2010:129
BACHELOR THESIS
Social media and brand awareness
- a case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector
Maria Johansson
Luleå University of Technology
Bachelor thesis
Marketing
Department of Business Administration and Social Sciences
Division of Industrial marketing and e-commerce
2010:129 - ISSN: 1402-1773 - ISRN: LTU-CUPP 10/129 SE
SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND AWARENESS
A case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector
Maria Johansson

2010-06-09

ABSTRACT
We live in the midst of a global communications’ boom where the use of social media
between individuals for personal and professional use is widespread. It has been predicted
that 2010 is the year when the use of social media for branding purposes will really take off
in the corporate sector. The purpose of this thesis has been to look at how social media can
create brand awareness. The specific area of fast moving consumer goods was chosen. This
study is of an exploratory, descriptive and qualitative character, and by looking at a single
case, it has been possible to withdraw necessary primary and secondary data. The most
important findings were that the theoretical framework does explain how the company in the
case study uses social media to create brand awareness. The great challenge that came up in
the case study was for the company to find the right balance between providing contents of
great interest for the audience, while at the same time respecting what kind of information the
company can really go out with- it is about being relevant in social media and in all other
channels of communication. This means a constant need for learning and developing new
knowledge, for measuring and following up. Regarding the different degrees of brand
awareness however, it was difficult to show to what extent the real case builds on the
theoretical framework; that there exist a clear strategy for how to reach the different stages of
brand awareness, from the weakest (recognition) to the strongest (word-of-mouth). What was
considered more important by the company in the case study was to integrate social media in
the total communications and PR-strategy, a task which is actually being performed at this
very moment.

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
SAMMANFATTNING
Vi befinner oss mitt i en global kommunikations-boom där användningen av sociala medier
mellan individer för personligt och professionellt bruk är mycket utspridd. Det har förutspåtts

2.1Definitionsofsocialmedia 6
2.2Socialmediaandmarketing 7
2.3Inwhichphasesofproductlifecyclecansocialmediabeused? 8
2.4Socialmediaandbranding 8
2.5Brandandbrandingingeneral,brandinginfastmovingconsumergoodssector 9
2.6Brandstrategy 12
2.7Brandequityandbrandawareness 12
2.8Managingthebrandportfolio 14
2.9Summary 16
3Conceptualframeworkresearchquestionsandframeofreference 18
3.1Researchproblemandresearchdiscussion 18
3.2Frameofreference 19
3.3Delimitations 21
3.4Summary 21
Chapter4:Methodology 22
4.1ResearchPurpose 22
4.1.1Exploratorystudies 22
4.1.2Descriptivestudies 22
4.1.3Explanatory–Casualstudies 22
4.2ResearchApproach 22
4.2.1InductiveversusDeductive 22
4.2.2QuantitativeversusQualitative 23
4.3ResearchStrategy 24
4.3.1Casestudy 24
4.3.2Survey 24
4.3.3Experiment 25
4.4SampleSelection 25
4.5DataCollectionMethods 26
4.6Dataanalysis 26
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subjects, David Aaker, has said that with the multitude of new medias developing, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand. The only
way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate messages
and their marketing efforts across all medias (Aaker 1996)
The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including the
social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network Facebook
with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies, the speed
with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing research about
this area all are reasons why this study was initiated. With regards to the discussion above,
this study will be about how social media influences branding.
1.1BACKGROUND
In studying how social media influences branding, we need to look at what social media is,
what it is composed of and what existing literature says about the correlation between social
media and branding. Branding per se is a vast and widespread area, where opinions diverge
concerning the basic definitions, such as brand equity for example. We need to clarify which
parts of branding that we will focus on in this context.
1.1.1SOCIALMEDIA
What is social media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p 60) define social media as "a group of
Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of
Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Web 2.0 is
platform on which social media is based (Carlsson 2010).
Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet forums,
weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social
bookmarking (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Weber, 2009).Weber also includes search engines
in the definition of social web, and describes them as reputation aggregators with the task of
aggregating sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of
reputation (Weber 2009).
Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web. He defines this as the dialogue
you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the stronger the
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and visual communication”. Consistent branding strategy leads to a strong brand equity,
which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you
to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command.
(www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 100424)
The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com highlights the following elements in the
branding strategy: to build a brand positioning, to manage your brand portfolio, to build your
brand architecture and naming, and to consider possible brand extensions.
(www.prophet.com. Retrieved 100424) This proposition takes the perspective of looking into
the management of several brands at the same time.
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1.1.2.4BRANDEQUITYANDBRANDAWARENESS
Despite the availability of numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature, there is
little consensus on what exactly brand equity means, claim Park and Srinivasan in Pappu et
al. (2005). Nor is there a general agreement among researchers at the conceptual level about
what brand equity comprises. The broad meaning attached to the term “brand equity” is
similar to the definition provided by Farquhar in Pappu et al. (2005), as the value endowed by
the brand to the product. A product is something that offers a functional benefit (for example
toothpaste, a life insurance policy, or a car)” (Farquhar in Elliott and Percy 2007). The definitions of brand equity can be broadly classified into two categories; either as
financial considerations and the value of the brand equity for the firm, or based on the
consumer perspective which looks as brand equity as the value of a brand for the consumer
(Brasco and Mahajan in Pappu et al. 2005).

Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on
consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition
of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and
symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm

There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning. In a
positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy
a particular need are addressed (Elliott and Percy 2007). Brand positioning can be thought of
as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it
offers (Elliott and Percy 2007).
Considering the great importance that brand awareness has in the creation of brand equity,
and that recent research take into account also how social media influence brand awareness,
brand awareness is the aspect of branding that this thesis will focus on. The approach will be
a combination of Weber’s and Aaker’s ideas: the strongest form of brand awareness will be
considered to be word-of-mouth (Weber 2009), that the customer has such a high brand
awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others. This stage is preceded by weak brand
awareness (recognition), medium brand awareness (recall), strong brand awareness (top-of-
mind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of) and very strong brand awareness
(dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember) (Aaker 1996).

1.2EMPIRICALAREA
Up until now, it is mainly within business to consumer market that social media have been
used for the sake of strengthening the brand and to reach new customers (Wikberg, 2010).
Apéria and Back (2004) claim that it is within the fast moving consumer goods sector
(FMCG) that only the strong brands, either own brands or the supplier’s brands, survive.
Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are defined as products that are sold quickly at
relatively low cost. Though the absolute profit made on FMCG products is relatively small,
they generally sell in large quantities, so the cumulative profit on such products can be large
( retrieved 100424).
The strong brands are defined as those with strong support from customers. To ensure their
brands survival, the brand owners have to seek an ever greater understanding of what the
consumer and customers want and to develop a relationship between them and the brand.
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Since existing research about social media so strongly emphasize that branding in the era of

in a broader sense, and brand awareness more specifically. All the literature is described and
explained in order to build a theoretical background for this study.
2.1DEFINITIONSOFSOCIALMEDIA
In addition to the definitions given in section 1.1.1, Wikipedia defines social media as:
“media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and
scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and
broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization
of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content
producers” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420).
Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television,
and film. They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private
individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally
require significant resources to publish information.
Social media technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant
messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these
social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like
Mybloglog and Plaxo (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420).
Weber uses the term “social web” instead of social media, and defines the social web as “the
online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments
and opinions. It includes social networks such as MySpace, Gather, Facebook, BlackPlanet,
Eons, LinkedIn, and hundreds more. It includes branded web destinations like Amazon,
Netflix and eBay. It includes enterprise sites such as IBM, Best Buy, Cisco and Oracle. The
social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web
and they include:
-Reputation aggregators: search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Live. They
aggregate sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of
reputation.
-Blogs: online journals where people can post ideas, images, and links to other web pages or
sites. Some appear on personal or corporate sites, while others are hosted on Blogger,
BlogHer (for women), Weblog, Tumblr, and other blogging sites. (Weber 2009)

company to take maximum advantages of the social media.
Also the way of segmenting changes radically with the advent of the social web.
Demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors have become less
relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their
behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests. The goal for the marketer is to identify
groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the
marketing (Weber 2009).
Harris and Rae (2010) have looked at the role of social networking in establishing an
integrated marketing strategy. They argue that online communities have evolved considerably
since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. For example Cisco has put forward a
customer community which allow customers to help themselves to technical support
information via web communities. After Cisco put the technical support function online,
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customers began to compete with each other to answer queries that had been posted by other
customers. This strategy contributes towards the creation of a community of people with
similar interests who will trust and act upon the recommendations of others in the group
(Harris and Rae 2010).
Harris and Rae claim that businesses are recognising the potential of generic online social
networking such as Facebook and Myspace for the development of their brands and to build
relationships with key customers, but that this is a very recent trend in the UK (which the data
comes from) and that it is difficult at this stage to draw conclusions on how successful
companies have been in using social networks in the marketing work (Harris and Rae 2010)
2.3INWHICHPHASESOFPRODUCTLIFECYCLECANSOCIALMEDIABEUSED?
Weber suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product
development, market introduction and market adoption. He exemplifies by stating that blogs,
wikis (A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of
interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a
WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to
create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in

