Understanding and predicting new line extension success
The practice of capturing more business and growing brands through launching new products continues to reign. Thousands of new consumer products are launched each year, equating to a new launch every two minutes in the United States. A common belief is that 80% of new products fail. While the actual failure rate is much lower at 40%, success is rarely guaranteed. Brands make decisions about allocating resources to shorten the odds of success, but these resources are often limited, and priorities are needed. This leads to two broad questions: 1) ‘How do successful new products perform?’ and 2) ‘When are they more successful?’.
This thesis documents the success of new line extensions (NLEs) on key performance indicators and investigates key marketing conditions in NLE success.
NOTE: The full version of this Thesis is not yet available to be shared. We will post it to the website soon.
Evolution, Not Revolution! An Investigation Into How To Effectively Redesign Consumer Packaged Products
It is widely accepted that branding and consumer packaging design is important to meet marketing objectives. However, 9 out of 10 redesigns fail to deliver a meaningful sales lift. This thesis investigates the factors that influence success, key drivers of redesign similarity, and consumer responses to redesigns. In total, this research includes 1336 old and new images of redesigns from 744 brands in 25 categories across the globe. This thesis has three studies. The first aims to establish the extent to which newly redesigned packaging is similar to previous designs. The second explores the factors (such as; advertising, research, redesign, brand and managerial) which could contribute to a successful redesign. The final study investigates the relationships between modernity, likeability, familiarity, and purchase intent of packaging redesigns.
Sisters, not Twins. An Investigation of Visual Brand Identity Cohesion across a Product Portfolio
In today’s cluttered marketing environment visual brand identity is a crucial means to differentiate a brand from its competitors. Comprising clear, proprietary cues, the purpose of brand identity is to unify disparate brand elements in a manner that feels seamless to consumers. Representing both an opportunity and a threat to building a brand’s identity are line extensions, that is, when a product is launched under an existing brand name into the same category.
To communicate a strong visual brand identity, all products within a portfolio need to be connected to one another in terms of design. It is this unified visual message that enables consumers to perceive the products as members of a single brand family. A crucial means to achieve this cohesion is the visual similarity of Distinctive Brand Assets such as logos, colours, shapes, typefaces, characters, and styles. When effectively built and linked to the brand, these brand assets act as powerful mnemonic devices to improve brand learning, retention and accessibility from memory. Akin to a mental short cut, well established Distinctive Assets form heuristic devices that help shoppers to find their brands on-shelf.
This thesis presents three studies which investigate the coherence of visual brand identity, as well as key drivers of fragmentation, across products in a branded portfolio. In total, the scope of this research spans over 2100 products from 211 brands in 11 categories and three markets.
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.
Does Size Matter? Assessing brand portfolio size and its relationship with penetration and sales
The thesis investigates the relationship between brand portfolio size, that is, the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs) within the portfolio, and brand performance in-market in terms of the number of buyers and sales.
To what extent does cross category loyalty exist for brand extensions?
The focus of this thesis is loyalty to brand extensions across categories and is entitled, "To what extent does cross-category loyalty exist for brand extensions?" Using duplication of purchase analysis, this thesis quantitatively examines consumer loyalty to brand extensions available in FMCG categories using panel data from TNS, the world’s largest custom research group. This thesis provides supporting empirical evidence to show that customers who purchase a parent brand in the original category are actually more likely to purchase the brand in the extended category. Using duplication analysis, this research measures the level of customer sharing that occurs for brand extensions across a wide range of categories (34 were incorporated into the research).
