Synopsis: Writing Instruments — Global Branding Strategy
Our client was faced with a traditional, international branding problem: highly autonomous individual country managers, each of whom insisted his/her market was “different.” As a result, our client could not develop any global leverage in product development or branding.
To help resolve this problem, the client reached out to QDI. The goal was to develop a framework to evaluate market positions for each country. The challenge was that the client had a very complex product line and channel mix. The product line included six different categories of products, each at multiple price points. The channels included twelve different types of retail outlets ranging from departments and discount stores to office supply stores and jewelers.
Our marketing research consultants created a research methodology to size and segment the market in any country based on channels, product modes, price points and brand shares. We conducted on-site and phone research in the top fourteen worldwide markets to build a sample base of sales of the different product categories and price points by channel as well as the portion of channel sales that the category made up. We then used government and industry data to size the each of the channels in every country. These two data points were the foundation of the model that QDI consultants then created to model the market, including total sales by category and price point and brand share by category.
This research created a global model for each country to compare itself to, enabling a comparison of product mix and share positions by price point in every country. With this information as a base, our client had the leverage to begin to centralize key product and branding decisions.