Mountain Dew

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Submitted to: Sir Muhammad ahmed butt

A New Morning For Mountain Dew

Case Study Analysis

Submitted By: 7 /1/2011

A New Morning For Morning Dew

Subject: Brand Management

TABLE OF CONTENT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.........................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION OF THE CASE...........................................................................2

HISTORY OF THE CASE........................................................................................3

SWOT ANALYSIS...................................................................................................4

MARKETING OBJECTIVES...................................................................................6

BRAND STRATEGY OBJECTIVES.......................................................................7

SEGMENTING STRATEGY……………………………………………………...8

BUILDING BRAND STRATEGY.........................................................................10

CUSTOMER BASED BRAND EQUUITY MODEL……………………………11

MARKETING MIX (4'Ps)………………………………………………………..15

Brand Management Page 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mountain_Dew.svg


POISITIONING STRATEGY.................................................................................16

POINTS OF PARITY (POP)…………………………………………………...…17

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE (POD)………………………………………………17

RECOMMENDATION TO THE MANAGEMENT..............................................18

ATTACHMENT…………………………………………………………………..19

ACKNOWLEGEMENT:

In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate. I would like to thank Allah, the most merciful and beneficent, who give us the opportunity, and blessed us with the ability to read, right and understand the knowledge of this world which is a blessing.

I want to thank Mr. Kevin Lane Keller, author of the book who provides us a chance to read this case study. Mr. I especially want to thank Sir Muhammad Ahmed Butt, our course instructor, from the very first day with all his heart and soul, along with his unique teaching style, he taught us to understand this difficult track and how to firmly grasp the concepts. His enthusiasm and guidance has proven invaluable to our research.

INTRODUCTION OF THE CASE:

Mountain Dew is a soft drink manufactured by Pepsi Co. but which remains its own brand. The formula was created by Bill Jones and was marked in USA in 1940s.It falls in the citrus segment of carbonated soft drink. Mountain Dew enjoys the status of the only citrus carbonated soft drink in the beverage market. The total market share of the citrus is 14% out of which 95% is held my Mountain Dew and the rest 5% by others... However, the flavors "Livewire" and "Code Red" still use the previous design as of September 2010.

As of 2007, Mountain Dew was the fourth best-selling carbonated soft drink in the United States, behind only Coca-Cola Classic, Pepsi Cola and Diet Coke. Mountain Dew like its mother company Pepsi, seeks the image by focusing on




individuals and also introversive people. Mountain Dew targets teenagers those who are ready to embrace excitement, adventure, fun, energy and enthusiasm. The appearance of the bottle of mountain dew is eye catching with bright yellow green color and semi opaque.

I am the key executive of the company and I was asked to make the SWOT analysis, strategic brand objectives and branding strategy. I have planned Mountain Dew branding strategy associated with its associated line extensions. I have applied consumer based brand equity (CBBE) model, four steps of strong brand building that comes under it,4P's and point of difference. At the end, I have given some important recommendations in order to improve the weaknesses faced by the company and also preparing for the threats to be faced in the future.

HISTORY OF THE CASE:

Mountain Dew was launched in 1969 by PepsiCo. Since then, the drink has outgrown its provincial roots. After unsuccessful attempt of targeting urban teenagers, the company switched its focus to outdoors action scenes in ads. In 1980's Mountain dew become fastest growing major soft drink in America and it posted double-digit annual volume increases. Its market share rise from 2.7 percent in 1980 to 7.2 percent in 2000.

Mountain Dew updated its image by using extreme sports. They featured athletes participating in extreme sports by consuming Mountain Dew products accompanied by the tag line “Do the Dew”. But now the ads are more adventures and thrilling. To reach the urban demographic, Mountain Dew also developed a series of print, radio, and television ads featuring hip-hop superstar endorser Busta Rhymes.

Mountain Dew balances its high profile nationally televised campaigns with grassroots marketing efforts, such as action -sports athletes and events like ESPN and X-Games, offering samples from the its branded Dew Hummer Trucks and subway cars and staging promotions at local stake parks. Mountain Dew again proved its power of its marketing program in 2000 when it introduced Mountain Dew Code Red, its first line extension since Diet Mountain Dew debuted in 1988. But this launch was an unqualified success.

