Stephanie Fierman - Marketing Observations Grown Daily

Stephanie Fierman Says My “Like” Is Your “Love”

Tuesday May 27th 2008, 3:30 pm
Filed under: advertising,branding,loyalty marketing,market research,retail

A new study indicates that love for a brand has greater impact on sales than do awareness and purchase consideration.

“Mind-set Metrics and Marketing Mix Models: Never the Twain Shall Meet?” is based on data from a panel of 12,000 households that tracked their purchases and the prices paid, 500 stores that tracked distribution and promotional activities and a survey of another 13,000 homes that asked questions about awareness, attitudes and purchase intent. The study focused on the sales performance of 61 cereal, shampoo, water and fruit juice brands in France over a seven-year period.

I certainly think that this is interesting – and a nice confirmation of what companies like Nike, Apple and even Mimobot already know – but I have questions about the validity of the conclusions.

This is because brand love equates to a desire and favoritism that is conscientiously built over a lifetime for many products. A Coke drinker who cannot stand Pepsi has developed these feelings over many, many years of ad exposure, promotions and personal experience: any one point in time – even a seven year one – cannot take this factor into account and is therefore, in my opinion, not too much more than an confirmation that people like brands more than others.

The fact that product preference may, in fact, be built over a lifetime also explains the researchers’ observation that distribution may be a bigger driver of choice than advertising. It’s not that this is necessarily the case, but that – at any giving point – it may be more important for an already-well-loved product to be readily available than to have $1 more worth of promotional exposure.

To do this study properly, then, the researchers would have to start with brands that had all been in the test market for the same number of years, with the same spend levels in the same media, and that started with the same approximate level of “brand love.” Otherwise, the results would be inconclusive.