tài liệu marketing - u&a

Description
The U&A, or ‘usage and attitude study’, to give it its correct title, is a large piece of strategic research. The term is often mis-used or over-
used to mean an annual check on awareness and a few image statements.
One of its main uses is to set the overall objectives for a brand or company. It is the route to help answer the question ‘where are we
going?’ in the planning process, and can also help with the question of ‘how do we get there?’.
At one point BMW was on the verge of financial collapse, and was rescued by an investment group. The newly appointed Chief Executive
recognized that there was an unexploited sector of the car market – a sporty saloon car. He led the strategy to produce a range of cars with a sporty
image and good performance. This strategy has remained broadly similar since that time, although the marketing plans have changed over time. The
piece of research that would have helped the Chief Executive is a usage & attitude Study. Assuming the right questions were asked, it would have
shown BMW the missing link.
The usage and attitude study is perhaps the most important piece of research that can be conducted. The actions that are taken based on
information from it should determine market and brand strategy. As such it is important to spend time in setting up this piece of research.
Objectives of conducting a Usage & Attitude Study The information a U&A provides can be taken from alternative perspectives.
From a marketing perspective a U&A will be conducted to give a full analysis of the brand(s) in which the company operates, specifically:
o how is the market made up
o The sector(s) in which brands operate
o Key characteristics of brand users (and non-users), - total, heavy users, lapsed users etc
o Usage patterns and reasons why consumers choose brands
o Analysis of brands’ strengths, weaknesses and points of difference
The data coming out of a U&A can be used for a variety of needs, including:
 Marketing plans information
 Brand fact book
 Strategic for brand positioning
 New product/concept development (identifying gaps)
 Competitive threats (SWOT analysis)
From a research perspective, objectives may be two-fold, based on the brand and the consumer.
Brand
 To determine consumers’ perceptions of the structure of the market, how it is segmented and which brands comprise each sector
 To examine consumer motivations for buying or rejecting sectors and brands
 To give detailed information on purchasing and usage patterns
 To investigate image strengths and weaknesses of each sector and major brands

 To understand how brand values translate across different product categories/sectors
Consumer
 How well does the market and specific brands provide products which meet key consumer sectors’ needs and wants
 To investigate how media is consumed and thus how to target media

Methodology
The main research must be quantitative in order to be statistically robust. However, unless there is extremely good qualitative information
that can assist development of the questionnaire it is essential to conduct some initial qualitative research in order to help design the quantitative
phase. It is extremely easy to put together a questionnaire for a U&A or other piece of research based on ‘accepted wisdom’. This runs the risk of
exacerbating any mis-held views within the company and potentially hiding any new insights.
A small-scale piece of qualitative research conducted initially will help with the following:
 Exploring behaviour within the market (usage as well as purchase)
 Discovering consumers’ attitudes towards the market and brands, whether rational or irrational
 Understand the depth of feeling about specific issues to do with the market/brands
 Gauging how consumers recognise the brands (name, packaging, colour etc) which will help decide what stimulus materials are required
The main phase of quantitative research will:
 Measure all aspects of behaviour, including brand penetration, usage patterns, loyalty to sectors and brands, key demographics
 Provide a detailed image profile of all key brands
 Gauge the importance of different factors in influencing brand choice
 Develop a robust segmentation of consumers for use in brand targeting and new product development
Before the main quantitative fieldwork the agency should pilot the questionnaire. Various agencies have different ways of doing this, but the main
objective is to test the questionnaire on a few true respondents (not agency executives) for length, sense and flow. This should only take a few days to
do and will ensure that your questionnaire will answer your objectives sensibly.
There are a limited number of research agencies that have the capabilities to conduct qualitative and quantitative research and have the
statistical prowess to unravel the segmentation issues. As the most important part of the U&A is the quantitative stage, ensure that this agency is
brought on board first. You can ask them to work with a separate qualitative agency if this is necessary.
Although it is not feasible in some markets, using CAPI (computer assisted personal interviewing) for a U&A will greatly enhance the data.
CAPI will automatically direct interviewers to the correct next question, as routing within a U&A can be complex. If you want to ask different
questions of a sub-group of the market for example, this can be done easily using CAPI.

