Survey Findings
About the Respondents
Brand Salience
Imagery
Judgement
Feelings
Resonance
Employment Status
When asked what attributes Kotex brought to mind, "comfort" and "young" came up as the strongest associations. Overall, there was a positive imagery surrounding the Kotex brand.
Low Points of Parity
The most important factors that consumers consider when using a sanitary pad are prevention of leakage, comfort and absorbency. However, Kotex only fared moderately on these attributes in the perception of consumers. Kotex should focus more on improving these factors so that they will bring value to the brand. On the other hand, Kotex scored the highest for price, which unfortunately is rated as the least important attribute. Hence, Kotex should prioritize on improving the top three attributes that would bring about more benefits to its brands instead of price. In fact, all the attributes that were listed were only rated as moderate for Kotex. This might mean that consumers are not able to think of any prominent attributes of Kotex that would make Kotex stand out from its competitors. Again, Kotex can choose to emphasize on improving comfort (the most important factor) so that this functionality would be more salient in consumer’s minds, prompting them to choose Kotex if they are looking for comfort when choosing sanitary pads.
Kotex fares considerably better on the feelings of comfort and safety. This might be attributed to its relatively high scores in relation to its performance on leakage prevention. However, Kotex generally does poorly on evoking feelings of affection, pride, and social approval. Whilst little feelings of affection and pride may not really be a problem from the perspective of a sanitary pad brand, Kotex may want to increase its social approval feelings of its customers. It highlights a problem that Kotex might be facing- brand feelings that it evokes in its customer base is generally quite negative.
In general, Kotex scores relatively better in terms of gaining customers’ trust and satisfaction. We see that Kotex fares well in the judgment aspect of brand trustworthiness, likability and satisfaction. A drop in ratings is observed when it came to customer’s perception of brand quality and brand expertise, which were tested based on questions of whether Kotex added value to them and if they perceived Kotex to have the latest technology. Kotex is also perceived to have low brand superiority amongst its competitors as a relatively low rating of 3.2 is obtained when respondents were asked if Kotex’s products were different from competitors’. From our findings in the performance aspect of the CBBE model, it seems that more needs to be done in terms of product improvement and product differentiation, in order to increase its brand quality, credibility and superiority amongst customers.
To find out the relationship that our respondents have with Kotex, we set out to ask them the questions as such:
Involvement with Kotex
Respondents are asked to rate their involvement in Kotex, on a Likert scale of 1 to 5, based on the 5 questions listed. The stacked columns as shown above indicates a distinct bulk of responses in the disagree/strongly disagree categories. Particularly for the marketing platforms to reach out to customers, Kotex fairs quite poorly with regard to their presence on social media and events. Few also feel psychologically attached to Kotex or a connection with the brand. Most are neutral about their feelings for Kotex..
In summary, Kotex fairs poorly, with 4 out of 5 of the questions above rated less than 2.5 out of a maximum of 5 points. Consumers also have a relatively neutral attitude toward the usage of Kotex. This perhaps indicates the lack of emotional attachment that consumers have for Kotex. Perhaps Kotex is a brand that consumers use out of habit. This indicates a very low brand resonance, hence signaling a need to step up on Kotex’s outreach to their customers if they wish to increase its brand share in Singapore
Brand Loyalty
Finally, respondents were asked what they would do if Kotex was not available in stores.
The Kotex team set off to conduct a survey, with the intention of finding out how strong the Kotex brand is. First of all, we wanted to find out how salient the Kotex brand is in our customers’ minds, by surveying users and non-users of
Kotex to find out the depth and breadth of awareness of the brand, as well as its brand share amongst its competitors.
Depth of Brand Awareness
We tested how likely the Kotex brand comes to the minds of our respondents, as well as the ease with which it does so. This is achieved by measuring the top-of-mind and un-cued awareness, as well as the degree of recognition of the Kotex brand.
When aggregated, the depth of brand awareness is highest for Kotex, because it was the highest top-of-mind recall brand, although un-cued recall percentage is slightly lower than that of Laurier. This shows that Kotex enjoys a strong ease of recall amongst the other competitive brands present in Singapore.
When we showed respondents pictures of the pads opened up, without the logo or packaging, Whisper had the highest recognition, whereas Kotex, despite its distinct flowery prints, only managed slightly higher than 30% recognition amongst all the respondents. This perhaps suggests two things – (i) people are not noticing the flowery prints on the Kotex pads, or the advertisements for the unique Kotex pads (ii) the costs and effort needed to print the flowers on the pads may be channeled elsewhere to increase the brand identity of Kotex.
Breadth of Brand Awareness
To find out the purchase and usage situations, as well as consumption consideration that Kotex enjoys, we asked the following questions:
Consumption consideration
Our survey reveals that Kotex is certainly not the top primary brand choice despite its high brand recognition and recall. When asked which other brands people use though, Kotex emerged third highest, not far from Carefree, which is the highest secondary brand choice in the Sanitary Protection category. Kotex does not seem to enjoy high consumption consideration, hence the Kotex Team would explore further ways to fill this gap in the later part of this project.
Usage Situation
Respondents were asked to indicate the proportion of the different types of sanitary protection used in a typical menstrual cycle. Most people, it seems, use a combination of pads for night, day use and panty liners during a typical menstrual cycle, and only 1.29% indicated the use of Tampons. This perhaps indicates that consumers seek a variety of sanitary protection every month, indicating three broad usage situations that Kotex could tap on, in which the Kotex brand can come to mind in order to increase its breadth of awareness.
A large majority of our survey respondents are students within the age range of 18-23, with about an even distribution of women between those who purchase their own sanitary pads and who do not.
Performance
75% say that they would go ahead and buy another brand. Only a quarter would be willing to stick to Kotex by searching for it at another store, or wait for the arrival of stocks. This indicates that a majority of customers are not brand loyal. The Kotex Team would thus need to explore ways to shift this trend.
