Image enhanced - sales increased

tegut... learned of its strengths and weaknesses by means of a customer survey and successfully implemented the results

THE CHALLENGE

tegut... gute Lebensmittel, the trade company, has more than 300 branches in Hesse, Thurinjin, Bavaria and Lower Saxony. In 1998, the trade lines "ha we ge" and "okay!", which, up to that point, were run independently, were integrated into the tegut... brand. Both names were firmly anchored among the customers. At the same time, the name tegut... had to be equally established on the market by means of suitable advertising and publications. In 2002, the management wanted to find out whether the message had got home.

Soft factors
Buying decisions are largely unconscious and made on the basis of emotional criteria. This needed to be ascertained. "We finally wanted to know and understand - in black and white - why our customers buy from us, how they see us and why they buy some things from the competition", said Thomas Gutberlet, Marketing Manager and grandson of the company founder, Theo Gutberlet. nextpractice GmbH was chosen as the investigation partner.

THE SOLUTION

nextpractice used the nextexpertizer interview and analysis method for the image analysis. 100 people, half tegut... customers and half customers of competing companies, were interviewed about their buying habits and various shops.

nextexpertizer is a qualitative method with which unconscious and emotional buying criteria can also be measured. This is an open method where the interviewees can express themselves completely freely. Nevertheless, the answers can be quantified in the same way as a questionnaire method.

The interview partners compare a series of elements with each other and describe similarities and differences in their own words. In this case, the elements were the tegut... supermarkets, the relevant competitive supermarkets, including Rewe, Edeka-Neukauf, Aldi and the "bakery next door", including value elements such as "ideal shop", for example.

THE RESULTS

The company learned that it had already succeeded in positioning tegut... as a brand. The special strengths of the brand lay in the well-being dimensions: Atmosphere and merchandising, friendliness and efficiency of the personnel, organisation and smart appearance.

However, there was clearly also a gap in the customer perception: it was not apparent, in particular to non-customers, whether and to what extent, tegut... offered special deals and low prices.

On the basis of the results, tegut... decided to put out a stronger "good food" message. At the same time, it wanted to increase perception of special offers, discounts and price reductions.

In a workshop in which the nextmoderator moderation method was used and comprised of directors from all branches, the participants devised specific measures. Among others, these measures concerned merchandising, advertising strategies and the involvement of employees.

The measures were not only implemented, but soon showed effects. According to tegut..., sales have increased considerably since then. "We have definitely gained new customers", said Gutberlet.

With emotional brand loading (ebl), the emotional strength of the brand becomes measurable

THE CHALLENGE

Following a merger, Bremer Nordmilch AG had some 30 brands to manage. The German market leader, with 4.5 billion litres of milk processed each year, decided to undergo a fundamental examination and re-working of its brand strategy.
 
Positioned as a national umbrella brand, Milram should expand and open itself to new market segments. Under this umbrella, the various sub-brands, such as Frühlingsquark, Burlander or Vitality should be able to develop their own targeted markets.
 
Which position is still available?
Preliminary analyses indicated that the Milram umbrella brand stands for values such as reliability, expertise and high quality, but in contrast to its sub-brands, lacks emotional loading. This meant that an emotional positioning niche had to be found.

THE SOLUTION
 
Nordmilch decided to undergo nextpractice's innovative emotional brand loading (ebl) procedure. This is a specific adaptation of the nextexpertizer interview and analysis tool.
 
New directions in brand analysis
Nordmilch marketing director Ernst-Günther Jörn describes the decision to implement ebl so: "We wanted to make use of a market-analysis instrument that, unlike traditional image evaluations, doesn't scale but rather highlights and includes real life and decision-making reasons."
 
Qualitative surveys - quantifiable and representative results
The special thing about it: ebl does not dictate terms of characterisation. Rather, the interviewed have the opportunity to create their own brand world, individually, intuitively and in their own words. The technique allows quantification of qualitative, emotional attitudes. Soft factors become the explicit basis for decision making. The complexity of the aspects linked to the brand by those interviewed is illustrated by the evaluation of the interviews in a unique multi-dimensional form: the emotional space.
 
The investigation not only clarified Milram's position in relation to competitive brands and products in the dairy sector, it also covered emotional niches in the market for future brand management and advertising strategies.

THE RESULTS 

The interviews underline Milram's known brand properties while revealing deficits in the realization of emotional factors. 

Emotional strengths-and-weaknesses profile
The consumers named attributes such as "low-key", "conservative" and "been there before". They described the strengths with words such as "sensual", "pleasant", "enjoyable", "soft and flowing". Milram still proved to be relatively bland, but rich in potential for opening up new fields. The examination provided a host of valuable information for the advertising and PR agency. It went far beyond the development of a pure umbrella-brand strategy. Amongst the individual competitive brands, it was possible to detect distinctly different complementary profiles with pronounced emotional loading. The results presented the advertising strategists with new challenges. 

