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JFMM 12,2

High-involvement and low-involvement products

A comparison of brand awareness among students at a South African university
Laetitia Radder and Wei Huang
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose Knowledge of brand awareness and its role is important for the design of an organisations marketing strategies. This study aims to determine the brand awareness of high- and low-involvement products among Black and non-Black students enrolled at a South African university. Design/methodology/approach A self-administered survey was completed by a convenience sample of 300 students of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The focal high-involvement product was sportswear clothing and the low-involvement product, coffee. Findings The results indicated a higher awareness of high-involvement product brands than of low-involvement product brands. Advertising played an important role in the awareness of sportswear clothing brands, but seemed unimportant in the case of coffee. The brand name was important for coffee, while the name and the logo played a role in students awareness of sportswear brands. Research limitations/implications This study was limited to students of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and to sportswear clothing and coffee product categories. Future studies could comprise larger samples, different contexts and other product or service categories. Practical implications The ndings suggest that marketers employ different strategies to create and increase brand awareness for high- and low-involvement products. Originality/value Previous research found that brand awareness played an important role in low-involvement products; however, little is known about brand awareness differences between highand low-involvement products, particularly with respect to the brand awareness of South African students. Keywords Advertising, Brand awareness, Coffee, Consumer behaviour, Clothing, South Africa Paper type Research paper

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Received May 2006 Accepted February 2007

Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management Vol. 12 No. 2, 2008 pp. 232-243 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1361-2026 DOI 10.1108/13612020810874908

Introduction To attract new customers and maintain existing ones, organisations need a distinguishing element that will make consumers identify and buy their products, for example, a successful product brand. Creating and building brand awareness, reaching consumers minds, and encouraging them to develop a preference for the brand, are important steps in ensuring a successful product brand (Keller, 2003). Brand awareness is essential for the above process to occur, since consumers must rst be made aware of a brand in order to buy it (Rossiter and Percy, 1997). Brand awareness is the crucial rst stage in buyer readiness to develop a brand preference and move closer to the point of purchase (Ross and Harradine, 2004).

In the modern world, consumers become brand conscious and make positive choices at an increasingly younger age (Ross and Harradine, 2004). In fact, many consumers establish their brand preferences between the ages of 15 and 25 (Taylor and Cosenza, 2002). Furthermore, young consumers play an important role in the marketplace as they exert signicant inuence on the allocation of spending power across a growing number of products such as clothing and footwear (Hogg et al., 1999). In addition, peers play a vital role amongst young consumers by heavily inuencing their purchases and choice of brands (Skim et al., cited in Beaudoin et al., 2003). As young consumers follow the trends set by their peers, they are likely to act as role models for later adopters in the fashion process (Beaudoin et al., 2003). Clothing is commonly considered a high-involvement product (Solomon, 1986). Consumers often buy a clothing item for its symbolic meaning, image reinforcement or psychological satisfaction (Solomon, 1986). Clothing is also known to reect the consumers social life, aspirations, fantasies and afliations (Kaiser, 1998). Consumers are aware of their own self-concept and thus use brand image as a criterion in evaluating products (Oh and Fiorito, 2002). It is thus important for clothing marketers to be informed about the brand awareness of young consumers. Consumers, however, also buy low-involvement products such as coffee. Although the consumption of coffee is less subject to the inuence of peers, branding is still important as brand awareness alone could lead to the consumer choosing a product based on the familiarity of the brand (Keller, 2003). A large student population exists at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), located in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Being in their late teens, students represent a specialised market segment for a variety of goods and services, including clothing and coffee. Research determining the differences in brand awareness of highand low-involvement products among students, is sparse. A few researchers (such as Hoyer and Brown, 1990) found that brand awareness is used as a heuristic or simple decision-making rule, in low-involvement purchase situations. Macdonald and Sharp (2000) replicated Hoyer and Browns (1990) study, employed a larger sample selected from a comparable population of undergraduate students, and found that respondents showed a strong tendency to use awareness as a heuristic and a degree of inertia in changing this habit. These studies, however, focused on low-involvement products and did not address high-involvement purchases. The current research is expected to help ll the gap. Literature review and research objectives Brand awareness Brand awareness is the consumers ability to identify a brand under different conditions (Keller, 2003). This can take the form of brand recognition and brand recall. Brand recognition assumes prior exposure to the brand. When given a cue, consumers are likely to correctly identify the brand as being previously seen or heard. Consumers might recognize many brands but only recall a small number; sometimes even only one brand. Brand recognition is therefore considered as the minimum level of brand awareness and is based on aided recall (Holden, 1993; Laurent et al., 1995; Mariotti, 1999). Brand recognition is particularly important when a consumer chooses a brand at the point of purchase.

