Competitors and Advertising
I think there are a few fundamentals that I have to understand first before seeking more information on our demographic. I found this site called “BMW education” though based in the UK I do believe that some of the information found on this site is relevant to achieve a result.
A few key words and points came up in this site which I think we need to clarify before doing more research. The term “brand identity” showed up a few times on this site. After a little research, I think wikipedia explains the term best for me.
Brand identity
How the brand owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand – and by extension the branded company, organisation, product or service. The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and the brand identity. Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand’s differentiation from competitors.
Brand identity may be defined as simply the outward expression of the brand, such as name and visual appearance. Some practitioners however define brand identity as not only outward expression (or physical facet), but also in terms of the values a brand carries in the eye of the consumer. In 1992 Jean-Noel Kapferer developed the Brand Identity Prism, which charts the brand identity along a constructed source and constructed receiver axis, with externalization on the one side and internalization on the other. On the externalization side brand identity consists of “physical facet”, “relationship” and “reflected consumer”. On the internalization side brand identity consists of “personality”, “culture (values)” and “consumer mentalisation”. In this respect Kapferer positions brand personality as one factor within brand identity.
Taken from Wikipedia article
So this makes me wonder if we should focus on BMW as “the brand” instead of just researching on the car? (325i) This is something I will have to discuss with my partner on Monday. It’s seems that BMW have a different approach to their brand depending on what country they are advertising in. It also seems people when purchasing a car do worry about what brand it is, which can lead to brand loyalty.
“One thing that all BMW adverts have in common is that they focus entirely on the cars” was a statement that showed up on the site. It was based in the article about advertising in the uk I felt that this was a pretty important statement. Maybe while focus sing on the brand of BMW we should also keep in mind that they sell cars. It is fairly easy to forget that while researching.
I think we should always keep these two points in mind while looking at BMW 325i.
On another note we found a site on the Australian Bureau of Statics on when children are leaving home. This could be useful to us since we found BMW could be targeting young males still living at home. We will have to look into this more to gain an understanding of our demographic.
We’re also researching the sponsorship programs that BMW do. We found from the BMW website they sponsor a lot of events. Perhaps by looking into this we could find out what our demographic is interested in. After all big companies wouldn’t sponsor something for nothing.
Sites of interest:
ABS
Living Arrangements: Transitions in living arrangements
Living Arrangements: Living with parents
Sponsorship
Zig and Zag Foundation <—- Warning .PDF
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