Following the success, however, the Mountain Dew franchise suffered as consumption of soft drink declined because consumers migrated towards water and




juices. To reconnect with its core teen audience, Mountain Dew increased its grassroots activities by sponsoring the Mix Tape street basketball tour and the Dew Action Sports Tour. They also launched another brand, energy drink called MDX aimed at video game players. These moves combine to reverse a four year slide, growing sales volume 1.5 percent in 2004 and enabling Mountain Dew to remain the number 4 carbonated beverage in America in terms of sales through 2006.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Strengths:

Mountain Dew is carrying strong brand.

Company maintaining healthy relationship in upstream.

Collective bargaining agent CBR, behavior is more professional.

International component portray reasonable and friendly environment.

Mountain Dew is finally sound.

Production policies, procedures, systems are reasonably consistent recent industry and out standards.

The primary and key strength of mountain dew is that it is the brand of one of the strongest and globally recognized company that is Pepsi.

This reorganization helps mountain dew a lot in increasing its name in the beverage industry.

Weaknesses:

Customers have become savvy.




Reasonably says customers are less incline towards mountain dew brands.

Fragmentation in the beverage industry is also another weakness.

Mountain Dew is facing extreme competition both from direct or indirect competitors.

The strategic directions including vision, mission at corporate objectives needs improvements.

Marketing management is a reasonably suffering from miss-management.

HRM needs improvement in the functional areas.

Mountain Dew’s frame can hurt the credibility of the brand Pepsi.

Opportunity:

USA economy is plagued by recession however, economies still managing.

Mountain Dew is reasonably fit to take care of social shift.

Mountain Dew is adhering to articles of law.

Mountain Dew is adequately equipped with requisite technology.

One of the best opportunities is that the people are now fed of all those old beverages, so now they are moving their interest towards the new beverages like mountain dew.

Threats:

The biggest threat for mountain dew is from its competitors like spirit 3G and other energy drinks like red bull etc.

Mountain Dew can also be a threat for its own mother brand.

The industries experiencing social shift and society are seeking out value in their dealings.

The industry is subject is vigorous are subject to some sort of instability.




Overall the industry is also feeling the impact of technology.

MARKETING OBJECTIVES:

The marketing objectives of the mountain Dew are as follows:

Mountain Dew overall objective is to increase the value of their shareholders investments.

They main objectives are to focus on financial and management resources and on their core business.

They usually lose focus, which may not be segmented enough. The other can be to address the customer’s stages separately.

Goals or targets that must be achieved by the marketing department in order to achieve overall corporate objectives.

Objectives must be definable and quantifiable so that there is an achievable target at which to aim.

This can be done through sales growth, cost controls and wise investment of resources.

They believe that their success depends upon offering quality and value to their consumers and customers and also providing the fair return to their investors while adhering to the highest standards of integrity.

They should be defined in such a way that actual performance can be compared with the objectives.




Relate the brand with the social environment.

Maintain balance in all the brands and product of the company.

Built effective advertisement in which targeting the selected market segment

for communicating the brand.

Point of difference of the brand should be that much effective that it properly

established the unique selling proposition (USP) and sustainable competitive

advantage (SCA).

BRAND STRATEGY OBJECTIVES:

In today's low-growth, hypercompetitive economic environment, companies are increasingly trying to blend their business strategy and line marketing activities to generate incremental top-line growth out of existing businesses. Mountain Dew is one of the leading beverage brands; still it faces direct and indirect competition. Some are low-priced as well. Therefore, they need to be proactive in understanding the market and customer’s needs and formulate branding strategies to deal with the changing trends of economic, technological, political-legal, socio-cultural and competitive environment.

The brand should be comprised of the company personality, image, core competencies and characteristics. The impressions that one make as well as the words people will use to describe your company to others, are the basic framework of your brand.

To have more influence on the market, Motive customers and clients to purchase from us, If done correctly the company will look at as a leader not followers.

Objectives:

Being recognized by receiving a specific award. Picking up a certain number of choice projects Gaining a specific number of new clients in the next year




Positioning our company as an industry leader in the next few months. Proper positioning of the Mountain Dew. To make the consumers to differentiate with the competitors product.

