Discuss about the Using Brand Alliance With Artists To Expand Retail.
Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business. Branding of a product or service helps in enhancing the product’s awareness as well as assists in setting the right positioning for the product in the minds of the consumers (MacInnis, Park & Priester, 2014). Branding of a business can be achieved via advertisements, logos, symbols, product’s target market, name, term, design or anything that separates the business from its competitors.
Source 1: Infinity intellectual
Target market of a company refers to the set of customers whose needs the business wishes to fulfill (Kotabe & Helsen, 2014). It is essential for businesses to recognize and identify their target markets. This assists in understanding consumer needs better and reaching out to them in an effective manner (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker & Brennan, 2015).
This report throws light on the importance of target marketing and branding for Specsavers which is a leading firm in the optical industry. Various marketing strategies adopted by Specsavers has been highlighted in the report and a few recommendations have been throws light upon which are aimed at improving the brand value of the firm.
Specsavers optical group ltd is a British optical retail chain and is currently operating globally. The firm sells sunglasses, eyeglasses and contact lenses. They have also recently ventured into the business of hearing aids. The brand was introduced in the year 1984 and has been a leading brand since then. The brand’s recall value as well as equity has been inspirational and the brand is well known throughout the country and other places across the globe.
The wide presence of the brand throughout the world has led to increased brand equity and improved brand awareness across a large group of people. Branding of a particular business is conducted through various aspects of the business. In the case of Specsavers, these aspects of the business are:
Brand Name: The brand name ‘Specsavers’ automatically identifies with people as a business that works towards offering people spectacles where they can also save money. The firm’s nomenclature makes it easy to remember by its audience.
Logo: The logo of Specsavers includes two green overlapping ellipses with a strapline ‘Now you can believe your eyes’. This reflected the customer’s expectations that they could buy top quality glasses and contact lenses at an affordable price.
Source 2 Specsavers
Tagline: There are various taglines that Specsavers has used through its advertising campaigns. In order to target elders above 40 years of age, Specsavers used the tagline ‘Your eyesight matters’. In order to target youth and lower to middle income segment groups, their tagline through one of the campaigns was ‘For affordable eyewear’.
Store: The Specsavers store is more like an eye consultation center. The stores offer a full range of services, expertise, experience and information to the customers visiting the store.
Advertisements: Advertising a product or a brand is one of the finest ways to promote the brand to the target market. Advertising helps in enhancing the brand’s awareness and ensuring the right positioning of the product in the market (Maehle & Supphellen, 2015). Specsavers invests heavily in television, social media and digital advertisments (Kenrick, 2017).
Target market essentially comprises of the set of customers whose wishes the business aims to fulfill through its products or services. Ideally, Specsavers is built to fulfill the needs of any person with an unclear vision or a poor eye sight. However, as a business, Specsavers has tried to target a wide audience to ensure increased reach. In order to decide the target market of a business, the business must first divide the market into various segments (Venter, Wright & Dibb, 2015). The market segmentation strategy adopted by Specsavers is as below:
Income groups: Specsavers targets lower to middle income groups who are looking for inexpensive eyewear and would not be willing to spend a hefty amount on the same.
Age: Age is another factor that largely impacts the target market of a particular business. Specsavers targets young people who have an increased inclination towards the latest fashion wear and a relatively less disposable income. This consists of people between the ages of 15-32.
However, a small part of Specsavers business also offers varifocals and bifocals. This is usually required by elders with a severely compromised eye sight.
Psychographic segmentation: Specsavers also categorizes its customers on the basis of their lifestyle. Specsavers targets customer who wear fashionable sunglasses, eye glasses and contact lenses.
Geographic segmentation: Specsavers is present across 12 different countries. The brand ships across the globe but is strategic about placing its stores across these countries. Specsavers stores across these countries are ideally situated at commercial locations which can be easily reached out by their customers.
Understanding consumer behavior is very crucial for the success of any business. Studying the behavior of the consumers helps organizations in analyzing their needs and hence offering them products and services to suit the same. Various organizations work towards understanding the needs of their consumers in order to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals (East, Singh, Wright & Vanhuele, 2016). Therefore consumer behavior is highly important for the success of any business.
Brand personality theory refers to attributing a set of characteristics to a particular brand which define the brand’s personality (Kim, Vaidyanathan, Chang & Stoel, 2017). These attributing characteristics make it easy for customers to relate with the brand and hence leads to enhanced purchase and a loyal customer base. It is a rather difficult and innovative process through which businesses assign personality attributes to their brands. It is achieved through thoughtful advertising and relatable appearance of the brand.
Brand personality theory states that brands are also living breathing entities like people and hence it is imperative that the brand’s customers are able to define the brands just how they would be able to define a person. The brand’s personality can also be strategically defined based upon the target market that the brand serves. This would help in making sure that the targeted consumers of the brand relate well with the brand’s personality.
Specsavers brand has also worked upon gaining various personality attribute that would help the customers of the brand relate with it. Various attributes given to the brand personality of Specsavers are as below:
Young: The Specsavers products are ideally targeting the young generation of people. Therefore the glasses are designed for a young and coming of age look.
