Buyer & Consumer Behaviour

You have recently been appointed as the Marketing Coordinator at Mars Inc. Australia. Mars is a leading consumer brand company, providing products to local and overseas markets in the Food, Pet Care, Chocolate, Gum & Confectionary categories. Your role is within the Gum division. Mars owns gum brands such as Extra, Eclipse, Hubba Bubba and Juicy Fruit. Your Marketing Director is also new to her role and has commissioned some market research to collect data on people’s gum buying behaviour. As you are a recent Marketing graduate from UniSA, she asks that you analyse and interpret the data and share your insights on gum buying behaviour with the department. Your Marketing Director has given you a list of specific questions that she wants answered. Prepare a 2000-word report that addresses the questions outlined below. Provide an Executive Summary (approx 1 page) outlining the major findings of the report and the implications for the brand Extra. Section 1: Understanding Buyer Behaviour 1. Your new Marketing Director asks for your opinion about which of the two theories, Cognitivism or Behaviourism, is the best approach to understand buyer behaviour. Explain each and give reasons for your preferred theory. (400 words approx.) Section 2: Brand Performance Table 1: Brand Performance Measures Brand Market Share Penetration Average Purchase Frequency Category Buying Rate Share of Category Requirements Sole Loyalty Orbit 37 75 2.2 5.2 43 22 Extra 27 55 2.2 5.4 41 13 Mentos 20 45 2.0 6.8 29 7 PK 12 35 1.5 7.2 21 0 Jila 6 21 2.0 7.9 18 0 Airwaves 4 18 1.0 9.5 11 0 Average 100 42 1.8 7.0 27 5 2. Are there any patterns evident between the brand performance measures in Table 1? Describe the patterns and differences that you see between the competing brands, and specifically for Extra. (400 words approx.) 3. Your Marketing Director says “sole loyal buyers are the best type of buyers to have, these buyers are the key to brand growth”. She wants to implement a marketing strategy encouraging existing buyers to only buy Extra. Explain if this is a good strategy to take. Why / why not? (300 words approx.) Section 3: Mental Availability 4. Describe Mental Availability. Discuss how mental availability can be built and enhanced. What are the appropriate marketing strategies for building mental availability? Name 10 category entry points that you would expect to be included in an advertisement for Extra. (400 words approx.) Section 4: Demographics & Segmentation 5. Your Marketing Director believes that the Extra brand should be targeted towards a customer profile of males, aged 26-45 years old, who earn more than $70,000 per year. Analyse Tables 4-6. Do you agree/ disagree with your Marketing Director? Explain your answer. (300 words approx.) Buyer and Consumer Behaviour SP2 2017 – Assignment 3 Table 4: Demographics – Gender Brand Male Female Male Dev. Female Dev. Average MAD Orbit 64 36 4 -4 4 Extra 60 40 0 0 0 Mentos 59 41 -1 1 1 PK 61 39 1 -1 1 Jila 61 39 1 -1 1 Airwaves 58 42 -2 2 2 Average 60 40 2 2 2 Table 5: Demographics – Age Brand 16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 16-25 Dev. 26-35 Dev. 36-45 Dev. 46-55 Dev. 56-65 Dev. Avg MAD Orbit 16 35 18 13 18 -2 6 -6 -2 3 4 Extra 16 31 24 18 11 -2 2 0 3 -4 2 Mentos 18 27 23 16 16 0 -2 -1 1 1 1 PK 23 28 20 14 15 5 -1 -4 -1 0 2 Jila 19 24 27 15 15 1 -5 3 0 0 2 Airwaves 17 29 30 13 13 -1 0 6 -2 -2 2 Average 18 29 24 15 15 2 3 3 2 2 2 Table 6: Demographics – Total household income Brand Less than $50,000 $50,000 - $70,000 More than $70,000 <$50k Deviations $50-$70k Deviations >$70k Deviations Average MAD Orbit 23 29 31 3 6 -7 5 Extra 21 19 43 1 -4 5 3 Mentos 16 22 40 -4 -1 2 2 PK 21 22 39 1 -1 1 1 Jila 22 21 35 2 -2 -3 2 Airwaves 18 24 41 -2 1 3 2 Average 20 23 38 2 3 4 3 6. What marketing strategy recommendations would you make to your Marketing Director as a result of your demographic and segmentation analysis above. (200 words approx.)