Marketing Research Nivea Case Study

Nivea, the most successful brand of the German cosmetics producer Beiersdorf, has been in the market for skin care for more than a century. Starting from the introduction of the first Nivea skin cream that revolutionized the industry, Nivea has become the synonym of quality and trust for millions of customers all over the world. However, with the increase of market competition it has become important for Beiersdorf to differentiate its products. Extensive research and marketing campaigns allowed to alter the image of Nivea as a mild but reliable family product and managed to communicate to the users the benefits of the extended product range. However, the future poses further challengers for Nivea. In particular, the development of the US market may become quite problematic as the successful European strategy may not be fully replicable in the American market. Therefore, additional marketing research is needed to explore the potential of Nivea in America.
1. Based on the Management decision problem, formulate three appropriate and relevant research questions.
Firstly, marketing research should identify the features of skin care products that are valued by American consumers. Secondly, the research should suggest the way to segment the U.S. market in order to identify the most lucrative customer groups and to see which customers can be targeted most effectively. The third question should focus on the perception of Nivea brand in the U.S. and potentially on the comparison of the Nivea’s position in the minds of consumers as compared to the image of the company’s competitors.
2. Nivea would like to undertake research to understand the preference of American consumers for skin care products.
a. How would you design the research?
The first step in the marketing research should be the exploration of the already available secondary data, such as demographic characteristics of the U.S., population trends and sales data collected by the distributors. The cost of collecting secondary information is relatively lower than the cost of designing own research, therefore Beiersdorf’s marketers should make sure that all the potential sources of secondary information are identified and explored. This information may become a helpful input for identifying appropriate segments for further customer targeting.
The second step should involve primary data collection. At this stage Beiersdorf should leverage on its current knowledge of the European markets and to design research accordingly. As the larger the number of people in a sample, the more precise the results are, it is important to ensure that the study will have sufficient amount of data to generate meaningful results. For this the most optimal way of research is by using a survey, which allows to attract a large number of customers. The survey can be conducted both at the points of sales and through online channels.
b. what would be the data collection process? Describe and justify.
The collection of primary data should be structured around the precise questions Nivea wants to have answered. Since the company wants to derive reliable conclusions from the data collected, it is necessary to ensure that the sample is sufficiently large. The research related to the questions is largely qualitative, therefore a Likert scale should be introduced to quantify customer responses for further data analysis.
Moreover, several studies should be conducted in different areas in the U.S. in order to take into consideration the differences in geographical distribution of customer preferences. In addition to that it is important to assure that the population samples are randomly chosen and are independent from each other, thus reducing bias in the conclusion. Bearing in mind the objectives of the research, surveys would be the most appropriate way to conduct it, as it combines low cost and speed of data collection.
c. Develop a sampling plan with justification.
The first step of designing a sampling plan is the definition of the variables under consideration. For the previously specified research questions the variables could customer satisfaction connected to specific product attributes measured using a Likert scale. This variable would help to understand how much consumers value some of the product attributes. The second research question relates to customer segmentation. In this case researchers can provide consumers with a set of questions related to their age, gender, buying habits etc. The aggregate information could be further used to understand market dynamics and to relate to customers in a better way. The question related to brand perception is the hardest to measure and quantify. Here marketers could investigate not only the overall satisfaction of the customers with their products, but also the perceived standing of\Nivea p to other market players. In fact, the questionnaire could ask people to identify the main competing products, thus simplifying market analysis. In the next step the sampling scheme should be designed with reference to the methodology and time of sample collection. It is important also decide on the sample size for the research as there is always a trade-off between data collection complexity due to large sample sizes and the precision of the obtained results. For Nivea the most appropriate way to collect large amount of responses is by using a survey. The company can leverage on the relationships with distributors in order to collect the necessary data. Finally, it is necessary to decide on the data format that is going to be easy to store and to analyze in the next steps. Since a survey is a preferred method in this case, the information collected will likely be stored on the paper, which will be later input into some kind of a database.
3. What kind of constructs would you attempt to measure in order to respond to your research question? Examples
In order to answer the first question regarding the attributes valued by the customer,it is necessary to come up with some attributes and ask consumers to rank the degree of importance of each of these figures. Depending on the scale selected the data can be further aggregated in order to identify the most important product features, while the least important ones should be decommissioned. The second question is related to segmentation and requires marketer to identify the potential criteria for market segmentation, such as demographic features, purchase frequency, share of wallet etc. Answers related to these variables should be evaluated in order to identify the most influential customer groups and the segments with the least potential . The third question relates to the brand image and it is the hardest to quantify. Here, marketers can choose several approaches. Firstly, it is possible to ask consumers direct questions about Nivea brand, however this method is associated with the risk that people will not be honest with the representatives of the company under evaluation. The second way is to conduct a more comprehensive study that would include also competing brands. Interviewers in this case should not suggest in any way which company they represent, while customers could express their opinion not only on the isolated Nivea brand, but also to compare it with the competing products.