Market research can play a vital role in developing or evolving the definition of a brand. Brand owners used to conduct studies to identify the needs and priorities of different groups of category buyers. Then, they’d pick segment(s) to target and then focus their efforts on these types of people, particularly when advertising the brand.
The flaw in this approach has been highlighted by Byron Sharp from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Focusing on a subset of category buyers limits a brand’s growth potential. People enter and leave the category all the time and their needs are constantly shifting. Focusing on a small subset of current category buyers means your brand remains unknown to other people who will soon be ripe to buy your brand.
A better approach is to aim for your brand to come to mind across a range of different usage contexts (which Sharp refers to as ‘category entry points’). If you do this, whenever someone has a certain need-state, they are likely to buy your brand. Sharp describes this as building ‘mental market share’ in his influential book How Brands Grow (2010).
There remains a debate, however, about whether a brand should aim to become all things to everyone. The author’s point of view is that a brand should focus on a small number of usage contexts and dominate these before expanding to others. Also, a brand should not attempt to become a ‘jack of all trades.’ Given how the mind works, it is difficult for a brand to come to mind for different usage contexts that have conflicting mental connections. For example, it’s hard to imagine how a brand with a rich set of mental associations suggesting ‘cheap and cheerful’ (e.g. George by ASDA) could evolve so that it would come to mind when people were looking for opulent luxury (e.g. Gucci).
With this in mind, the focus of market research needs to move away from consumer segments and toward usage contexts. The author recommends a three-stage approach to obtain the required insights.
1. Establish Buying Attitudes And Profiles
This is done via a survey of a representative sample of category buyers, who are asked for detail about themselves and their relationship with the category:
- Why they buy the category
- The process (if any) they use to decide which brands to consider
- How they make their final decision
- How often, how much, when and where they buy
- Which brand(s) they buy
- Their mental associations with different brands and their responses to these
- Their demographic, psychographic and lifestyle characteristics
In some countries and categories, this data will already exist. A panel provider may be able to provide the data and analyze it for you. If not, you will need to do your own study. You may also need to conduct qualitative research before the survey to reveal all the relevant parameters and ensure the questionnaire reflects how different people think and behave.
2. Quantify Usage Contexts
The data from the previous stage is combined to identify a set of usage contexts that between them represent most of the category purchases. For most categories, the top 8–12 usage contexts should be enough. Here’s an illustration of what some of the main usage contexts might be for a snack category:
- Mid-morning snack
- For when I’m on the go
- To give as a gift
- For grazing during the day
- To treat myself
- A healthy way to keep me going
- Evening snack
- Instead of a meal
- For sharing with friends
It is vital for marketeers to know the relative sizes of these usage contexts. This information indicates which areas would offer the greatest growth potential should the brand be able to dominate them. Also, the nature of the usage contexts suggests the kinds of innovation and communications that would be most relevant.
3. Choose Usage Context(s) To Target
The choice involves complex considerations. It requires the combination of data, company and competitor knowledge, branding expertise and creative thinking:
- Would the usage context(s) be large enough to support your growth ambitions?
- Do any other brands already dominate the usage context(s)?
- Could your brand satisfy the usage context better than competitors?
- Would the required repositioning be credible for your brand?
- What impact would choosing these usage contexts have on your other brands?
Knowing which usage contexts you are going to target in the short and long term goes a long way towards setting yourself up for success. To achieve sustained success, your company needs to be able to deliver well against your chosen usage contexts. Aldi is one of the world’s fastest-growing supermarket brands. It aims to sell products of at least comparable quality to its competitors at a lower price. It can do this and still make a good profit because all aspects of its operations are designed to keep costs down.
Even a well-established brand can grow by creating a strong connection with a major usage context. In the early 2000s, UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s was struggling. Sales had been in decline for years. In 2004, new CEO Justin King set an ambitious £2.5 billion sales target over three years. This inspired the brand’s ‘Try something new today’ campaign, featuring celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
The advertising provided homemakers with ideas for tasty, everyday family meals, while highlighting the few extra ingredients they’d need to buy. It worked brilliantly. The campaign attracted new customers and boosted the value of shoppers’ weekly bill. Sales increased across the whole product range, not just the featured ingredients. The campaign’s success came from associating Sainsbury’s with a frequently recurring challenge common to many shoppers – providing a variety of family-friendly meals day in, day out.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Dan White, author of The Soft Skills Book, The Smart Marketing Book and The Smart Branding Book
The Blake Project helps organizations and brands in all stages of development create marketplace advantages. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education