Sample
In most cases the sample for the quantitative stage of research will be nationally representative of household shoppers. This may well
comprise men as well as women as men are becoming more active shoppers in most countries.
You may consider having a total sample of those active in the market (for example, last three month buyers). If you do so you will not be
able to investigate how to draw new buyers into the market. The sample will eventually be decided based on your specific objectives of the study, but
as a general rule it is best to think widely around the area so that you can gain maximum value from analysis. You can easily analyse sub-groups of
the sample to investigate buyers if you go for a total population sample.
Sample size will have to be large in order to facilitate analysis and to ensure that you have robust numbers on which to perform, for
example, cluster analysis for segmentation. There is no ‘magic number’ for sample size. However a sample size of less than around 700 is unlikely to
be adequate. A sample size of 1000, for example, will give you 100 brand buyers of a brand with 10% penetration. In fact, sample sizes for U&A
studies are going up rather than down, as consumer choice in markets is greater and individual brand penetrations are declining.
A way of ensuring that you have sufficient brand buyers of a small but important brand is to boost the numbers of that brand’s users within
the total and the agency can then re-weight the data to take account of this. This assumes that you know the total penetration amongst the sample that
you are investigating. For detailed analysis a sample of 100 brand users should be achieved. However, be cautious about trying to reach a readable
base of too many minority brands as the cost will be higher for these groups (as they are harder to reach) and the re-weighting becomes very
complicated, leading to the possibility of error.
Sampling procedure by the agency is also important. You need to ensure that you have a representative sample. Therefore you cannot just
conduct fieldwork in the major cities, as this will not give a total picture. A simple quota sample will not generally be good enough for this research,
as interviewers tend to pick ‘average’ areas, ignoring high or low status districts. Ideally the agency should base the sample on a geo-demographic
database if this is available.

Timing
You do not need to conduct a U&A every year. Consumer attitudes change slowly on established brands and the segmentation that you
obtain is likely to be valid for some time. This is good, because a U&A is expensive and time consuming to conduct. You can generally leave at least
three years between studies. Awareness and usage figures may change slightly but unless something seismic happens within the market the main data
will sty the same. You can check basic awareness and usage data via a different study, perhaps using an Omnibus type of research. Omnibus research
tends to have good sampling and is very cost-effective for short questionnaires where you require large samples.
The only reason why you may need to repeat a U&A more frequently than every three years or so is if there is a very important change in
the market. For instance a new brand could be launched with a big media budget and gain awareness/ penetration very fast. Or something can happen
in an aligned market that may impact significantly on your market. This is the exception rather than the norm.

A well-conducted U&A takes several months to complete. It is an important study and it is essential to plan the time to get the best research.
It is essential to obtain proposals from different agencies, and once the agency has been chosen, to brief them formally to detail your objectives.
Analysis of a U&A takes longer than for other studies, as the segmentation side needs to be investigated thoroughly. Segmentation is an art as well as
a science and you need to be sure that the agency has the best solution for the market.
From writing the brief a typical timetable may run as follows, assuming no hold-ups:
Write brief for agencies
Week 1
Circulate and get internal approval
Week 2
Agency proposals received
Week 4
Face to face briefing meeting
Week 5
Qualitative phase – fieldwork
Week 7/8
Debrief on qualitative phase
Week 9
Agreement on questionnaire for quantitative phase
Week 10
Pilot fieldwork
Week 11
Main fieldwork
Weeks 12-14
Analysis
Weeks 15-17
Presentation of results
Week 18
Report
Week 20