is a great way to help secure speaking engagements, contributed articles, and quotes in major
media. All of that adds credibility, which eventually can lead to the interest of new
customers, who may be used to buying other brands, products or services but may feel more
comfortable with you. An executive may also want to blog to get a feel for what is taking
place in the field, and get a direct line with your customers (Weber 2009).
2.5 BRAND AND BRANDING IN GENERAL, BRANDING IN FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS
SECTOR
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Why is branding interesting to look at in this study? There is a great variety of concepts
relating to brands and branding. From the beginning, a brand was used to mark ownership of
cattle (Aaker in Bertilsson 2009). In modern times, brands functioned as symbols that
enabled consumers to identify and separate one producer from another, with the ability to
trace one good back to the manufacturer holding it responsible for its quality (Koehn in
Bertilsson 2009), but they are today ascribed with almost divine characteristics serving as a
strategic business asset essential for firms to develop if they are to compete successfully
(Aaker and Kapferer in Bertilsson 2009). This leads to the conclusion, that when looking at
how social media affects marketing in a broader perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on
the area of branding within marketing.
But branding in itself is as mentioned above, a large area containing many concepts and
dimensions and diverging definitions. Therefore, it has been deemed necessary in this study
to make an overview of key concepts in marketing, and to on the basis of this analysis,
choose which concepts within branding to focus on. The areas which will be looked into in
this section besides brand and branding following right hereafter, are brand strategy, brand
equity and brand awareness and managing the brand portfolio.
The traditional definition of a brand used in brand management literature was formulated by
the American Marketing Association in 1960 and identifies a brand as a kind of
differentiating device “ distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark or
package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or groups of
sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors ” (Aaker 1991,
Bengtsson 1996).

consumer and her or his needs were in the centre for choices of core value (Melin in Apéria
and Back 2004), and this is very similar to the traditional view of branding from 1960.
In literature about brands, it is often stated that the company appreciates strong brands
because they are an asset which contribute to strong profitability, and consumers appreciate
them because they reduce uncertainty. Apéria and Back (2004) however, bring forward the
importance of branding for the distributors in fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG);
for them, strong brands create sales in the shops.
Weber approaches the question of branding relating it to the consequences for branding
considering the emergence of the social media. He defines branding as the dialogue you have
with your customer. The stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand and vice versa.
Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means
that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social
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web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to
which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can
flourish. (Weber 2009) He means that transparency is critical if you want customers and
stakeholders to trust you and engage in dialogue with you. The objective is to have customers
invite you to deliver the message to them. Messages can’t be “forced” through. (Weber
2009)
Yet another way of looking at what a brand is, is that the brand is your promise to your
customer. It tells her/him what to expect from your products and services, and it differentiates
your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who
you want to be and who people perceive you to be. (www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved
100424)
Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that contemporarily, it is hard to build a brand. One of the
factors causing this, is the fragmenting markets and media today compared to 30 years ago.
With a limited number of media options and only a few national media vehicles, being
consistent across media and markets was easy. The media world today consists of a lot of
possibilities; advertising on the Internet, interactive television, event sponsorship etc.

The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com defines the following parts in a branding
strategy: build a brand positioning, manage your brand portfolio, build your brand
architecture and naming, consider the possible brand extensions (.
Retrieved 100424)
Kapferer identifies branding strategy as the term used for decisions on: the number of brand
levels to be implemented; one, two or even three and the role of the corporate in the product
value communication; should it be absent, strongly present or hardly present. He also
considers the relative weight of these brands, and the graphic arrangement of their
coexistence on all the documents, packaging and products but also industrial sites, offices and
business cards of salespersons and managers as well as the degree of globalisation of the
architecture as bearing elements of the branding strategy (Kapferer 2008).
2.7BRANDEQUITYANDBRANDAWARENESS
As mentioned in section 1.1.2.4, there is little consensus on what exactly brand equity means
and there are numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature (Park and Srinivasan in
Pappu et al. 2005). In marketing it has for a long time been considered that brands add value
to a product, but it was not until the large wave of mergers and acquisitions in multinational
corporations with large and well-known brands in the 1980’s that this value was measured in
the asset value of companies. Besides the traditional way of considering asset value and net
income, also “goodwill” was to be included (Elliott and Percy 2007). Even if accepted
accounting procedure did not permit considering the added value of a brand name on the
balance sheet, it was nevertheless being counted as part of the net value of the firm. The term
brand equity stems from this context.

