14-05-2014, 04:47 PM
Business research methods Project ON Health Food Drinks
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Background
India, the world’s largest malt-based drinks market, accounts for 22% of the world’s retail volume sales. These drinks are traditionally consumed as milk substitutes and marketed as a nutritious drink, mainly consumed by the old, the young and the sick.
The Health food drinks category consists of white drinks and brown drinks. South and East India are large markets for these drinks, accounting for the largest proportion of all India sales. The total market is placed at about 90,000 ton and is estimated to be growing at about 4%. These Malt beverages, though, are still an urban phenomenon.
White drinks account for almost two-thirds of the market. GSK Consumer Healthcare is the market leader in the white malt beverages category with a 60.7% overall market share. Heinz’s Complan comes in second (in this segment, third overall) with a market share of 12-13%. Market leader GSK also owns other brands such as Boost, Maltova and Viva.
Currently, brown drinks (which are cocoa-based) continue to grow at the expense of white drinks like Horlicks and Complan. The share of brown drinks has increased from about 32% to 35% over the last five years. Cadbury’s Bournvita is the leader in the brown drink segment with a market share of around 15%.
Other significant players are Nestlé’s Milo and GCMMF’s Nutramul.
Problem Statement
The project had been undertaken with an objective to understand the customer behaviour in the “Health Food Drink (HFD)” product category. The objective of the study also included identifying the determinant purchase factors, the customer segments and the sources of information they rely on. The existing positioning of prominent brands and the perceptions among different segments were also covered under the study. The brand loyalty and switching were also studied. The brand personality was also studied as a part of the project.
India has enormous under-nutrition and over-nutrition problems
Asia has the largest number of malnourished children in the world. The Double Burden of Malnutrition in Asia was inspired by the massive challenge that this situation currently poses for Asia. It describes the main driving forces behind the groundswell of under-nutrition, while shedding light on the emerging double burden of co-existing underweight and overweight, and the linkages between these two different forms of malnutrition.
Brand Loyalty
Selling to brand loyal1 customers is far less costly than converting new customers (Reichheld 1996, Rosenberg and Czepiel 1983)i. In addition, brand loyalty provides firms with tremendous competitive weapons. Brand loyal consumers are less price sensitive (Krishnamurthi and Raj 1991)ii. A strong consumer franchise gives manufacturers leverage with retailers (Aaker 1991) 1. And, loyalty reduces the sensitivity of consumers to marketplace offerings, which gives the firm time to respond to competitive moves (Aaker 1991) 1. In general, brand loyalty is a reflection of brand equity, which for many businesses is the largest single asset.
Perhaps the most cited conceptual definition of brand loyalty comes from Jacoby and Chestnut (1978, p. 80)iii: “The biased, behavioral response, expressed over time, by some decision-making unit, with respect to one or more alternative brands out of a set of such brands, and is a function of psychological (decision-making, evaluative) processes.” Consistent with this definition are two broad categories of operational definitions. The first stresses the “behavioral response, expressed over time”—typically a series of purchases. As Day (1979) observediv, however, the major limitation of behavioral measures is the failure to identify motive and the resulting confusion between brand loyalty and other forms of repeat buying. The major alternative operational definition is based on consumer attitudes, preferences, and purchase intentions. These measures stress the cognitive “bias,” and the “psychological (decision-making evaluative) processes” underlying loyalty.
Objective or theoretical framework
The objective of this research is to identify the factors that influence a person into making a decision to buy a certain brand of malt-based health drink.
As mentioned in the Literature Review, according to industry analysts, this category has grown only on promotions and for now, except for promotions, nothing seems to be working. Therefore, ideally, this research should be able to bring to the fore, certain other factors that could lead to a growth of this segment.
At the very least, the research should corroborate the existing assumptions regarding the influencing factors. It should be in a position to verify that the steps various players are taking to stimulate volumes are in the right direction, and would eventually lead to an increase in market share.
Preliminary Investigation
This phase involved preliminary investigation of the various factors which could possibly affect the consumer’s perception about the various brands and in turn influence the purchase decisions of the consumer. We primarily used three methods to identify the various factors. The Secondary data gathered was analyzed to understand the current scenario of the Health drinks segment. The analysis of the secondary data also helped us find different attributes which affect the health drinks segment.