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Key Topics
Requirement
The purpose of the Final Project is to apply the concepts and techniques of the module to the analysis of real-world situations or problems. You are expected to use diverse sources of information and to carry out an original analysis rather than summarize or rehash existing work. You are also encouraged to use situations and data from your own experience where possible.
For this project, you will identify a marketing problem for a firm that you know well or for a well-known firm. The objective of this project is to communicate the essence of the marketing research process between the researcher and the organisation. The problem should be relevant to the business and specifically outlined.
Your task is as follows:
(1) Identify and clearly communicate a marketing research problem that demonstrates that you have a clear understanding of the problem at hand. The problem could include, but is not limited to, the following:
• Possible market to target, or an adaption of current practises towards a current market
• New opportunity to pursue
• Marketing problem either at the consumer or organisational level
(2) Identify the information needed to address the research problem, including a specific discussion of the field data requirements. You should identify the following elements:
• Type of information needed: primary, secondary, or both
• Sources of information to be used
• Whether consumer or company data will be needed
(3) Choose a research design and justify its choice. You should identify the following elements:
• Explanation of the exploratory, descriptive, or causal approach followed
• Individual techniques adopted
• Research design needs and limitations
(4) Identify appropriate data collection method(s). You should identify the following elements:
• How data was collected
• Field data requirements
• Who was responsible for data collection
• Control mechanisms to ensure the quality of data collected
(5) Summarize your proposal recommendation based on your findings and discuss the limitations of your research
Solution
Executive Summary
Experts define brand as a product, service or a concept that conspicuously differentiates it from the products, services or concepts belonging to the other competitors. The main idea behind creating a brand image of any product or service to communicate to the consumers about its importance and usefulness. Branding, therefore, is the process of creating and disseminating the image and identity of a particular product or service(Graeff, 1997). The process of branding in turn is conducted by marketing. So, in that sense marketing becomes one of the most important activities undertaken by any company in order to activate the consumers and make them loyal towards their brand. However, sometimes the marketing strategies do fail and as a result the brand image of the products or services gets badly hit and the customers subsequently discontinue using them. In the following report, we have discussed about the Coca Cola Brand Failure and various aspects of customer loyalties towards coca Cola’s original product because of which New Coke could not become successful. The research conducted by us included different sources of data, questionnaire for different people followed by the findings and recommendations.
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Background Information
The success story of Coca Cola is not hidden from anyone as it is still being considered as the world’s most recognized brand. A few decades earlier, marketing experts believed that the consumers had begun more cola-conscious, while the firms didn’t quite see that. It happened because of the fact that an intense marketing competition was started between the two giants Pepsi and Coca-Cola. The rivalry between these two companies got bitter more and more as it was battle of perception for them in order to establish supremacy over each other(Pitta &PrevelKatsanis, 1995). By the year 1981, the topmost position of Coke was starting to look vulnerable. It was not only losing its market share to arch-rival Pepsi but to some of the other drinks which were produced by Coca-Cola itself like Fanta and Sprite. As soon as the Diet Coke became a runaway success, it also proved to be a double-edged sword as it made the sugar cola market shrink. Subsequently, Coke’s market share had declined to all-time low of just under 24%.
Problem Definition
The difficulty was that Coca Cola ineptly underestimated the value of its first brand and the marketing problem ensued in 1985 when Coca Cola decided to stop manufacturing its popular soft drink brand and replaced it with New Coke(Haig, 2003). The majority of the consumers decided to snub the new product as soon as they heard the announcement made by the company regarding the same. This joint decision is still being called as the biggest marketing blunder of all time. It became clear to the management of Coca Cola that they were left with no choice but to bring back the original brand as well as formula. By observing what happened with the strategy of Coca Cola, marketing experts explained that the time, money and skill that spent in customer research regarding New Coke could not measure the deep emotional connect to the original product on the part of the customers. This passion and attachment for the original Coca Cola caught the management of the company by surprise. It was a great learning for Coca Cola that the marketing is lot more than the product itself.
This brand failure of New Coke to establish its significance in the minds and hearts of the existing customers can be attributed to their brand loyalty.So, there are a number of factors that contribute to the brand loyalty, which in turn require a clear understanding of evaluations, attitudes as well as intentions that influence customer behavior (Lau & Lee, 1999). The factors influencing loyalty are as follows:
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Satisfaction:It can be termed as a gateway towards becoming a loyal customerof a company or product. It is an obvious fact that if any service or product being used by customers is satisfactory then he/she will most likely use it again. It is always characterized by quality and expectations, which are necessary ingredients for loyalty. So, it seems the customers were highly satisfied with the original Coca Cola that they did not want to go for the new product.
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Trust: once a customer starts feeling satisfied with the product or service by using it again and again, a natural trust develops in him. So, this feeling of trustworthiness for the brand is a strong factorthat impacts brand loyalty to a great extent. In view of this fact, the Coca Cola customers must have a deep trust for the product.
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Brand Image: it is indeed a powerful factor that impacts the brand loyalty in two different ways. Firstly, consumers associate themselves with the brands according to their preferences. Secondly, people tend to consider their opinions as different and it allows them to evaluate and value the symbols and compare them with their own. So, the brand image of Coca Cola and hence the original product worked both ways for the customers.
