Predicting Brand Perception for Fast Food Market Entry

We present a combined and integrative market research approach to address common, but potentially neglected problems resulting from consumers’ perceptions towards food brands. Our findings provide improved response measures and guidance for market entry strategies of established and novel food brands. Two knowledge sources and methods are combined to derive a model of brand perception: experts’ opinions are elicited using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to generate an overall causal effects framework for food brands. Complementary hereto, a survey of potential consumers retrieves consumers’ perceptions regarding market entry scenarios of different food brands. A remote metropolitan area (Novosibirsk) was chosen as quasi-laboratory setting to simulate the market introduction of alternative fast food brands. Insights are gained about the interdependence of branding and advertisement effects. As expected, consumers’ attitudes towards the brand and towards the ad are the key success factors for any type of brand. Different responses depend on consumers’ expectations towards novel or established brands. Otherwise, the paper provides a proof of concept to integrate AHP and experts’ assessments with consumer surveys. Findings indicate a large potential to join external and internal perspectives for obtaining more valid market assessments before the real market entry. Managers might need to enhance their model of assessed consumer perceptions with expert opinion before entering a market in order to align their advertising accordingly. Global and local brands face distinctively different market entry barriers. Novel global brands constitute a promising alternative for a food company wishing to enter a new market. Managers need to decide whether a combined specific approach is necessary and eventually incorporate it in case of new foods brands. A novel method is introduced to assess market perceptions of food brands before the latter actually enter the market. A combined approach incorporates expert opinions to enhance incomplete consumer information. Findings indicate strong interaction effects between brand and advertisement related factors which in turn strongly influence consumers’ perceptions.