BRANDING OF OTC AND SKINCARE PRODUCTS: A BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY APPROACH

Abstract

Abstract
One of the main reasons for the failure of branding activities, is that marketers and brand managers consider branding as an input activity or as "something done to the consumer." It is argued in this thesis that consumers actively participate in this practice by evaluating branding efforts and in many cases they do not associate branding endeavours with product category. This thesis is attempting to explore consumer behaviour toward branding and discover variables that could be used to explain the role and contribution of consumers in branding activities.
Two main reasons have been introduced in this thesis to explain the characteristics of consumer contribution in branding endeavours. First, the consumer side of brands and second, the situational variables in a purchase and consumption environment. The consumer side of the brand consists of three main factors: firstly, what customers expect from the brand per se, independent from the product; secondly, the extent to which the brand is considered by customers and finally, their consideration of the relationship between product and brand.
The Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM), introduced by Foxall (1997), is applied in this research to explore both situational variables and the consumer's side of the brand. This behaviouristic approach to consumer research considers setting and learning history as twodeterminants of consumer behaviour. Involvement has been used for quantifying learning history and it is argued that to a very high extent involvement could be considered as the same as learning history in BPM.
Three different methodologies have been used in this research to investigate the aforementioned variables using a case study of skincare and OTC products in Iran. Interviews, focus groups and questionnaires have been applied to explore the aforementioned variables and any potential relationships among them.
The results show that brand image is the main situational variable in these two groups of products. For OTC products the dominant expected brand image is functional; in skincare products, although some level of symbolic brand image is expected, the brand image is mainly functional.
The variables introduced in this thesis could be used as a framework for brand managers when deciding how to prioritise their efforts. More importantly, they could use this information for choosing the right brand image based on the type of consumer involvement.