Promos or Brand Building: What Works With Your Customers?
It turns out that plenty of consumers will take advantage of "special" promotions and discounts, and then go back to favored brands - even at likely higher prices - when the deals are done. IRI just released a new study (specifically focused on consumer packaged goods) that seems to indicate that today’s savvy consumers will "play" you right back if you are "playing" them.
Perhaps it’s just human behavior, plain and simple, that leads all of us (as consumers, professionals, mates, and so on) to want to feel invested in, instead. I took a look at this promo versus brand building, play versus investment, question in my latest HuffingtonPost piece.
July 13th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Andrea,
Nice HuffingtonPost piece. I think a good example of “trained” consumers can be found in the pizza category. We’ve been trained to find the deals, which makes it is very hard to build a solid pizza brand.
To me, what you have described also sounds like weight loss. Investing in the long haul of exercise and a good diet will do more for your long-term benefit than roller caster ride of short spurts of eating better and moving more followed by a backwards decline. Sure these spurts may get you some short-term success, but your body will quickly go back to its old shape if you do not make the long-term investment.
Off the topic slightly, I am not sure that I understand the comments of “dadw5boys” on your HuffingtonPost piece. Whatever.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Hi Bill -
yes.. the pizza biz is a great example. I guess another caveat might be that households in the family mode (where they have to buy pizza or other “deal” products for a mass of people), they might do major promo-hunting, but if they had their druthers, and when the nest empties a bit, they’ll be back to the brands that reach them on the “investment” level.
As for my HuffingtonPost comments - I am learning to simply embrace the truth of “it takes all kinds” - and try not to take it personally. (ha)