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Brand recall is considered the next level of brand awareness. It relies on unaided recall (Holden, 1993; Laurent et al., 1995; Mariotti, 1999) and relates to the consumers ability to retrieve the brand from memory when provided with a relevant cue (Ross and Harradine, 2004). As the consumer is not aided by having the name provided, brand recall implies that the brand holds a stronger brand position in his or her mind. The rst-named brand in an unaided recall thus represents the highest level of brand awareness (Laurent et al., 1995; Mariotti, 1999). Brand awareness and advertising Brand awareness is created and enhanced by increasing the familiarity of the brand through repeated exposure, which ultimately results in consumers having experienced the brand (Keller, 2003). When consumers have enough experience of the brand by seeing, hearing or thinking about it, the brand will take root in memory. Advertising is a major path to increased familiarity and brand awareness. Moreover, visual and verbal effects in advertising help entrench the brand name in the consumers memory (Keller, 2003). Hence, the rst task of advertising is to build brand awareness (Gregory, 1993; Hoyer and Brown, 1990). Through advertising, marketers expose potential consumers to the brand and give them the opportunity to accept it. This is the reason why companies such as Nike and Adidas make use of television and magazines to advertise their products and brand names (Waterschoot, cited in Ross and Harradine, 2004). Brand functions Brands could perform a number of functions for consumers (Lambin, 2002; Varey, 2002, Pickton and Broderick, 2001), for example, serve as a signal of the product characteristics; simplify decision-making; serve as a guarantee by providing trust, consistency or a set of promises and a reduction of risk; full a personalisation, social or status function; or provide pleasure. Brand elements and brand awareness Brand elements such as the name, logo, symbol, slogan or packaging can be chosen to enhance brand awareness, identify the brand in general, as well as to differentiate it from other brands (Keller, 2003). Brand elements thus make it easier to achieve the evic ec, 2003). and Stanc goals of creating and enhancing brand awareness (Vranes Brand awareness and the decision-making process Brand awareness also plays an important role in consumer decision-making by inuencing which brands enter the consideration set, which of these brands are used as a heuristic, and the perception of quality (Macdonald and Sharp, 2000). During the decision-making process the consumer retrieves, from long-term memory, those products and brands of which she/he is aware. This small set of brands (the consideration set) is important, since a brand that is not part of the consideration set is unlikely to be chosen (Mowen and Minor, 2001). A relationship exists between the level of brand awareness and the purchase decision (Woodside and Wilson, 1985). The more easily the consumer recalls the brand in an unaided recall situation, the higher the purchase intention and the more likely the purchase of the brand. In other words, top-of-mind brands have the highest possibility of purchase.

Consumers do not always spend a great deal of time or cognitive effort in making purchase decisions. They often try to minimize decision-making by using a heuristic such as buy the brand I have heard of or choose the brand I know and then purchase only familiar, well-established brands (Keller, 1993). The decision-making process is further simplied by a brands association with evic ec, 2003). High perceived quality is said to drive a and Stanc quality (Vranes consumer to choose one brand above competing brands (Yoo et al., 2000; Lin and Chang, 2003). Consumers perception of quality is sometimes based on the belief that if he/she is familiar with the brand, the organisation must have spent heavily on advertising. If the organisation spends a lot on advertising, it must have good prots which means that many consumers are satised with the product; therefore the product must be good(Macdonald and Sharp, 2003). Especially in low-involvement situations, familiarity has a greater effect on the quality perception of a brand than its physical characteristics do (Macdonald and Sharp, 2003). This research focused on the brand awareness of students in a South African context. It investigated the levels, similarities and differences in their awareness of sportswear clothing brands (a high-involvement product) and coffee brands (a low-involvement product). Methodology A combination of convenience and judgement sampling was used to select 300 respondents for the study. One of two very similar versions of a self-administered questionnaire (one dealing with coffee and the other with sportswear clothing) was randomly handed to full-time students found on campus on the day set aside for data collection. The questionnaires were distributed on an alternative basis, i.e. one on coffee, and the other on sportswear clothing, until 150 useable questionnaires on coffee and on sportswear clothing were returned. These questionnaires were divided equally between black and non-black, and male and female students. Questionnaire The questionnaire consisted of three sections: (1) Section A included four open-ended questions aimed at identifying which brands of coffee (or sportswear clothing) students could think of and which brands came to mind rst. These were determined by the questions: What brand names of sportswear clothing (coffee in the case of the second questionnaire) can you think of? and When you think of the sportswear clothing brands, which one comes to mind rst?. Thereafter respondents were presented with a list of brands and were asked? Which of the following brands have you heard of? and Which brands have you seen advertised in the past six months?. It was argued that following the customary method of rst asking brand recognition questions (and providing a cue, which in this case consisted of a printed list of brand names), could inuence brand recall and so favour one brand above another. (2) Section B dealt with demographics which included questions on age, gender, ethnic group and average monthly expenditure on coffee and sportswear clothing. Income was not determined as it was argued that most full-time students do not earn a living and have to rely on pocket money. Their purchase of clothing could thus be subsidised by parents.

