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Thailand escapists

In a study examining decision-making patterns among international tourists, 260 participants provided information on six psychographic orientations: psychological, educational, social, relaxational, physiological and aesthetic. Cluster analysis was used to group participants into psychographic segments. The results suggested that there were three meaningful segments based upon their lifestyles. The first segment (53%) consisted of individuals who were high on nearly all lifestyle scales. This group was called the ‘demanders’. The second group (20%) was high on the educational scale and was named the ‘educationalists’. The last group (26%) was high on relaxation and low on social scales and was named the ‘escapists’. Specific marketing strategies were formulated to attract tourists in each segment. In order to recover from the aftermath of the economic downturn in 2008–2009, Thailand made a special effort to reach the ‘escapists’, as the country, with its many relaxation opportunities and natural beauty, would appeal the most to these tourists.

 
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Perceived product parity – once rarity, now reality

How do consumers in different countries perceive brands in different product categories? Surprisingly, the answer is that the product perception parity rate is quite high. Perceived product parity means that consumers perceive all/most of the brands in a product category as similar to each other, or at par. A study by BBDO Worldwide (www. bbdo.com) showed that two-thirds of consumers surveyed in 28 countries considered brands in 13 product categories to be at parity. The product categories ranged from airlines to credit cards to coffee. Perceived parity averaged 63% for all categories in all countries. The Japanese had the highest perception of parity across all product categories at 99%, and the Colombians the lowest at 28%. Viewed by product category, credit cards had the highest parity perception at 76% and cigarettes the lowest at 52%.
BBDO clustered the countries based on product parity perceptions to arrive at clusters that exhibited similar levels and patterns of parity perceptions. The highest perception parity figure came from the Asia–Pacific region (83%) (which included Australia, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea), and also France. It was no surprise that France was in this list because, for most products, it used highly emotional, visual advertising that was ‘feelings oriented’. The next cluster was US-influenced markets (65%), which included Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Mexico, Singapore and the USA. The third cluster, primarily European countries (60%), included Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the UK and Germany. What all this means is that in order to differentiate a brand, advertising cannot just focus on product performance, but also must relate the product to the consumer’s life in an important way. Also, much greater marketing effort would be required in the Asia–Pacific region and France in order to differentiate the brand from the competition and establish a unique image.

 
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Ice cream ‘hot spots

Häagen-Dazs Shoppe Co. (www.haagendazs.com), with more than 850 retail ice cream shops in over 50 countries, was interested in expanding its customer base. The objective was to identify potential consumer segments that could generate additional sales. It used geodemographic techniques (as discussed in Chapter 5), which are based upon clustering consumers using geographic, demographic and lifestyle data. Additional primary data were collected to develop an understanding of the demographic, lifestyle and behavioural characteristics of Häagen-Dazs Shoppe users, which included frequency of purchase, time of day to visit café, day of the week and a range of other product variables. The postcodes or zip codes of participants were also obtained. The participants were then assigned to 40 geodemographic clusters based upon a clustering procedure developed by Nielsen Claritas (www.nielsen.com). Häagen-Dazs compared its profile of customers with the profile of geodemographic classifications to develop a clearer picture of the types of consumer it was attracting. From this it decided which profiles of consumer or target markets it believed to hold the most potential for additional sales. New products were developed and advertising was established and profiled to target specific consumer types.

 
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Feelings – nothing more than feelings

As it faced stiff competition in digital cameras, Nikon (www.nikon.com) was marketing its Coolpix line with the tag lines ‘passion made powerful’, ‘brilliance made beautiful’ and ‘memories made easy’. The advertising campaign was designed to evoke emotional feelings in consumers. Nikon based this campaign on a study conducted to identify feelings that were intuitively evoked. A total of 655 feelings were reduced to a set of 180 that were judged by participants to be most likely to be stimulated by advertising. This group was clustered on the basis of judgements of similarity between feelings, resulting in 31 ‘feelings’ clusters. These were divided into 16 positive and 15 negative clusters, as shown in the table.

Thus, 655 feelings responses to advertising were reduced to a core set of 31 feelings. In this way, advertisers now have a manageable set of feelings for understanding and measuring responses to advertising. When measured, these feelings can provide information on a commercial’s ability to persuade target consumers, as in the case of Nikon cameras.

 
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