There exist many definitions of brand equity, defined mainly from two perspectives, either as
financial considerations or as consumer perceptions of a brand. Here are some examples: “A
set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, it’s name and symbol, that add to or
subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to firm’s customers”
(Aaker 1991)
Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on
consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition

valued place” in the mind of the target consumer. In a positioning statement, the benefits a
brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy a particular need are addressed.
Brand positioning can be thought of as the element that tells the potential customer what the
brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott&Percy 2007 p 229).
Considering the great importance that brand awareness has to create brand equity, and that
recent studies are questioning the traditional way of looking at brand awareness, taking into
account how it is affected by social media, this is the aspect of branding that this study will
focus on, and the approach will be to look at brand awareness in the way that Aaker has done.
Amongst the other 4 assets underlying brand equity, perceived quality is defined by Aaker
(1996) as a brand association that is elevated to the status of a brand asset for a number of
reasons: among all brand associations, only perceived quality has been shown to drive
financial performance and perceived quality is linked to and often drives other aspects of how
a brand is perceived (Aaker 1996).
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Brand loyalty: Aaker (1996) defines the third dimension of brand equity as brand loyalty,
which is not recognised by some researchers. Keller for example (1992) defines consumer-
based brand equity in terms of brand knowledge and unique brand associations.
The importance of including brand loyalty as a fundamental asset underlying brand equity is
according to Aaker that a brand’s value to a company is largely created by the customer
loyalty it commands. He also believes that considering loyalty as an asset, encourages and
justifies loyalty-building programs which can then help to create and enhance brand equity.
Another definition of brand loyalty, is arguing that a highly loyal customer base can be
expected to generate a predictable sales and profit stream. A brand without a loyal customer
base is usually vulnerable or has value only in its potential to create loyal customers (Aaker
1996).
This is true also because it is much cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones, the
costs can be 5 times higher to gain a new client than keeping an old one.
( Retrieved 100419)
The brand loyalty of existing customers also constitute an important barrier of entry towards

According to Kapferer (2008) it is due to historical reasons that most companies have to
manage a large portfolio of brands. The natural trend during the growth of firms has been to
add new brands each time they wanted to penetrate new market segments or new distribution
channels. This was done in order to avoid conflict with former segments and channels which
could have endangered their old brands. The vogue of company mergers and acquisitions in
the 1990’s brought additional brands that managers were reluctant to dispose of or merge
with other brands. The size of brand portfolio therefore grew to increased complexity
(Kapferer 2008).
There has been a rupture of this trend however, argues Kapferer, and today the trend
particularly in the FMCG industry, is to reduce the size of portfolios as soon as possible. The
reasons are that it is considered difficult to promote several brands to retailers at the same
time, there is simply not enough shelf space. A few brands will be promoted to gain sufficient
market share, and the others will be abandoned.
Furthermore, Kapferer highlights that the concentration of the distribution trade has reduced
the number of retailers and has even almost suppressed certain retail channels and small
businesses. Brands that were previously uniquely handled by specific distribution channels
and sold only in certain stores, may now be found in a single wholesale or purchasing group.
This tends to lead to a reduction in the numbers of brands. Another strong trend in the FMCG
industry is the creating of distributors’ own brands. This, together with the fact that
supermarket shelf space is limited, leads to the reduction of the space allocated to the other
brands.
There is also a concentration of industrial production. International competition has put the
emphasis on high productivity and low costs and has led to the regrouping of production units
and R&D activities. There is less justification for large brand portfolios when the products,
even if they are varied, come from the same factories or even the same production lines.
Finally consumers show signs of being overwhelmed and confused by the multitude of
brands. A response from manufacturers is to rationalise the number of brands.
Brand internalisation and the abolishing of national barriers is also a reason to the reduction
of the number of brands in the brand portfolio, according to Kapferer. In Europe for example,
class, lifestyle and consumer needs are no longer exclusive for a single country. The

These brands include a parent brand which may be a corporate brand, an umbrella brand, or a
family brand as an endorsement to a sub-brand or an individual product brand. The
endorsement should add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of consumers.
Examples are Nestlé KitKat, Sony PlayStation.
- Individual product brand
The individual brands are presented to consumers and the parent company name is given little
or no prominence. Other stakeholders, like shareholders or partners, will know the producer
by its company name. Examples are Procter & Gamble’s Pampers or Unilever's Dove.
( Retrieved 100425)

2.9SUMMARY
The aim of this chapter was to review and explain the relevant literature in the field of social
media on one hand and branding in general and brand equity and brand awareness in
particular on the other hand; in order to present to the reader the state-of-the art research in
this domain. In the following chapter, this literature review will serve to create a suitable
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theoretical framework to solve the research problem, and in order to do this, the precise
research questions will be formulated.
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3 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND FRAME OF
REFERENCE

The aim of this chapter is to, based on the introduction and the literature review, formulate
the research questions which will enable the data collection and the analysis of this to be
done in a proper way to solve the research problem.
3.1RESEARCHPROBLEMANDRESEARCHDISCUSSION
The research problem in this thesis, as formulated in the introduction in chapter 1 is: “To