Loyal buyers are direct contributors to brand equity. As brand image can explain the reasons for strong brand equity with choice modelling, so can it explain the reasons for the 'superpreference' exhibited by the loyal subgroup. Not only do superpreferers consequently rate their loyal brand far higher in image, but they have higher expectations and a different motivation. Benefits that motivate the loyal segment, however, should not be assumed to be motivating to new or marginal buyers: the latter have their own agenda which is usually different to the loyals. Relatively high numbers of loyal superpreferers can exist even for small brands, probably where there is a unique offering that makes it a niche brand. With an attitudinal measure of loyalty it is possible to track the reasons for changing loyalty within overall brand equity. With experience this can reveal aspects of motivation that behavioural loyalty cannot. Loyalty-building is a long-term activity that depends on getting all elements of the marketing mix right to achieve a 'superpreference' - everywhere and always consistent and so building the rich network of associations that make for the durable image.
The inspiration for this monograph is the belief that consumer choice modelling is the core discipline of consumer marketing research. The simple need of our industry is to be able to predict and to explain the choices that consumers make. The focus of this monograph is on the brand because brand choice is the most difficult to model, depending as it does on overtly emotive criteria for choice. If we can explain and predict brand choice, then non-branded choice such as between product subcategories or product features, follows more easily.
Brand loyalty is a familiar behavioural measure but there appears to be no valid, general attitudinal measure to allow us to track the loyalty drivers and the consequences for loyalty of our product and communications testing. We define loyalty as a very high level of preference we call âsuperpreferenceâ and relate it to other current but little agreed-upon concepts such as brand equity and brand image. Evidence comes from surveys on customer attitudes and loyalty to major domestic appliances in Europe. Programmes to enhance loyalty are discussed in terms of their breadth - consistent application over all customer points of contact - and their depth - building loyalty over time.
In 1989 Whirlpool bought Philips's major domestic appliance division and embarked on a transfer of the Philips brand name to Whirlpool in Europe. Research was central to this process. The existing and desired positionings of the brands were determined at the outset and, along with trade attitudes, tracked through this period to inform management centrally and in the countries of when and how best to transfer. This full information on our customers enabled the risks inherent in the brand transfer to be kept to a minimum.
To ensure quality at all levels requires comprehensive and continuous surveys and feedback between customers, dealers and the manufacturer. This allows strategy and action to be integrated at all levels in the meeting of customer needs. The needed benchmarking of how customer expectations are being formed is provided by parallel surveys of competitor performance. In addition, a means is provided for implementing the results. IBM Personal Systems implemented their "Customer First" programme in 14 countries in Europe in 1991 to help maintain its market leadership in personal computing systems. Though only in its first full year of operation, there are already substantial dividends for IBM and its Business Partners, the dealerships. Findings are still coming in but already they have allowed IBM to identify the key factors that drive satisfaction measure and track satisfaction identify areas of key strategic significance improve these through education and training Illustrative findings from the programme are presented to show the operation of Customer First and give a measure of its impact on IBM Personal Systems operations. A particular feature of the programme is that the means of implementing the results was designed into the project from the beginning. Customer Satisfaction consultants have been appointed in 8 countries to help interpret the customer satisfaction results for the dealers and to provide the requisite training.
We define and measure expectations as being what people ideally would like in terms of the discriminating attributes of the choice category. For relevance in the interpretation of expectations it is necessary to view them for the individual and also to know which of them are the most driving of change in the category, ie importance. The theory and practice of disaggregated consumer choice modelling provides us with a framework to relate expectations and inferred importance for predictive purposes. It also provides examples for discussion. Expectations must be interpreted in the context of the other key attitudes of perceptions and behavioural intentions. We provide an operational definition of expectations and related attitudes such as needs and show their relation to perceptions or brand ratings. A motivational segmentation based on buyer needs is more informative than normal methods. We show how environmental expectations in the car market mean the personal environment in Germany but the external environment in the UK, with France in between. Trends in environmental/health expectations in a UK food category are shown to lag behind shifts in importance, with implications for brand competition. Rapid changes in the altitudinal structure of the âisotonics' drinks market in Japan cannot be understood or responded to without knowledge of changing expectations. The effect of future likely changes in expectations and needs in the car market is examined. Our conclusion is that attribute expectations are key to understanding current and future markets, but they are only properly useful if able to be considered for individuals and in conjunction with attribute importance.
Advertising testing should be an integral part of a successful brand management system. For this reason the continuous tracking of consumer attitudes in a product category is recommended. With computer-interview disks always in the field, the tracked sample serves as an ever-ready control for the rapid and accurate testing of ads, animatics and concepts. It also requires minimal levels of administration. A further possibility is that the tracking and test data can be modelled, providing a simulation facility for the reliable 'what-if testing of advertising concepts to ensure that the strategy is on target even before it enters the creative process and field testing. One outcome from this ad testing and the choice models that can be derived from them is that emotively-accurate reader profiles or segments can be determined that can be used convincingly by advertisers to market to appropriate advertisers, and even to select those advertisers that will best contribute to those aspects of the title's image that are attracting most new readers. Between the two techniques and following the principles of successful pretesting it is possible to both confidently show why and whether the advertising for a title is working, and also to provide cost-effective feedback to advertisers on how their ads are working
Advertising affects buyer attitudes to the brand in a number of characteristic ways. The important effects are similar across product types fmcg, durables and services because brand attitude formation is relatively similar in the unpressured environments where most advertising is received. Attitudes change in correlated patterns in response to advertising, and can be used to explain most changes in preference for the brand. This allows pretesting to show both whether and how advertising is working, and with a relatively high degree of confidence. The practice of pretesting must embrace five principles to be effective; marginal buyer preference, comprehensive attributes, attribute importance, competitive effects and correlated attributes. This allows the problems of quantitative pretesting that have been experienced in the past by users to be largely resolved.
The ideal of targeting and promotional effectiveness is to deliver to those individuals who are most open to brand switching the message or benefit that most satisfies their preferences, and to do this in the most appropriate executional and media context. The validated principles of disaggregated choice modelling are used to focus on individual differences in motivation and how consumers can be aggregated according to their probability of switching brands in response to different promotional messages. Consumer responses vary also according to the communication strategy adopted. A finite number of individual product motivational patterns are revealed that can vary in their distribution, regionally and nationally as well as by the more usual social demographics, lifestyles and product usage patterns. The degree of similarity between countries determines the extent to which products and advertising campaigns can be "globalised". By taking this individual approach to determining product motivations across cultures, solutions to international product design and promotion opportunities can be specified for maximum effect and least compromise. Examples are taken from several markets.
There are two main approaches to measuring a product's changing place in society, those that begin by monitoring social values and those based on measuring changing attitudes to the product itself. The differences in approach stem from concern with different levels of consumer decision making and associated levels of marketing strategy. Approaches based on product attitudes are the most helpful in determining brand strategy, and social trend monitoring and value groups are most useful for strategy at the broader category level and also for communication strategy. The techniques of consumer choice modelling lead us to the meeting point of these two approaches. To reconcile the approaches it is necessary to equate the measures of attribute importance and attribute ideals provided by choice modelling to the monitored social trends and values, but the data are not yet available for this task. For a complete market understanding, both approaches are necessary. It is likely that the validated techniques and the predictive discipline of choice modelling will be increasingly adapted to consumer decision making at the category and social levels.