Trendy: Eye wear sold by Specsavers are always living up to the latest fashion trends and the products are constantly updated with the changing trends.
Strong: Specsavers various advertisements throw light on the strength and durability of the eye wear sold by the company.
Emotional: Specsavers has been highlighting upon the importance of emotions through its various advertisement campaigns. In order to target the elderly people, Specsavers introduced the tagline ‘Your eyesight matters’. Such initiatives by the brand bring about the emotional side of the brand’s personality.
Economic: Specsavers has not priced its products too high and hence makes it accessible and affordable to a large set of consumers across the globe. People identify with Specsavers as an economic and affordable brand.
Caring: Specsavers has positioned itself as a brand that cares about its customers. The stores of Specsavers provide extensive guidance and services through its customer. The doctors at the stores have a wide experience and hence are able to assist customers about what kind of spectacles should they wear and how can they take better care of their eyes.
Intelligent: Specsavers advertisements that promote ‘should have gone to Specsavers’ are a clear indication of attributing the smartness factor the brand’s personality (YouTube, 2018). The company released a series of advertisements which all recommended going to Specsavers as the smart solution to the problem.
These attributes of Specsavers allow the brand to have such a solid personality making it easier for the brand’s customers to associate with the brand. Specsavers has worked hard upon giving its brand these attributes. There are numerous strategies adopted by the business that have attributed these personality factors to the brand.
Brand positioning is a combination of both rational and emotional appeals. However, emotional appeal of any brand is most central to the success of the brand. Emotional appeal by the brands helps in improving brand positioning and enabling brand loyalty (Rosenbaum-Elliott, Percy & Pervan, 2015). Emotional appeal of a brand theory believes that brands must communicate with their customers on an emotional level. No doubt that sharing the technical information of a brand is extremely important but at the same time, the emotional quotient depicted by the brand is what helps the brand relate to its customers.
A significant advantage of emotional appeal in branding is that it does not require a significant budget and hence is not limited to large brands with extensive marketing and advertising budgets. But at the same time, emotional appeal can be achieved through small gestures depicted by the brand through numerous channels of communication.
Source 3 Pinterest
Specsavers is a brand with a significant emotional appeal. There are various advertisements of the brand that depict the emotional side of the brand. Upon visiting a Specsavers store, it is common to be greeted by polite professionals who would always be willing to take an extra effort in fixing customer’s eye problems. As a brand, Specsavers understands the importance and significance of eye wear. Therefore despite offering their products on a lower price, the company never compromises on quality.
Their tagline ‘Your eyesight matters’, ‘Now you can believe your eyes’ and ‘Local Eye care nationwide’ are the brand’s efforts to appeal to their customers in an emotional manner. The fact that the brand has different advertisements and different taglines in order to target the youth and the elderly depict their emotional appeal.
Such an emotional appeal of a brand impacts the consumers’ behavior and helps brands build an emotional connect with its customers (Brown, 2016). The emotional aspect of the brand influences customers and reaches out to them in a manner which is different and better from price, product quality or product need. With an emotional appeal, brands form a connection with the customers and hence improve customer relationships.
Humans or the customers of a particular brand build the brand and not the company. This statement is a whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is the consumers who decide how a particular brand will be perceived and how exactly will that brand be positioned in the minds of the consumers. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps brands in understanding consumer needs and hence helps businesses in branding their products in an effective manner.
Source 4: Simply Psychology
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs focuses on five needs which the brand aims to fulfill for its consumers in a hierarchical manner (Anderson, 2014). Specsavers aims to fulfill these needs identified of its consumer segments and works towards molding its offerings in order to suit these needs and demands. For all the people with a poor eyesight, Specsavers aims to fulfill basic safety needs. By targeting elders of the society and demonstrating concern for their eye sight, Specsavers aims to fulfill social needs. Lastly, with a few newly introduced high end products, Specsavers aims to fulfill esteem needs of customers.
There are various strategies that Specsavers has adopted in order to apply these theories and reach out their target market. These strategies include:
Positioning of a particular product refers to the image that the product has in the minds of its consumers. Positioning of a product plays a vital role in impacting consumer’s behavior towards the particular product (Solomon, Dahl & White, 2014). Specsavers has put tremendous efforts in setting the right positioning for their products. This positioning has enabled customers to set the desired image of the product.
Product positioning is accomplished through various strategies including advertisements, social media presence and marketing of the product done by the business (Nylén & Holmström, 2015). Specsavers has always focused on positioning its products as young, fashionable, trendy, affordable and of great quality. Therefore the brand is now recognized by these attributes. Through various advertising campaigns, Specsavers has positioned the brand as a smart choice for customers. This is helped people associate smartness with Specsavers.
Television advertisements are the most effective way to reach out to a large audience of people (Shkedi, 2017). Television is the convenient form of communicating with ‘family audience’. Over many years, advertising has been used as a tool to influence consumer’s behavior and their buying preferences. Innovative and often influential adverts have been introduced by leading brands in order to lure customers into buying the products.
