What’s your excuse for not eating breakfast?
Because
you have “no time”; “you are not hungry?”; “you might gain weight?” or “you simply don’t like breakfast food?”
Nowadays too many consumers are skipping their
breakfast or do not see the importance of a healthy breakfast. We all assume
that breakfast cereal is one of the physiological needs that everyone try to
fulfill however it seems difficult according to the varieties of brand cereals
offered.
Therefore, brand managers have to deal with the
consumer’s mindset to position their breakfast cereal as a main component of
the consumer’s daily life.
The theory of cognitive dissonance explains that humans have a need for
consistency in their normal lives, and a state of tension is created when
beliefs or behaviours conflict with one another. (Michael et al 2007)
While consuming cereals we try to seek for quality and start to think about the
amount of value that we can get; healthy which include the amount of vitamin c,
source of iron and superior taste.
Motivational conflicts have three main sections and two types of these conflicts will be
applied: approach-approach and approach-avoidance.
The approach-approach conflict is when a person has to determine between two desirable
alternatives. The conflict is based on the taste vs the health (French
toast and eggs vs breakfast cereal).
In the approach-avoidance conflict, consumers face both a positive and negative feelings during the
purchase. The consumer wishes the taste and emotional satisfaction but does
not want to gain weight. Most breakfast cereals are healthy as compared to
other breakfast options like eggs.
The consumer would rather prefer purchasing breakfast cereal but it is
difficult to ascertain whether breakfast cereals satisfy him or not. Moreover,
consumer have now begun to realize that breakfast cereals are extremely healthy
and they do not account for weight gain as opposed to eggs that do confer
satisfaction on consumption and make gained weight.
The different between these types of food with regards to time taken to
make has made the consumer to move from making eggs to having breakfast cereals.
Finally the avoidance-avoidance conflict occurs when the
customer faces two undesirable choices.
For example, an option of either spending more money on an old car once it breaks down or deciding to buy a new one. Marketers usually address an
avoidance-avoidance conflict with some messages that emphasize unexpected
benefits of choosing only one option.
Consumers are largely influenced by sensory stimuli
like sight, sound, smell, taste and texture.
Brand managers can use external
stimuli to touch the 5 senses of a
human body. For example consumers might see a billboard, feel the softness,
hear the sound of jingle or even taste a new flavour of cereals. It allows
brand managers to work on perpetual process using sight and taste signals that
the consumers receive from different channels.
Then brand managers have to work
on the exposure. Indeed, consumers are exposed
to knowledge through scenes (advertisements, billboards) and this gets
transformed into a purchase decision.
This would attract consumer attention towards breakfast cereal and make
consumers wonder about the reason behind choosing that product - whether it is
health or taste.
Finally, brand manager have to emphasize
on the attention: clear weighs advantages and disadvantages.
For breakfast cereal if brand managers have to take in consideration
some tools to work with is the vision and taste.
Vision
Marketers have tried most of the time to satisfy consumers' needs
throughout using advertising, store design and packaging. In case of breakfast
cereals, consumers may be attracted to many types of cereals not because they like
it but because the color influences them.
The blue, red and yellow color create a feeling of appetite. The white
is related to healthy.
Females are much quicker in noticing colors especially once the thing is
related to healthier food like breakfast cereal.
Taste
The taste preference differs from one consumer to another; therefore we
can apply this theory to the breakfast cereals. Children will prefer the cereal
that contains sweet taste because in their minds the image of sweet food is
strong and positive.
However, when it comes to the purchase the parents are the one buying
the cereals for their children. So it is important to convince the parents
about the health benefits of the cereal and the promising taste for their
children. Children get easily influenced by the taste and become loyal to the
breakfast cereal that tastes good. Taste becomes the driving force to make
children loyal to breakfast cereal. For example chocolate or fruity flavors
would be preferred by children. More so, if children consume such breakfast
cereal, they are happy to eat that breakfast and their parents would love to
give them breakfast cereals that are readily and easily eaten by their children
and also take care of their health.
Brand managers need to develop the right kind of stimuli while targeting
different consumers.
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