Since the decision of establishing a company is made, it is done with the intention to expand, to grow, to gain a good position in people`s mind, in order to be more than just a company but a brand in which people could feel comfortable. Now, I will present a case in which a bad decision, maybe caused by a bad marketing research or the lack of one, can lead the company to a failure.

This case focuses on the purchase of “Cerveceria Suramericana” ( an ecuadorian Brewery) by AMBEV  (a multinational Brewery which is the 5th largest brewery in the world). This multinational brewery decided to buy “Cerveceria Suramericana” in 2003, when this company was already well-known for their products, like the beer “Biela”. This ecuadorian beer company had worked hard for many years to compete and gain market against the company “Cerveceria nacional”, producer of “Pilsener” beer, which is identified as the ecuadorian beer. So hard was the effort made by “Cerveceria Suramericana” that it started to gain a lot of customers, it had such a good position in people`s mind that people started to say “let`s have a biela” referring to the desire of having a beer. But in the time of the purchase of the company, AMBEV decide to rename the product in order to introduce to Ecuador one of their popular products that is “Brahma beer”.

The problem lies in the fact that this decision made AMBEV to start from zero and to try again to earn the market that “Cerveceria Suramericana” already earned, and meanwhile they let a lonely “Pilsener” to monopolize the ecuadorian market, and to own the space of that company that once was so well positioned, and now is still trying to regain what once was theirs.

In this blog, I want to talk about the importance of the Marketing research for a business, but specially the importance of making the right questions in the research. It is essential for a company to make a Marketing research before launching a new product or changing one of their products that already exists, in order to know how the consumers will react towards this and if the idea of this new product is profitable. However, a very usual mistake while doing the research is asking the wrong questions, which can lead the company to misunderstand the results and therefore to make the wrong decisions, which eventually can lead the business to decline.

A very useful example of this fact is the case of Coca Cola in the early 1980`s when Coca Cola`s market share was decreasing and Pepsi`s was rising, consequently, Coca Cola decided to change the formula of their coke and make its taste “smoother”. In order to do it, they made a Marketing research, in which they asked to their consumers how would they feel if the company added a new ingredient to the formula, just to realize that only the 11 percent of the consumers will be angry; by having this research as a guide, the managers decided to launch the new product. As a result, they had a lot of negative reactions from their consumers; what really happened is that they did not do the right question, they asked how the consumers would feel if they added a new ingredient to the formula; when the right question was: “how the consumers would feel if Coca-Cola was replaced with a drink that tasted different”.

We can see with this example how what seems a little and insignificant question can alter a whole Marketing research and therefore make it useless when making the right decision for the company.

For more information about this case please visit the following link:http://www.marketresearchsurveysoftware.com/market-research-and-the-coca-cola-problem/

As we all know, brand-positioning is a very important key for every business, this will define how people perceive the company, this will define if the firm is the number one or not in people`s mind when they think about a specific aspect. Brand-positioning is definitively a fundamental aspect for the success of a firm, therefore, if the brand does not have the correct marketing, it will surely decline.

An example of how the wrong marketing can harm a company is the one of Walmart, which is one the biggest retailers in the U.S, that used the wrong positioning statement, that ended up decreasing their sales; their last positioning statement was: “Low prices…Always low prices! “, this statement seems to be very attractive but the real result is that it made Walmart seem like just a place where people can get cheap things, more than good quality products, which later led people to think that this brand was just for people with economy issues. Another reason that explains why this positioning statement is not a good one is that due to this advertisement people just think of Walmart as a place to buy products  with a lower price, so when the company does not low the prices too much, the people instantaneously stop going to Walmart shops.

As a consequence of this bad advertisement and its results, now Walmart has a new positioning statement, which is “Save money. Live better”, it seems to be a little change, but actually it can help a lot with the growth of the business.

For more information about this topic, you can visit the following links:http://www.evancarmichael.com/Branding/72/Wal-Marts-brand-positioning.html http://www.donaldcooper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=166:artworldslargestbizchanges&catid=28:creating-delivering-and-communicating-compelling-customer-owning-value&Itemid=58