Build customer trust on the brand by communicating with the consumers through positive images and aware them about the brand through those images and relate the images with the consumer’s daily life.

Customers are first priority provide them the right information. Company must have to build that they are in the market for serving the customers and the company should built the brand by keeping consumers interest in mind.

Restore the brand equity. Rebuild the brand equity through CBBE model. To achieve the more market share then 1.5 % that was in 2004. Use strategic tools and technique to build the brand.

SEGMENTING STRATEGY:

Market can be segmented on the basis of variables used for segmentation;

Behavioral segmentation. Demographic segmentation. Psychographic segmentation. Geographical differences.

Behavior Segmentation:

Behavioral segmentation is based on the customer's needs and subsequent reaction to those needs or toward the purchase of intended products and/or services. This study is conducted on all variables that are closely related to the product itself, like loyalty to a particular brand, cost effectiveness in terms of benefits and usage. The strength of Mountain Dew’s strategy is to target their audience on the basis of behavior. Since, their actual target market is the teenagers hence they target daring, excited, adventurous, fun-loving, confident, energetic, enthusiastic and aggressive behaviors. All these mentioned behaviors are part of the teenager’s life; therefore, the same message is also being delivered through their ads.

Demographic Segmentation:




Demographic segmentation is done according to the potential customers. While marketing a product many variables like age, gender, education, income, size of the family, occupation, socioeconomic status, culture and religion, language and nationality are taken into account. Mountain Dew is targeting the people within the age range of 16-18, mostly the teenagers. Hence, they are not concerned about their income level, because their target audience can easily buy the product as they are charging the standard price, country-wide. Secondly, the usage of carbonated soft drink has now become a lifestyle of people in Pakistan, which again becomes an opportunity for Mountain Dew.

Psychographic Segmentation:

Psychographic segmenting is done according to the lifestyles and values of customers, and how they translate into consumption or purchases of products of services is what psychographic segmentation is all about. Segmenting people according to their lifestyles and values, and how they translate into consumption or purchases of Mountain Dew is what psychographic segmentation is all about. How one's interest, opinions, values, attitude and the activities they perform, all affects how and why a group of people would lean towards Mountain Dew more than others.

Geographic Segmentation:

Geographical segmentation is done by dividing people (markets) into different geographical locations. The country, state, or neighborhood, the king of gentry, climate, and size of a place segmented into size of its age wise population, etc. all play a role in devising market strategies. This helps the producer and the marketers




to understand what will sell and what won't, for example, a market for winter wear would definitely not work in warm regions.

BULDING BRAND STRATEGY:

Building a brand with loyal customers is indeed a tough task. There are four defining characteristics that allow companies to actively involve customers in creating communities around their brands. Each is essential in building brand strategies. Branding strategy is the building of the brand in a unique way to position the brand that consumers will easily get the reason to buy it. It includes every step of the marketing or we can say it is a plan for doing or building a brand. Mountain Dew brand is very much popular among the youth and to make its customers loyal Mountain Dew should do the brand extension. As I am hired by management of Mountain dew, now I will give them an idea to launch a new brand that is “Booster”, a flavored juice accompanied with the tag line “It will boost your emotions”.

1. Create a strong brand myth:Brands in today’s world are not mere inanimate ‘things’ but thriving entities with identities and personalities that allow customers to express themselves through its consumption.

2. Create a need for collaboration among consumers:For a community to be actively adopted, customers must feel a need to connect with each other in the context of the brand’s consumption.




3. Identify with a specific segment: Members of the Samsung brand community are part of the community because of their need to be identified as part of the global ‘cool’ segment that is in tune with the latest in technology and fashion.

4. Create identifiable brand elements: As with any community, brand communities must be able to offer its members unique identifiable community elements in terms of terminologies, icons, symbols and spokespersons.

5. Create a unique culture:One of the fundamental reasons for the growing popularity of brand communities is that they offer companies real time feedback about the brand. Further, brand communities allow companies to co-create value with customers on a continuous basis.

CUSTOMER BASE BRAND EQUITY MODEL:

It is the differential effect that brand knowledge has on consumer response to the marketing of that brand. The three key ingredients come under this model:

Differential effect.

