the reason a customer will proceed with executing the purchase of a product (Baumann, Hamin and Chong, 2015). This becomes especially important in the current business scenario where intense competition between several brands in the same segment can often lead to shifting in consumer choice and even the slightest of negative association can lead to a decline in the brand equity of a product (Baumann, Hamin and Chong, 2015).
Brand Association for Colgate
In terms of brand associations, Colgate shows several attributes that have been associated with its loyal and new customers over the period. The toothpaste through its formidable marketing strategies, aggressive promotions, and impactful logo has been able to strike a positive association among consumers. This can further be explained by assessing the associations as suggested by various consumers.
Mind Map for Colgate Associations
As understood from the figure above, most of the consumers have associated attributes such as white teeth, freshness and bright smile indicating that Colgate can achieve what it conveys through its marketing communication and branding strategy. Consumers also feel that Colgate makes their gums strong and gives them shining teeth.
A further aspect when measuring brand association comes in measuring brand attitude. Brand attitude can be understood by determining the strength (the degree to which brand image is maintained in a consumer’s head), favorability (the degree of satisfaction provided by the brand) and uniqueness (the relatability of recall information for the brand in question) of the brand in consumer’s mind (Foroudi, 2019).
It is observed that Colgate lives up to its reputation of being a popular choice of toothpaste amongst Australian consumers as the brand resonates strong attitude. Through the associations identified above, it can be stated to reason that consumers have thorough knowledge about the use and function of Colgate as none of the associations deviated to any non-relatable attribute. This is reflective in the fact that whenever the brand launches any further extensions and variants of toothpaste, the acceptability of the same is received through the customers. It is not so difficult to convey the purpose of the product and the customers are even willing to pay a premium price for the product.
Conclusion on Brand Awareness Analysis
The report is based on analyzing the important concepts of brand awareness and brand associations by taking into context two toothpaste brands Colgate and Pronamel. While Colgate is a popular toothpaste brand that is well-known to Australian consumers, Pronamel is not comparatively as much known. In terms of brand awareness, Colgate leads as the consumers can easily identify the brand. Moreover, customers can easily recall the brand while making purchase decisions leading us to believe that Colgate has an effective brand awareness strategy. The associations identified with the brand are highly strong, favourable and unique which further makes it easy for the brand to introduce a new variant and easily convey the message across thereby further converting into potential sales thus leading to believe that Colgate enjoys high brand equity in the toothpaste segment.
References for Brand Awareness Analysis
Baumann, C., Hamin, H. and Chong, A. (2015). The role of brand exposure and experience on brand recall—Product durables vis-à-vis FMCG. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, [online] 23, pp.21–31. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969698914001532.
Colgate Australia (2019). Oral Health and Dental Care | Colgate® Oral Care. [online] Colgate.com.au. Available at: https://www.colgate.com.au/.
Davcik, N.S., Vinhas da Silva, R. and Hair, J.F. (2015). Towards a unified theory of brand equity: conceptualizations, taxonomy and avenues for future research. Journal of Product & Brand Management, [online] 24(1), pp.3–17. Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JPBM-06-2014-0639/full/html.
Eslami, S. (2020). The effect of brand experience on brand equity and brand loyalty through the mediating role of brand awareness, brand image and perceived quality. Archives of Pharmacy Practice, [online] 11(1), pp.98–104. Available at: https://archivepp.com/storage/models/article/ljGaJiCk7Az3QLyVr0lidyzk3EDCxq5PdQmsPFF98G6HjzZc3PE8BJx8UOg1/the-effect-of-brand-experience-on-brand-equity-and-brand-loyalty-through-the-mediating-role-of-bra.pdf [Accessed 1 Sep. 2020].
Foroudi, P. (2019). Influence of brand signature, brand awareness, brand attitude, brand reputation on hotel industry’s brand performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, [online] 76, pp.271–285. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278431917308411.
Jayswal, M. and Vora, P. (2019). Impact of Brand Association on Brand Equity with Specific Focus on Advergames in India. Journal of Creative Communications, [online] 14(3), pp.271–284. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0973258619866366.
Pronamel (n.d.). True Protection. [online] www.pronamel.com.au. Available at: https://www.pronamel.com.au/better-protected.html [Accessed 8 Sep. 2020].
Shahid, Z. (2017). Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research www.iiste.org ISSN. An International Peer-reviewed Journal, [online] 33. Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234694288.pdf.
Sürücü, Ö., Öztürk, Y., Okumus, F. and Bilgihan, A. (2019). Brand awareness, image, physical quality and employee behavior as building blocks of customer-based brand equity: Consequences in the hotel context. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 40, pp.114–124.
Vriens, M., Chen, S. and Schomaker, J. (2019). The evaluation of a brand association density metric. Journal of Product & Brand Management, [online] 28(1), pp.104–116. Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JPBM-02-2018-1768/full/html.
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