Subway, the world's biggest restaurant company by number of outlets, is an excellent example of a successful regional expansion of an American company into Latin America. With more than 4,400 restaurants in over 30 countries in the region, Subway became a part of life for millions of consumers from different nationalities and cultures, with a consistent brand promise of healthy, fresh and affordable casual food. This paper explores this success story, showing how market research had a central role in this process, allowing the company to use a new model of consumer behaviour to understand their brand choices and produce actionable marketing plans.
I want to talk to you about certain types of modem trade research under study at the present time in a number of countries, especially in the United States and in France which I regard as the most advanced and forward-looking in the field. These methods are sometimes referred to as "brand choice cybernetic models". My aim is to explain in the present introduction the place held by this type of model in the whole complex of trade research.