Tasks for Marketing Assignment: Assessing a Brand's Position in the Market

Task 1: Set Out What the Brand Is and Where it Sits in its Market

Tasks

1. Set out what the brand is and where it sits in its market
2. Set out who are its key customers by frequency of use and by key demographics
3. Identify the relevant attitudes of these customers that can be used to define their attitudes to the brand and to customer services in general
4. Clearly set out statements that can be used to identify what the brand says about customer service and what beliefs and organisational culture underpins these statements
5. Demonstrate that an audit of all the manifestations of customer of the brand has been carried out
6. Critically assess these against models and theories set out in the module and teaching material
7. Set out a substantiated set of recommendations to improve aspects of the customer experience for this brand

You are required to find this information and then assess its value in relation to carrying out tasks 6 and 7. Without having carried out 1 to 5, you will not be able to complete 6 and 7 to a satisfactorily level. This last point means aligning with the assessment criteria for this particular piece of course work. Please make sure you have looked at these whilst doing this work.

Task 1.

Set out what the brand is and where it sits in its market

You should be looking at a brief statement on the nature of the brand, what type of brand category it is, its ownership (particularly if privately or publicly owned). The category will define the market it is in and from this you should be able to use those sources that are available to you, such as Mintel, Passport, and TGI. This will enable you to see how well or badly the brand is doing, in terms of measurements such as market share, and information that relates to Task 2. You should, were possible, be looking at the sector and brand performance over time. Here reference to models such as the Boston Matrix might help (see Marketing Mentor via the online resources in the library if you need reminding of what this and other models are).

So an example might be Unilever tea brands may be doing well, but what is happening to the sector. 30% share of a declining market is not good for the sector or the brand. Having done Task 1 what conclusions do you draw from this?

Hypothetical Example of BCG

Star Question Mark

Cash Cow Dogs

1. Tesco,
2. Asda
3. Lidl
4. Aldi
5. Morrison
6. John Lewis
7. Dabenhams
8. Sainburys

Task 2.

Set out who are its key customers by frequency of use and by key demographics You can use the same sources as you used in task 1. Here you need to examine key demographics like sex, age, and class. You may use others where you deem that this may deliver more depth of insight. Here what you should be looking at, are there any biases in the brand profile? So too old, not young enough, too down market, too up market (limiting growth of volume)? Then think about how this may impact on customer attitudes.

Task 3.

Identify the relevant attitudes of these customers that can be used to define their attitudes to the brand and to customer services in general

Task 2: Identify Key Customers by Frequency of Use and by Key Demographics

Once again you should look at the same secondary sources. You could also conduct primary research amongst users/customers if you can, so you can develop your answer and gain more insight. Here you should be looking to see if the customer likes to but known brands or prefers own label, like or dislikes discounts/money off, etc., etc. How do these relate to your brand and what its owners say about it, how it is positioned in the market?

Task 4.

Clearly set out statements that can be used to identify what the brand says about customer service and what beliefs and organisational culture underpins these statements You may well have found in your wider research, statements that say that almost ‘all brands are now digital’. What this means is not that all brands are digitalised, as media and music brands now are, but that all brands are involved in promoting themselves digitally via paid owned and earned media and many have both an off and online sale presents. (Primark is one of the few exception to the latter). A key ancillary to this is that this creates an increasing need for both personalised and corporate statements on how the brand wishes to relate to its customers, often couched in terms of how it wishes to deliver customer service to enhance the customer experience. This means that the brand will have made these statements in these media areas. So check the owned (website/ company report) the paid (ads/ influencers) earned. Also look at Marketing Week (online) to see what your brand, and often a senior person from your brand has said about customer service/experience (Journalists/ influencers/users). What have they said and what are the reactions to this? What are customers saying about the brand on social media about their customer experience? How do these large corporate statements relate to what you have found in 1-3 and in what you have discovered in 5?

Task 5.

Demonstrate that an audit of all the manifestations of the customer of the brand has been carried out This means that you should be looking at issues relating to if the customer manifests as two people, this who buy v those that use, so a supermarket, or an fmcg brand may be like this. Look at variations in the demographics and if there are different attitudes by say, age? How do these relate to what the brand claims it wants its customer relationship to be? You should also be looking to see if the brand promise to its customer manifests itself consistently across all the touchpoints of a brand. A touchpoint is any place that the customer comes into contact with the brand, from face to face to online via website/social media, to the call centre.

Here you will have to do some ‘leg work’ by way of an audit. You should look at using some of the models that we have examined to act as ways of carrying out the audit, benchmarks to gauge if the customer service I being delivered and that both parties are happy with it. Go back over the course slides to check which models and read the relevant parts of the text books on this