Danone

: let’s rebrand DanUp : enhancing brand-consumer personality congruence

Abstract

In light of profound changes shaping the Portuguese dairy market and Danone’s overall worsening performance, this Case Study assesses the visual rebranding strategy of DanUp and the impact of its new packaging design on the brand’s equity. Using extensive secondary data collected from Danone and an in-depth interview to one of the company’s brand managers, we first examine the yogurt industry’s growing competitive landscape and the key drivers affecting its structure. Next, we focus on DanUp’s new brand architecture, whose foundation rests on developing a brand personality congruent with target consumers’ so as to positively influence specific brand responses. An online survey based on Aaker’s (1997) personality framework was designed to test target consumers’ perceptions on the personality traits elicited by DanUp’s old and new packaging designs. Our findings suggest the new design effectively enhances DanUp’s brand-consumer personality congruence as it better communicates young adults’ characteristic exciting traits. Supporting this, brand likeability and willingness-to-pay were both found to be positively influenced by the new bottle design. Yet, secondary target personality traits were revealed to be negatively affected by the new packaging, which calls for the need of finding additional marketing variables capable of maximizing the brand’s personality congruence with target consumers’. Directions for future research are also suggested, namely an empirical test on the individual contribution of each brand element to DanUp’s enhanced ability in establishing exciting traits. For managers, since this was a real issue experienced by a renowned food multinational operating in a highly competitive market, this Case Study provides a valuable benchmark for their own rebranding decisions. For academics, it also shows how Aaker’s (1997) acclaimed framework can be used to measure the impact of a specific branding variable on a brand’s personality.

Date of Award	9 Jul 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Pedro Celeste (Supervisor)