Brand Attitudes of Brand Loyals of Beauty Soaps

A customer’s brand loyalty on the basis of brand attitudes towards a specific product depends on the product’s relevant benefits provided by the company, the brand’s perceived ability to provide the benefits as well as on the uniqueness of the product. Beauty soap is a necessary product.

Customers purchase the product normally for skin friendliness, less use of quantity, anti-bacteria etc. benefits. Some beauty soaps including Lux, Meril, Keya are available in Bangladesh. All of these brands are exposed to advertisement.

The attitude of a brand loyal customers to these brands or to its attributes is very important to the company for advertisement design and thereby their sales and profit. Buyers usually buy product when they are motivated by any purchase motivations. For the purpose of this study brand attitudes were measured by benefit composition. The purchase motivations can be linked with the benefits of the product in the category of need.

For example, if consumers’ purchase motivation is problem removal (bad smell from mouth) can be linked to the fresh mouth texture benefit for the toothpaste.In this study target audiences has been grouped into four categories. They are New Category users (NCU), Brand Loyals (BL), Brand Switchers (BS), and Other Brand Loyals (OBL). BLs are very important for companies’ profitability in the sense that the profit of a brand product does not come from the mass market but from the brand’s most loyal users – the relatively small proportion of the households that accounts for large percent of sales volume. Thus the company should concentrate on the BL customers.

Normally the customers want some benefit from the brand products.In case of beauty soap the benefits are aroma, skin friendliness, various colors, various sizes, attractive package, less use of quantity, reasonable price and anti-bacteria. Therefore, a customer’s brand loyalty on the basis of brand attitudes towards specific product depends on the product’s relevance benefit provided by a particular brand, the brand perceived ability to provide the benefit as well as on the uniqueness of the product. 1. 1 Origin of the Report This report has been originated as the fulfillment of “Project writing/Internship” course of the BBA program.

I had to prepare this report under the supervision of Mr.Syed Habib Anwar Pasha, lecturer of Faculty of Business Administration of Eastern University. I hope this report will give a clear idea about the brand attitudes of brand loyals of beauty soaps and their adverting implications. 1. 2 Problem Statement Brand attitudes of brand loyals of beauty soaps and their adverting implications are unknown. 1.

3 Justification Customers’ attitudes towards a brand are very important to a company in sales and profit terms. Beside this, the attitude of a brand loyal customer to the brand or its attributes is very important to the company for advertisement design and thereby their sales and profit.That’s why it is necessary to identify brand attitudes of brand loyals of beauty soaps and their adverting implications. 1. 4 Literature Review Brand Attitude: Brand attitude refers to the buyer’s overall evaluation of the brand with respect to its perceived ability to meet currently relevant motivation.

Brand attitude consists of logical benefits called cognitive component guiding the buyer’s behavior. It is also associated with emotional feeling of the buyers called affective component energizing buyer’s behavior. Brand Loyals:Brand loyals are the customers who are attitudinally and behaviorally loyal to a brand and purchase the brand repeatedly. Brand Switchers: Brand switchers are the customers who change brands occasionally. Other Brand Loyals: Other brand switchers are the customers who do not use the brand but buy competitive brand. Benefit: Benefits are product attributes that the buyers want.

Benefits are the ‘Surface means” used in advertisement and promotion offers to connect the brand with a motivation and thus influence brand attitude (Rossister-1987). Benefit Composition Rule:Brand attitudes can be measured by benefit composition. Benefit composition rule describes how the buyer combines benefits in mentally arriving at an attitude toward the brand. This procedure makes the managers understand how the benefits of products should be handled. Benefit composition rule identifies the unique benefits, equal benefits and inferior benefits across the brand.

Accordingly advertisement campaign can be designed. According to benefit composite rule, brand attitude is measured by the following formula (Rossister, 1989). Abs = ( Bbis IisWhere Abs = Brand attitude Bbis = Benefit belief (delivery) for the brand Iis = Relevance weight (importance) on benefit Uniqueness is indicated by the variance of Bbis across brand. If Bbis equal across the brand, then there is no uniqueness. 1. 5 Objectives of the Report Broad Objective: The broad objective of the study was to measure brand attitudes of brand loyal customers of beauty soaps to identify the advertisement implications.

Specific Objective: The specific objectives were: --- To measure the attitudes of brand loyals of Lux, Meril and Keya beauty soap, -- to provide guideline for advertising campaign, --- to identify the benefits of beauty soap , --- to determine the importance of the benefits of beauty soap and --- to determine the brand belief (delivery) of beauty soap 1. 6 Scope of the Report I am very fortunate that I could work on this topic. I have had an opportunity to gather knowledge by working on this report. The area of concentration of this report is confined in investigating brand attitudes of brand loyals of beauty soaps, uniqueness of brands and their advertising implications. .Limitations I have faced some barriers for making a complete and perfect report.

These barriers limitations, which hinder my work, are as follows: . I was placed for only 3 months of time. The time span was not sufficient enough. Therefore, it was very difficult to carry out the whole analysis.

. I have done two other courses with this (Project writing/Internship) course, which hindered the opportunity to put me the full effort for this study. . During data collection, some respondents have showed their unwillingness to answer.

. 8 Methodology The methodology of the study including sample selection, data namely collection, data analysis, etc. is being detailed below. Sample Brands: A number of beauty soaps are available in the market. Such as, Lux, Meril, Keya, Arometic, Tibbet, Cosco etc.

Out of these available brands Lux, Meril and Keya have higher demand, continuous supply and higher sales. Thus these brands were selected for the purpose of the study. Sample Respondents: The sample population is not the whole target group rather only a part of it.The target groups can be classified as new category users, brand loyals, brand switchers, and other brand users.

Out of the four categories, for the purpose of this study, the population has been narrowed down to the brand loyals. The brand loyals of the selected beauty soaps living in the Dhaka metropolitan area were the population. So, data were collected from the respondents only if they were the brand loyals of any one of the three selected brands. Sample Size: The sample size was 90 brands loyals consisting of 30 from each brand.

Sampling Technique: Convenience sampling. Data Sources: Data were collected mainly from primary sources. The respondents were the primary source of data. Personal interviews were conducted to collect data from the respondents by using a structured questionnaire.

Besides; some supplementary data were collected from secondary sources. These were books and web sites. Data Collection Procedure and Instrument: Data were collected using a formal structured questionnaire and through personal face-to-face interviews. Brand attitude measurement procedure:As stated earlier, the brand attitude is measured based on the overall evaluation of the benefits. Benefit composition rule that measures brand attitude of a particular motivational state was used for this purpose.

This benefit composition model was also favored by some scholars (Tucker, 1960; Wilkel and Edgar, 1973,Myers et al. 1968). According to benefit composite rule, brand attitude is measured by the following formula (Rossister, 1989). Abs = ( Bbis Iis Where Abs = Brand Attitude Bbis = Benefit belief (delivery) for the brand Iis = Relevance weight (importance) on benefitsUniqueness is indicated by the variance of Bbis across brand.

If Bbis equal across the brand, then there is no uniqueness. Data analysis: The analysis was done in light the analysis procedure used for measurement procedure of attitude used by Rossiter (1987). 2. 0 Findings The findings of the empirical research have been reported in this section. The benefits of the three brands of beauty soap, the relative importance of the benefits, the brand attitudes of the buyers, and the advertisement instrument that the managers of these companies should design etc. ave been accommodated as detailed below.

Determining the Brand Benefits of the Beauty Soaps: The benefits of the beauty soap of three brands under study were found similar to the brand loyals (BLs) of three brands. However, the perceived importance of the benefits differs across BLs.