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(3) Section C contained 35 Likert-type questions each consisting of a short, structured statement and seven preferences ranging from (1) completely disagree to (7) completely agree. One question Branded products display fashionable and attractive styling was omitted from the questionnaire for coffee as this question was not relevant. Eight questions related to brand functions and the rest to brand awareness. Data analysis and discussion Prole of the respondents There was an almost equal distribution of male and female and black and non-black respondents. The majority (70.7 per cent) of those responding to the coffee questionnaire were 20-25 years old, 20 per cent were younger than 20, and 9.3 per cent were 26 years and older. The corresponding gures for those responding to the sportswear questionnaire, were 72.7 per cent, 16.7 per cent, 10.6 per cent On average the respondents annually spent R1479.87 (about US$207) on sportswear clothing and R450.72 (about US$63) on coffee. Levels of brand awareness . Brand recall. Respondents had to list all the brand names that came to mind when thinking of coffee (or sportswear clothing) and to indicate the one that came to mind rst. To differentiate the extent of brand recall, those respondents who listed up to three brand names were deemed to have low brand recall, while those who listed four to six brand names had medium brand recall. Those respondents who listed seven or more names were deemed to have high brand recall. The data showed that proportionately more respondents had high levels of brand recall in the case of sportswear clothing. The most frequently mentioned coffee brands were Ricoffy (76 per cent of respondents) and Frisco (12 per cent of respondents), while the top-of-mind sportswear clothing brands were Nike (46 per cent of respondents), Adidas (22 per cent of respondents), Puma (12 per cent of respondents) and Billabong (7 per cent of respondents). . Brand recognition. The respondents were presented with lists of coffee and sportswear clothing brand names. They identied 18 brand names of coffee and 8 brand names of sportswear clothing, respectively. The three most chosen brand names in coffee products were Frisco, Ricoffy and Kofehuis, while Levis, Billabong and Lee were the top sportswear clothing brands. Brand recognition and recall of advertising shared some common trends. Ninety-four percent of the respondents had heard of Frisco coffee. Frisco was also the brand for which the most advertising was noticed. A similar pattern was evident in the case of Levis sportswear clothing. Identication of factors Factor analysis was employed to reduce the 35 items in the questionnaire to a more workable number. The statistical package, Statistica Version 6.1, was used to perform the required exploratory factor analysis, incorporating principal factor analysis with varimax rotation. A total of ve factors were extracted in each case, of which four similar ones (see Table I) for coffee and sportswear clothing (albeit with different items) were deemed appropriate based on the values of the Cronbach coefcient alpha, item

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Item loading 0.83 0.75 0.68 0.65 0.61 0.56 0.51 0.45 0.91 0.86 0.85 0.85 0.81 0.78 0.74 0.50 0.84 0.88 0.81 0.65 0.83 0.63 0.66 5.10 0.61 0.61 0.59 0.58 0.55 0.54 (continued ) 6.38 0.74 0.85 0.60 0.85 4.46 16.68 0.68 0.63 0.78 0.76 0.47 0.78 0.54 0.78 6.57 0.84 0.76 0.68 0.68 0.58 0.58 0.65 0.41 9.05 22.07 0.84 24.66