Brand knowledge.

Consumer response to marketing.

Brand equity must be build for creating the difference among your product and consumer’s response and this can be done by communicating about the brand to the consumers and creating awareness among the consumers about the brand.

To made “Booster” strong brand among the product category or in the brand extension first awareness should be created among the consumers about “Booster” and a positive brand image of “Booster” should be built. And where as brand awareness will be crated by increasing the familiarity of “Booster” through repeated exposure and packaging and brand image of “Booster” can be created through marketing programs like sponsoring events and sort events. And make strong favorable and unique association of “Booster” in consumers mind.

The Four Steps of Brand Building:

The four steps of brand building that consumers want are as follows:




Brand identity. Brand meaning. Brand responses. Brand relationships.

After the launch, it has become very important to create awareness among Mountain Dew consumers about the Booster and the target consumers and to tell the consumer about its performance of the new as well as the previous line extensions and getting their responses after change in order to build strong relationship with Mountain Dew consumers in order to increase market share and brand equity.




BRAND BUILDING BLOCKS:




Brand Salience:

Brand Salience means increase the awareness of the brand in the minds of the consumers. Mountain Dew has to define a product category structure by which consumers know that the brand is satisfying the needs. Increasing awareness about the “Booster” in the minds of the consumers will help to increase the sales volume.

By Using Brand salience we will try to deepen, broaden and increase the awareness of the brand and as “Booster” is a new brand so it is necessary to create awareness among consumers. So the brand awareness made consumer learn about the packaging of the product and the attributes and benefits of the product “Booster“ and makes them to recall and recognize the brand under different conditions.

Brand Performance:

Consumers view performance in terms of Reliability means the consistency of performance over time. The performance of the “Booster” depends upon the taste means trusting, caring and having the customer’s interest in mind. It describes how well the product or service meets consumers' more functional needs.

This product is specially made for the fun loving people in order to bring back consumers to the brand. It is very important to communicate about the performance of brand with the consumers and giving them complete guarantee that they can gain trust the reliability, durability and serviceability of “Booster”.

Brand Imagery:

It depends on the extrinsic properties of the product or service, including the ways in which the brand attempts to meet customer’s psychological or social needs. The next step is to emphasize on the image of Mountain Dew that was diminished because of the social shift by the consumers towards water and juices.

My purpose is to again create the image that was sensed by the consumers before the shift and has to make them psychological and socially satisfied by informing them usage situations and enhancing the personality of “Booster” through extensive advertising and sales force.




Brand Judgments:

The Brand Judgments tells about the consumer’s opinion about the “Booster” with the comparison of competitor’s product and this can be get through brand quality, brand credibility, brand consideration, brand superiority. It tells about Customer personal experience and evaluation about the brand “Booster”.

Brand quality: brand has a good quality it satisfies consumer demand. Brand credibility: “Booster” has come up with new flavors by keeping in

view consumer interest. And this creates likability of purchasing “Booster”. Brand consideration: getting so much attached to it consumer will go to

recommend “Booster” to others.

Brand Feelings:

These are customer’s emotional responses and reactions to the brand. After the last consumption, consumer’s feelings towards the Mountain Dew had become changed due to social shift and questions on the beverage producers resulted in the loss of consumption and loyalty diminished rapidly. Here transformational advertising would be the best approach to make the consumers feel that they had attachment with the brand.

Brand Resonance:

Booster created greater loyalty through deeper attitudinal attachment through marketing programs to the customer.

Sense of Community can make greater difference in a way that different consumers use the Booster and the fellow users or customers create an attitudinal attachment with a brand.




Marketing Mix (4P'S):

1. Product:

Proper research should be conducted in order to come up with a proper product for customers.

Quality should be original. Taste of the juice should be a reflection of the fresh fruits.

2. Pricing:

Value pricing strategy should be used. Better than competitors pricing strategy. Price of the brand will be found by consumers appropriate and reasonable.

3. Placing:

Adopt direct channels. Selling through salespersons.

4. Promotion:

Extensive advertising through both radio and television to make the consumers aware about the new brand.

Internet promotion through websites and online ads. Billboards promotion. Distinguish the products from competitors.