Stimulus materials
It is likely that within the U&A you are going to ask awareness and usage of not only brand ranges, but also sub-brands and variants. You
need to check in the qualitative phase how consumers recognise brands. It is quite common for consumers to be confused about the brands and
varieties that they buy.
In the research you need to be sure that when a consumer says that they buy your brand that they actually are talking about your brand!
Therefore you will probably need to arrange for photographs of packs to be taken to show respondents. Although this is costly you will obtain much
better data on which to base your marketing plans. The ideal is to use 2"x2" (25cmx25cm) colour photographs and present them in a plastic see-
through wallet. This is also useful in a market where literacy is a problem. Your agency will help you in designing stimulus materials and may be
able to produce them.
If you are checking awareness of advertising it also helps to have stills of the ads. However, you must be careful not to over-burden
interviewers with too many pieces of paper as they will be interviewing on foot door-to-door in most cases.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire should capture all the major elements that you need to know about awareness, purchase, usage and behaviour of the
market in question. However, it is important that you do not include extraneous questions while developing thee questionnaire if it takes it over a
critical time period.
It is also easy to view your market with intense scrutiny, as it is important to you. However it is certainly less important to your brand
buyers and if you ask too much or too many details they will become bored and not think about the answers they give (known as ‘respondent
fatigue’). Therefore ensure that the image attributes are discrete and meaningfully different and do not ask everything you ever wanted to know about
a market. Be reasonable and critique the questionnaire.
As a general rule a U&A questionnaire should not take more than 30 minutes to implement. At a maximum it should take 45 minutes. The
longer the questionnaire, the more likely it is that you should incentives respondents. The size and nature of incentive depends on the local culture. In
some countries money is acceptable and even expected, whereas in others a gift is more normal.
The questionnaire will cover the following areas:
 Brand Awareness – spontaneous and prompted with showcards (photo prompts)
 Advertising awareness (and possibly some recall information if you do not have a separate advertising tracking study)
 Brand purchasing, including brand most often, others bought, varieties or pack size if required
 Reasons for buying brand bought last
 Source of purchase for brand bought last
 Usage patterns – who uses when and with what/how

 Brand imagery and personality
 Consumer segmentation questions – attitudinal questions concerning involvement in the market and general lifestyle questions (this can be
a self-completion sheet rather than interviewer administered if wished)
 Demographic and other classification data

Analysis of the U&A study
When you commission a U&A, you must be sure that you spend the time to analyse the data you obtain effectively. This is not just a case
of accepting the cross-breaks of standard demographics and taking them at face value. You must develop insights from the data and that generally
takes some additional analysis and a different way of approaching the data.
As part of this, conducting factor and cluster analysis to obtain market segments is usually a valuable exercise.
Segmentation via research is different from marketing segmentation. Marketers often segment the market into categories, and the
population into categories based on usage, demographics etc. However, segmentation via research data is a statistically based analysis from data
obtained from the consumer. There is no need to go into details on the exact statistical techniques that are used, as this is the agencies’ area of
expertise. As marketers you should be aware that the technique is possible and be able to request that this is an objective of the research.
Uses of segmentation are many. The main ones are:
 To define a market. Consumers do not always perceive the market in the same way as manufacturers. An example is the milk market,
where fresh and dried milk may be seen as part of the same market in some countries and separate in others. Another is the yoghurt and
chilled dessert market versus other desserts (perhaps including fresh fruit and ice cream?)
 To position brands or varieties. Within any market different segments of the population may have different needs , and companies should
position their brands in order to satisfy as many of these as possible without cannibalisation/ competing with one’s own brands
 To develop policies for existing brands. How can market share be improved or at least maintained? How is it best to attack competitors’
brands?
 To identify market gaps. By identifying a market group whose needs are not being met plans can be put together to develop a new brand
to launch into that area, or alternatively, an existing brand may be targeted at that segment
As can be seen, there are two main types of segmentation; consumer and product. In consumer segmentation, respondents are clustered into like-
minded groups, which are based on attitudes to life and leisure as well as attitudes to the market. Product segmentation groups brands or products
together by the way that they are perceived by consumers. These are complementary techniques that can both be conducted.