Coffee Sportswear clothing Cronbach Item Cronbach alpha Variance loading alpha Variance

Brand functions: Branded products are worth their price Branded products satisfy my expectations Branded products save me shopping time Well-known brands are of good quality Branded products are good quality The higher priced products are of a better quality Unknown brands are of a low quality Branded products display fashionable, attractive styling Advertising: Magazine advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Newspaper advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Radio advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Advertisements or coffee/sportswear clothing/sportswear clothing usually draw my attention Internet advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Television advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention In-store advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Brand elements: I usually remember brand names that are easy to pronounce I usually remember brand names that are easy to spell I usually remember brand names that remind me of something Consumer decision making: I usually buy the best-selling brands I usually choose well-advertised brands I am likely to buy the brand that I remember best I prefer buying well-known brands I can remember a number of different brands when purchasing I usually choose the brand I know

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Table I. Resulting factor analysis: coffee and sportswear clothing

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I can think of more international brands than local ones I like attractive logos I take note of new brands coming into the market Brands inuence my choice of purchase If I had a choice I would buy the best quality I usually buy high quality products Brands make it easier to choose the product

Table I. Item loading 0.68 0.60 0.55 0.76 Coffee Sportswear clothing Cronbach Item Cronbach alpha Variance loading alpha Variance 0.53 0.48 0.47 0.46

JFMM 12,2

loadings and relevance. Only factors with Eigenvalues equal to or greater than one were considered signicant and chosen for interpretation and only items with loadings of 0.40 or higher were included (Malhotra, 2004). Reliability coefcients lower than 0.60 were deemed to be questionable, those close to 0.70 acceptable, and those larger than 0.80, good (Sekaran, 2003). The four factors were termed brand functions, advertising, brand elements and consumer decision-making. As brand functions did not form the focus of this article, no further analysis of this factor (apart from its inclusion in Table I) is provided. Brand awareness, advertising, brand elements and consumer decision making Table II shows a comparison of the mean scores indicating the importance respondents attached to branding of coffee and of sportswear clothing. Table II shows that advertising did not seem to play an important role in the awareness of coffee brands (all mean scores were lower than 4.0 on a seven-point scale). In-store advertising played the most important role in creating brand awareness, while internet advertising was unimportant. Advertising, particularly in magazines, was far more important in the case of sportswear clothing. Respondents agreed that brand names that are easy to pronounce were more important than those that reminded them of something. Although coffee is a low-involvement product, it is interesting that quality still seemed important. The role of the familiarity of the brand is clearly reected in the fairly high mean scores relating to these items. Respondents seemed to be familiar with a variety of local and international sportswear clothing brands and tended to choose the ones they know and remember best and which are also well advertised. Table III summarises the comparison of the factor means scores per age group. Table III shows that in the case of the low-involvement product, brand awareness seemed to be linked to advertising and consumer decision making to a larger extent in the older respondents (25 years). The youngest age group (younger than 25), on the other hand, had the highest mean scores for advertising and brand elements in the case of sportswear clothing. Neither coffee nor sportswear clothing, however, showed signicant differences ( p , 0.0500) among the various factors. Managerial implications This study proposed to compare South African students brand awareness of a high-involvement product (sportswear clothing) and a low-involvement product (coffee). As many consumers establish their brand preferences between the ages of 15 to 25 (Taylor and Cosenza, 2002), marketers should utilise potential opportunities to create brand awareness and brand preference among this group and so establish future preferences and possibly brand loyalty. The results showed that students had a higher degree of recall of sportswear clothing brands than of coffee brands. Advertising played an important role in awareness of sportswear clothing brands, while it was far less important for coffee. With respect to sportswear clothing products, in-store and magazine advertising played an important role in creating brand awareness, while newspaper, radio and Internet advertising were unimportant. Although advertising did not seem to play an important role in the awareness of coffee brands, in-store advertising and television

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Advertising: In-store advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Television advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Advertisements for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draw my attention Magazine advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Radio advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Newspaper advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Internet advertising for coffee/sportswear clothing usually draws my attention Brand elements: I usually remember brand names that are easy to pronounce I usually remember brand names that remind me of something I usually remember brand names that are easy to spell Consumer decision making: If I have a choice I would buy the best quality I usually choose the brand I know Brands make it easier to choose the product Brands inuence my choice of purchase I usually buy high quality products I prefer buying well-known brands I like attractive logos I can think of more international brands than local ones I can remember a number of different brands when purchasing I am likely to buy the brand that I remember best I usually choose well-advertised brands I take note of brands coming into the market I usually buy the best-selling brands