These advertisements are aimed at gaining consumer attention and improving customer sales which further leads to increased purchases. Through advertisments Specsavers has been successful in giving personality attributes to their brand as well as providing an emotional appeal in reaching out to their customers.
“Should have gone to Specsavers” advertisements of the brand created waves when it was first introduced to the market. The advertisement depicts that going to Specsavers is a smart and intelligent way of fixing one’s eye sight. This idea made people relate with the brand and people started using the statement in their everyday lives. Such is the impact of effective advertisments the
The Specsavers stores across the globe are designed in the manner to provide customers with a 360 degree consultation regarding eye care. The store have experts to check eyes, consultants to guide through an everyday eye routine and the stores are even equipped with all forms of eye care products including glasses, contact lenses, eye solutions, medicinal drops, sun glasses and eye hearing aids. This infrastructure, design and competency of the store positively influences customer behavior by impacting brand’s positioning and attributing to the brand’s personality.
Every time a customer visits a Specsavers store (which is strategically located at the center of the city), the customer can expect to be treated politely and patiently by leading experts who will do their best in assisting the customer get the right solution to his or her eye care problem. The store also offers consultation free of charge and recommends customers to visit again after 6 months for a better analysis. This keen interest in the customer’s eye solution helps in building trust and positively influences consumers’ behavior and attitude towards the brand.
Social media has become an increasingly relevant platform to advertise brands and reach out to a large number of customers (Tuten & Solomon, 2017). Specsavers has an active presence across social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Through these platforms, Specsavers has attempted at influencing consumer behavior and enhancing brand reputation across the same audience.
Specsavers advertisements across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are aimed an engaging audience, understanding their needs and working towards offering them the same. Through effective social media channels, people have started engaging with the brands and built an image of the brand in their minds. Through social media, Specsavers has been able to establish itself as an affordable, fashionable and coming of age brand which its target customers associate well with.
There are various advantages of applying these consumer behavior theories into practice by Specsavers. The results obtained by applying these theories are as below:
Given the current market trends and the frequency with which these trends change, it is fair to assume that the industry, its consumers and their behavior will continue to change with their evolving needs and demands. Few trends which are expected to influence consumer behavior and this product category are as below:
Conclusion
Consumer behavior is an essential part of an organization’s marketing strategies. The idea behind understanding consumers’ behavior is to analyze their needs and demands and mold the business’s offerings in order to suit the same (Zhang & Benyoucef, 2016). Through this report, the need and the impact of consumer behavior has been analyzed with the leading optical retail chain of the UK, Specsavers.
Specsavers has been influencing consumer needs by attributing various characteristics to the brand’s personality, using an emotional appeal to target audience and aiming to satiate their changing needs as well as aiming to fulfill their safety and esteem needs. The brand has strategically made use of its social media platform, in store operations, television advertisements and other sources of customer communication to reinstate these theories.
Applying consumer behavior theories not only helps brands in understanding and rightly identifying the changing needs of their customers, but also assists them in influencing these demands to the brand’s advantage. Therefore, in this era of increasing competition, effective implementation of consumer behavior theories can assist brands in gaining consumers as well as gaining a competitive advantage over other industry players.
References
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Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Brown, S., 2016. Brands and branding. Sage.
East, R., Singh, J., Wright, M. and Vanhuele, M., 2016. Consumer behaviour: Applications in marketing. Sage.
Jaakkola, E. and Alexander, M., 2014. The role of customer engagement behavior in value co-creation: a service system perspective. Journal of Service Research, 17(3), pp.247-261.
Kenrick, L., 2017. How Humor Sells (Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds).
Kim, P., Vaidyanathan, R., Chang, H. and Stoel, L., 2017. Using brand alliances with artists to expand retail brand personality. Journal of Business Research.
Kotabe, M. and Helsen, K., 2014. Global marketing management.
MacInnis, D.J., Park, C.W. and Priester, J.W., 2014. Handbook of brand relationships. Routledge.
Maehle, N. and Supphellen, M., 2015. Advertising strategies for brand image repair: The effectiveness of advertising alliances. Journal of Marketing Communications, 21(6), pp.450-462.
Nylén, D. and Holmström, J., 2015. Digital innovation strategy: A framework for diagnosing and improving digital product and service innovation. Business Horizons, 58(1), pp.57-67.
Rosenbaum-Elliott, R., Percy, L. and Pervan, S., 2015. Strategic brand management. Oxford University Press, USA.
Shkedi, R., INTENT IQ LLC, 2017. Targeted television advertisements based on online behavior. U.S. Patent 9,813,778.
Solomon, M.R., Dahl, D.W. and White, 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Pearson.
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
Venter, P., Wright, A. and Dibb, S., 2015. Performing market segmentation: a performative perspective. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(1-2), pp.62-83.
YouTube, 2018. ‘Specsavers advertisments’. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDwK_AUk0FI&t=13s. Retrieved on 21 March, 2018.
Zhang, K.Z. and Benyoucef, M., 2016. Consumer behavior in social commerce: A literature review. Decision Support Systems, 86, pp.95-108.
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