POSITIONING STRATEGY:




The positioning strategy is the heart of the brand strategy. Positioning statement typically identify the set of associations (benefits, quality, user imagery) that the brand should own, the support for claiming these associations, and perhaps the tone or personality by which the brand should speak to its prospects about these concepts. Positioning is an aspect of an offering strategy that identifies its key benefits in relation to competitive offerings. The term positioning can be used in two distinct contexts:

1) Desired Positioning: Which will reflects the company‘s positioning goal with respect to particular offering.

2) Actual Positioning: This reflects customer’s perception of the offering.

The positioning strategy is the heart of the brand strategy. Positioning statement typically identify the set of associations (benefits, quality, user imagery) that the brand should own, the support for claiming these associations, and perhaps the tone or personality by which the brand should speak to its prospects about these concepts. Positioning statements are the arguments for the brand relative to the other brands in the category and are based on abstracted associations. The positioning strategy identifies three main aspects:

1) Target customers.2) Frame of reference3) The primary reason of buying the offering.

Depending on the frame of reference two types of positioning strategy can be distinguish:

1) Non comparative,2) Comparative.

Once the competitive frame of reference for positioning has been fixed by defining the customer target market and nature of competition, marketers can define the appropriate points-of-difference and points-of- parity associations.

POINTS OF PARITY (POP):




POP are the associations that are not necessarily unique to the brand but may in fact be shared with other brands. These types of associations come in two basic forms:

1) Category,2) Competitive.

Category:

Points of Parity are associations of consumers who view as essential to be a legitimate and credible offering within a certain product or service category. They represent necessary but not necessarily sufficient conditions for brand choice. Consumers might not consider a travel agency truly a travel agency unless it is able to make air and hotel reservations, provide advice about leisure packages, and offer various ticket payment and delivery options. Category points-of-parity may change over time due to technological advances, legal developments and by consumer trends.

Competitive:

Points-of-parity are associations designed to negate competitors. Point-of-difference is as strong for a brand as for competitors and the brand are able to establish another association as strong, favorable and unique as part of its point-of-difference, then the brand should be in a superior competitive position. In other words, if a brand can break even in those areas where the competitors are trying to find an advantage and can achieve advantages in other cases, the brand should be in a strong and perhaps unbeatable competitive position.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE (POD):

Points of difference (POD) are attributes or benefits consumers strongly associate with a brand, positively evaluate, and believe that they could not find to the same extent with a competitive brand. Strong, favorable, and unique brand associations that make up points of differences may be based on virtually any type of attribute or benefits. Creating strong, favorable, and unique associations as points-of-difference is a great challenge, but essential in terms of competitive brand positioning.




RECOMMENDATION TO THE MANAGEMENT:

Mountain Dew is in a better cause because one can get a sugar rush off its awesome rock on people.

The best part of mountain dew is the customer’s do not have to worry about their weights because as much as they have it the calories will remain the same.

I should also focus on all age group segments, as I have only focused on teenagers.

It might be possible that our company would not be able to perform well in the market because of decline stage but we will also work on that as well.

The values and the strategic mission of the company should be very clearly conveyed to everyone and emphasis on the youth and sporty persons should be communicated.

Immediate steps should be taken so that the loyal consumers would not have any reasons for switching the brand.

They should come up with awareness programs to educate the consumers about the new brand that they produced to tackle this social shift.

Company should improve its marketing activities and try to attract more and more customer through delivering superior value.

Company should make use of the necessary technology and try to enhance it as well in order to face the direct competition and indirect competition as well.

Company should conduct a survey as well to find out the interests of its customers, their needs and wants as well.

Attachment:




Strategic Brand Management (Third Edition) By Kevin Lane Keller www.wikipedia.com www.google.com www.mountaindew.com

CBBE MODEL

BOOSTER (JUICE): “It Will Boost Your Emotions”


http://www.mountaindew.com/

http://www.google.com/

http://www.wikipedia.com/



PRODUCTS:




























































Mountain Dew

Documents

diet mountain dew

s mountain dew

mountain dew franchise

bottle of mountain dew

mountain dew branding

mountain dew code red

mountain dew targets

morning dew history