An examination into the long-term characteristics of market share non-stationarity
The thesis tracks whether market share growth and decline remain stationary and how the brands grow and decline over a long period. It used big data of around 649 consumer package goods (CPG) categories and 3,899 brands that remained in the market from 2009 to 2019. The thesis provides marketing practitioners with many important insights. First, the findings highlight the importance of launching new brands in the low-competition categories, where brands do not have much difference in their market shares. Second, managers need to execute long-term marketing strategies to maintain their share growth by increasing the number of category buyers and avoiding investment in the categories that lose the size of their overall sales. Finally, the findings debunk the myths of the effectiveness of promotions and frequently changing the unit price by showing its inefficiency in growing a brand’s market share over a long period.
A replication and extension of unbearable lightness of buying
A business’s success in managing its brand sales and driving brand growth depends on understanding the purchasing behaviour of all buyer groups. Previous research has prioritised heavy buyers, as they contribute significantly to the brand and category sales (Anesbury et al. 2020; McCarthy & Winer 2019; Rungie et al. 2002). However, recent studies (Dawes et al. 2022; Graham et al. 2017; Graham & Kennedy 2022) reveal that most buyers are ultra-light over the longer term (i.e., five years) and account for around 40% of sales. This study aims to replicate and extend these findings to gain a deeper understanding of the long-term behaviour of ultra-lightbuyers, building on the work of Dawes et al. (2022).
Understanding the Effects of Branded Paid Search Advertising: The Case of Direct-to-Consumer (Online-Only DTC) Brands
This research looks at the effects of stopping branded paid search advertising for small online-only Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) brands on sessions, transactions, and sales. Over the nine experiments, our results show no effect of stopping branded paid search advertising on the critical dependent variables mentioned above. That suggests that small online-only DTC brands would be better off spending their money on alternative online growth strategies, such as improving organic search results (SEO), buying generic search terms, or buying online display ads, rather than on branded paid search advertising.
A Review of Offline and Online Brand Presence Measures
Past research has presented frameworks of existing definitions and measures of physical availability, albeit not necessarily focusing on the brand presence element of it. There is also no evidence to suggest the information reported in these studies was gathered through a systematic review of marketing literature or based on a direct appraisal of managers’ views. Additionally, these studies did not delineate and compare the offline and online domains.
To address these issues, this thesis includes two studies: Study 1 is a systematic literature review (SLR) conducted to identify existing offline and online brand presence measures. Study 2 is based on the results of an online survey targeting over 50 marketing practitioners from different consumer good categories and countries. The survey examined respondents’ awareness, use and perceived level of usefulness of the measures identified in Study 1.
The inventory of offline and online brand presence measures this thesis created can assist academics and practitioners to find, evaluate and compare indicators of this important driver of brand growth ‘all in one place’. Besides forming an epistemological base for future research endeavours on the topic, the list can guide managers to understand and track brand presence in different domains, adding confidence to multi- channel and omni-channel practices.
Using Double Jeopardy to Forecast Small Brand Growth
Small brands have proliferated in recent years in certain markets. This has led to a surge in interest in understanding how small brands grow. Industry and (some) academic publications claim that ‘niche’ positioning strategies - described as aiming for unequivocal loyalty from a handful of specially targeted consumers - best situates a small brand for growth. However, this challenges the widely observed empirical pattern known as Double Jeopardy, which illustrates that growth is actually achieved more so through penetration than loyalty. Double Jeopardy shows that true ‘niche’ brands are those that achieve ‘niche’ outcomes by acquiring excess loyalty than what is expected for their brand size. This is one of five known deviations from Double Jeopardy, along with its counterpart ‘change-of-pace’ or deficit loyalty. Furthermore, there is also evidence to show that benchmarking a small brand against the Double Jeopardy line could indicate the future potential for share growth or decline.
Do brands that grow advertise differently to those that do not?
Market share stationarity is the norm in established categories and developed markets with growth (or decline) clearly the exception. Nonetheless, growth targets remain common practice in business and marketing plans.
Advertising is a key scalable tool and one of the large budget items marketers have to help achieve growth. Yet there is limited generalisable evidence and knowledge to inform how much to spend on advertising and how to allocate budgets across media and time. The purpose of this study is to understand whether growing brands advertise differently to non-growing brands, with a focus specifically on advertising budgeting and media planning.
NOTE: The appendices for this Thesis are too large to post on the website. Please contact the Institute to obtain a full copy.
Benchmarking branding practices in the Australian wine industry
The Australian wine industry consists of a plethora of brands and contains a myriad of possible choice cues, i.e. brand name, variety, region, year, country of origin (COO), and awards. Consumers find choosing a wine to be a complex decision, therefore they rely on wine attributes to help provide them with knowledge of the product before trying it, and to make a purchase decision. Variety, region, and brand are frequently found to be the top three extrinsic wine attributes for consumers in Australia. Although this research is extensive, spanning multiple countries and different buying conditions e.g. retail versus on- premise, much of the research either uses an experimental design and limits branding to the brand name only. Branding literature characterises a brand as not just the brand name but as all the associations the brand has. Fundamentally, branding can be categorised into two types: direct branding – the brand name; - and indirect branding – logo images, fonts, and colours. These elements assist consumers in identifying a brand on shelf, which is vital in the cluttered wine category.
This research, therefore, will provide a descriptive understanding of the use of wine attributes and brand elements in the Australian wine industry. It will also provide insight into the relative importance of the attributes perceived by brand owners via the amount of space (prominence) they are given on label.
Investigating the cross-category purchasing between brand extensions
Brand extensions occur when a brand launches a product in a different product category and is a way of capitalising upon successful brand names. Several studies have shown that users of a brand express intentions to purchase extensions at a higher rate than non-users. The problem with these results, however, is they have been developed using attitudinal measures, rather than behavioural ones. This thesis intends to bridge this literature gap by using behavioural data to analyse whether the buyers of a brand in one category purchase extensions at a higher rate than non-brand buyers.
A previous study by Mundt (2011) had a similar purpose, however the study held limitations, such as categorising brands by their corporate brand and category pairings analysed being the same category. This thesis aims to replicate and extend this study to increase the understanding and generalisability of these findings.
As brand extensions are said to positively impact choice of the brand, this thesis aims to understand whether this occurs in market.
The value of a brand: A wine retailer’s perspective
The wine retail landscape in Australia has changed dramatically over the last five years. Two major players have formed a duopoly, collectively acquiring 63% of the liquor retail market (IBIS World 2017a).
This thesis seeks to uncover insights for industry practitioners and academia in the Australian wine retail sector by identifying:
1. The relative importance of branding in wine retailer decision-making (compared to the region and other factors);
2. The processes (i.e. stocking, delisting and replacement) wine retailers follow when making decisions;
3. The breadth of factors considered in each process; and
4. Whether the factors and processes followed by wine retailers differ depending on
the store type
Understanding the value of memory metrics in brand health tracking research
To account for marketing performance, marketers need reliable and valid metrics to monitor progress on their brand building activities.
Many marketers of large brands spend a considerable amount of time and portion of their research budget measuring and monitoring Consumer-based Brand Equity to inform their brand managerial decisions. The challenge however is that CBBE is multidimensional (Aaker, 1996), and there are many traditional and proprietary metrics proposed to capture this concept.
This thesis aims to increase understanding in this area by investigating the metrics’ diagnostic and prognostic ability from two perspectives: (1) interviewing expert practitioners on their views, experiences and practices regarding the value of these metrics and (2) a quantitative assessment of the performance of memory metrics using a commercial, longitudinal brand tracking data from two consumer packaged goods categories.