Coffee Sportswear clothing Mean Std. Mean Std scores dev. scores dev 3.11 3.93 3.88 3.42 2.96 2.65 2.57 2.34 4.60 4.71 4.68 4.40 5.59 6.10 5.78 5.64 5.35 5.34 5.31 5.31 1.42 1.85 1.93 1.87 1.78 1.75 1.72 1.60 1.69 1.97 1.83 1.99 1.15 1.44 1.33 1.58 1.78 1.59 1.61 1.58 4.42 4.94 4.92 5.03 5.37 3.07 3.95 3.68 4.70 4.94 4.59 4.57 4.88 5.37 5.25 4.95 5.31 5.05 5.01 4.57 4.50 4.41 4.37 1.26 1.62 1.80 1.71 1.64 1.75 1.84 1.97 1.54 1.86 1.83 1.86 1.09 1.57 1.71 1.66 1.58 1.68 1.73 1.80 1.61 1.71 1.64

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Table II. Mean scores: branding of coffee and sportswear clothing

advertising were more important than other media. Marketers of coffee can thus successfully employ in-store and television advertising to create and enhance the brand in consumers minds, while marketers of sportswear clothing could use in-store and magazine advertising to achieve and enhance brand awareness. The results also showed some important links between brand recognition and advertising in both the product groups. Frisco and Ricoffy were the most recognised brands and also the brands noticed most often in advertisements. A similar pattern was evident in the case of Levis and Billabong sportswear clothing. This indicates a clear link between repeat exposure in advertising and high levels of product recognition.

Coffee Mean scores Advertising: Younger than 20 years 20-25 years Older than 25 years Brand elements: Younger than 20 years 20-25 years Older than 25 years Consumer decision-making: Younger than 20 years 20-25 years Older than 25 years 3.11 2.86 3.07 3.89 4.60 4.59 4.65 4.21 5.59 5.67 5.55 5.68

Std. dev. 1.42 1.12 1.48 1.44 1.69 1.61 1.62 2.36 1.15 1.07 1.11 1.61

Sportswear clothing Mean scores Std dev 4.42 4.79 4.33 4.52 4.70 4.98 4.72 4.10 4.88 4.84 4.90 4.80 1.26 1.28 1.26 1.25 1.54 1.79 1.52 1.14 1.09 1.10 1.12 0.88

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Table III. Mean scores per age group: branding of coffee and sportswear clothing

In-store and magazine advertising were shown to have an important link to brand awareness in the case of sportswear clothing. However, it has to be determined whether advertisements featuring the products only, or featuring the products together with models are most effective. The results showed that although brand elements enhanced brand awareness, they played different roles in the case of the two selected products. Brand name was the most important element to enhance brand awareness in coffee products, while the brand name and logo were important for sportswear clothing products. Students seemed to pay particular attention to brand names in low-involvement situations, while in high-involvement situations they attached importance to other brand elements. Marketers of coffee could focus on the brand name while marketers of sportswear clothing could concentrate on the brand name and the logo. An attractive logo and symbol, together with a short, easy to pronounce and easily remembered name could be effective in creating and enhancing brand awareness for both product types. Brand awareness plays an important role and provides a positive contribution in consumer decision-making for both product groups, but especially in the case of coffee. The ndings furthermore showed that brands tend to represent a particular perception of quality.

Limitations of the study and future research A limitation of this research is the majority of the respondents being between 20 and 25, thus largely ignoring the 15 to 20-year-olds. Furthermore, these students were enrolled at one South African university only. Before any generalisations about the brand awareness of young adults (15-25 years-old) can be made, it is necessary to also focus on those under the age of 20 and include respondents from different cultures. The same would apply to comparing the brand awareness of young adults in the upper age segments, but who are employed on a full time basis as they are likely to have access to higher levels of discretionary income, which might inuence their purchases of high-involvement products.

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This study has also been limited to two products only. Further research into other product categories such as alcoholic beverages, electronic equipment, or even services, would shed more light on the brand awareness of students.
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