Implementation in the advertising strategy
Nordmilch quickly turned the results of the ebl investigation into definite action. A gap was detected the area "feel good". "We created the slogan ´Milram...essen für´s ich´ which conveys every meaning associated with the idea of "feel good", such as 'tastes good', 'good for you' and 'healthy'", explains Nordmilch marketing director Ernst-Günther Jörn.

A recipe for a successful product relaunch.

THE CHALLENGEA pharmaceutics company is planning to re-launch a drug. What is the existing drug's market position from the perspective of the doctors who prescribe it? What medical and emotional motivators and barriers exist in regard to the existing product within the range of drugs?Current position and possible lines of developmentThe company reqires a detailed strength / weakness analysis of the existing product compared to the competition. Especially those hard to measure intuitive attitudes and emotional assessments should be surveyed and shown. In this way, the marketing department wishes to find positioning gaps and options for designing the re-launch.

THE SOLUTION

The company's market research department defines a selected group of specialists for interview by nextpractice using the laptop-aided analysis tool nextexpertizer.
The section consists equally of doctors who regularly prescribe the drug and those who do not.

Next-generation medicines
Apart from the re-launched drug and the client, the interviewed is required to also evaluate seven rival products and three rival manufacturers plus assessment elements such as "medicine I would take myself" or "medicine my patient expects". Via the ?next generation medicine? comparison element, the survey should provide insights into innovation potential.

Naming the critical factors for success
The survey technique allows participants to freely describe and select the assessment criteria to provide the basis for a detailed strength / weakness profile.

The market positions of the assessed drugs are depicted by the dimensions in the assessment space. Proximity and distance decide over similarity or difference in the drugs' assessment. The sum of the subjective concepts named by the interviewed, reflects their success-critical rational and irrational decision-making factors.

THE RESULTS

The client receives detailed information of how the interviewed rank his product. Their freely developed descriptive profile sheds light on arising topics - such as side effects and pricing, but also trustworthiness, dynamics and esprit as well as sales staff presentation and patient information. Through the expressive results, the client can see how his product performs and can analyse the reasons in relation to other products. The assessment not only provides information about the perception of comparative products, but also about the competitor himself.

The myth of rational action
The surprising result: only about 60 percent of all free descriptions are purely factual and of a medical nature. The remaining statements have a strong emotional character. Next to rational descriptions such as "reliable, experienced, fast-acting, few side effects", emotional definitions such as "lively, implausible, power" dominate. or even professionally unrelated associations such as "party dress, has a dot over the i", "more form than substance" or "slow waltz".

A high level of emotional loading endows market share
The investigation showed that medicines with a high level of emotional loading also gained larger market shares. The resulting ranking order gained from the subjective perceptions of the interviewed doctors proved almost identical to the actual sales figures of each of the individual medicines. Finding: emotional "soft" factors play a far greater role than previously assumed, not only in the purchase of OTC medicines, but also in the choice of prescription drugs.

Analysis of the emotion brand loading of over-the-counter (OTC) medicines.

The advertising agency BMZ!FCA wants to determine the emotional loading of a range of product brands, but also of umbrella brands.

Which intuitive values and notions are important to normal people? What do they think of this or that brand? On which undeliberated, irrational emotions do consumers base their - real - decisions to buy specific products?

Within the scope of a pilot study, amonsgt others, the popular OTC pain killers ratiopharm (ASS-ratiopharm) and Aspirin were to be assessed. How do they differ? Where are they similarly received? Which dimensions play a part in the decision to buy?

THE SOLUTION

nextpractice surveys a group of consumers selected jointly with BMZ!FCA. Using the laptop-aided technique Emotional Brand Loading (ebl), they were interviewed on a range of brand names from various fields, amongst them, Aspirin and ratiopharm (ASS). ebl is a specific adaptation of the nextexpertizer tool. Intuitively and without prompting, the interviewed people spontaneously state what they ssociate with the paired brands.

THE RESULTS

Both brands are placed as reputable, confidence-inspiring trustmarks. The magazine "Lebensmittelzeitung" summarises the differences: "At second glance, however, clear differences are evident. The emotional loading contains more positive elements for ratiopharm. This is particularly noticeable for state of the art, simplicity, activation and liking. Aspirin receives more positive emotion for trustworthiness and integrity. According to this, Aspirin is considered to be the respectable classic, the strength of which is deemed to be tradition. At the same time, the negative statements include the term 'old-fashioned'."

The ebl detail analysis shows a sophisticated picture of differently spread positive and negative loading for the subjects named most often by those surveyed (compare fig.):

The result of the study: the emotional, "soft" factors play an important role in the purchasing of OTC-medicines. Using the emotional brand loading procedure, these factors become measurable and comparable.