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Commitment: According to the marketing experts, commitment can be defined in many ways – a strong desire for maintaining a strong relationship, a pledge with which two parties continues their relationship or an absence of competitive offerings(Morgan & Hunt, 1994). So, the customers of Coca Cola as well as the original product both were fully committed to each other, of course until New Coke was introduced, that generated a strong loyalty by the customers towards the product of Coca Cola.
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Word of mouth: As per some marketing experts, one of the most important signs regarding loyalty is that the customers frequently recommend the products or services to others as well. The fact that the person is putting his reputation at stake by referring the product to others indicates his feelings of strong loyalty.
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Importance of relationship: loyalty sometimes also gets driven by strong desire to maintain working relationships that the customers think of them as meaningful in their own ways. So, the consumer-brand relationship that was seen between original Coca Cola and its customers was that of a high degree of loyalty.
Research Objective
The objective behind this research was to study the conception of framework that links the different dimensions of brand loyalty to capture different category of customers,which was clearly ignored by the management of Coca Cola. In other words, this research study discusses as to what were the factors that contribute to the loyalty of customers towards original Coca Cola.
Methodology
The research methodology that has been used in this report addresses a systematic approach in order to solve the research problem. So, to a lot extent the research was the study done by scientifically.
For studying the behavior of customers towards the product or brand, the following elements were studied:
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Pricing
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Satisfaction
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Repurchasingbehavior
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Value
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Quality
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Usage experience
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Place Your OrderSources of Data
There are fundamentally two sources of data – Primary and Secondary. The primary data is comprised of the information and the knowledge that is being collected particularly for completing a research project. It is very important for research purposes because it is directly obtained from the sources. The secondary data is something that had already published or unpublished work that in turn would have been derived from the primary sources(Berry &Linoff, 2004). It basically comprises of descriptions, summaries, analyses, evaluations, derivations. It also provides a critique and interpretation of the original source material. In this report, we have used both primary as well as secondary data.
A survey was conducted as a research instrument that was a combination of a well-planned questionnaire and unorganized and random interviews. The questionnaire that we prepared was based on studying the behavior of the loyal customers falling in different age categories. We circulated this to a range of people.
The statistical tools that were used for the purpose of data collection and analysis as far as this report is concerned proved to be very crucial. They included Questionnaire, Pie Charts and Bar Graphs.
Research Design
In order to design the research, we used descriptive research approach that concerned as to how data was described as well as the characteristics of the population surveyed. The objective of the descriptive research design was to acquire factual, accurate and systematic data that proved to be very crucial in calculating averages, frequencies and other statistical calculations.
The analysis was done by using the following equations:
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Percentage analysis
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Median=n+1/2
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Mode = highest frequency
Questionnaire
The following questionnaire depicts the passage of research on “The Study of the Behavior of Loyal Customer”. Please answer the following questions:
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Favorite Brand:
1. How would you rate the performance of your brand
1 denotes poor
2 denotes satisfactory
3 denotes good
4 denotes very good
5 denotes outstanding
a.Overall Quality
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
b. Value
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
c.Purchasing Experience
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
d. First Use Experience
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
e. Usage Experience
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
2. What rating would you give in terms of overall satisfaction with the brand?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
3. What do you think is the most important element that affects brand loyalty?
a. Satisfaction b.Brand image
c. Trust d.Commitment
e. Word of mouth
4.From how many years have you been loyal to the brand?
a. 0-2 b. 2-5 c. 5-10 d.10-15 e. Above 15
5.Would you like to purchase it again?
1. Yes 2. No 3. Might be
6.Would you like suggest this brand to others?
1. Yes 2. No 3. Might be
7.What was the source that influenced you to buy the product?
1. Television Ad 2. Friend Suggestion 3. News
7. In the event of unavailability, would toy like to switch the brand?
1. Yes 2. No 3. Might be
9. Does pricing affects you in purchasing this brand?
1. Yes 2. No 3. Might be
10. Did u ever experience its customer service?
1. Yes 2. No
Date:
Thank you, for your responses.
Findings
On the basis of the above responses given by the customers, various analyses were done and the findings were noted. What we found out that majority of the customers were inclined towards the original Coca Cola. Most of the answers were “Yes” and the ratings were either 4 or 5.
Limitations
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The time duration of the questionnaire was a major constraints because responders do not generally have enough time.
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There was a lack of interest and indulgence shown by the respondents while filling the questionnaire.
Recommendations
As per the study conducted in the manner provided above and the subsequent findings, the management found the following recommendations would be helpful for the company:
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Concentrate and focus on the perception of brand.
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Do not try to clone the strategies of the rivals.
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Do not doubt taking U-turns in your strategies.
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Always use proper market research.
References
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Berry, M. &Linoff, G. (2004). Data mining techniques. Indianapolis: Wiley.
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Graeff, T. (1997). Consumption situations and the effects of brand image on consumers' brand evaluations. Psychology And Marketing, 14(1), 49-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1520-6793(199701)14:1<49::aid-mar4>3.3.co;2-d
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Haig, M. (2003). Brand failures. London: Kogan Page.
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Lau, G. T., & Lee, S. H. (1999). Consumers' trust in a brand and the link to brand loyalty. Journal of Market-Focused Management, 4(4), 341-370.
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Morgan, R. & Hunt, S. (1994). The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. Journal Of Marketing, 58(3), 20. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1252308
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Pitta, D. &PrevelKatsanis, L. (1995). Understanding brand equity for successful brand extension.Journal Of Consumer Marketing, 12(4), 51-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07363769510095306
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