Young Consumer Report: Measuring Effectiveness of Brands to Influence Purchases

Not surprising, Nike again topped the list for conversion rate in the 2010 Brand Strength Report, Young Consumer Edition.  Conversion rate was measured as the percentage of consumers that were “aware” of a brand that had also purchased that brand over the last year. 

A key to having a successful marketing campaign is converting the consumers that see a campaign into paying customers.  The Nike brand was not only the brand purchased by the most respondents, but Nike also had the highest “conversion rate” (68.4%), or Young Consumer survey respondents that were aware of Nike and also purchased the brand.  Adidas was #2 in purchasing when measuring the entire pool of Young Consumer respondents and Converse was third.

Adidas also ranked second in “conversion” with 50.7% of the “aware” Young Consumer respondents purchasing the brand in the past year.
While Converse was ranked #3 on the overall brand purchasing question with Young Consumer survey respondents, Under Armour leap-frogged the All Star brand when it came to conversion rates of those aware of the brand and also purchasing the brand. 

 

Considering this age demographic is key for both brands-it appears Under Armour is getting more return on its brand capital by converting more “aware” consumers into purchasing consumers.   While Under Armour was purchased last year by about 28.7% of the Young Consumer respondents in this target age group, 40.6% of those respondents that were aware of the brand also purchased the brand, or a move of three positions between the two charts of overall purchase percentage versus “aware” consumers purchasing the brand.

Because of the fact that Under Armour was strictly an apparel brand until recently, purchasing rates were somewhat lower.  Now that the brand offers apparel and footwear products-and the company is significantly increasing the number of owned-retail stores to reach more consumers-purchasing rates are expected to increase in the future.
While Nike and Adidas maintained their positions on the “conversion” charts for both genders, Under Armour saw a clear drop off with female Young Consumer survey respondents, falling ten full percentage points when it came to measuring the percentage of female young consumers that were aware of the brand that also purchased the brand.  Nike also fell ten percentage points with female Young Consumer respondents, but still maintained its #1 position with 64.9% of female “aware” respondents also purchasing the Nike brand.

While the Under Armour shift between genders is easily understood due the brand’s focus on the high school male athlete in most marketing efforts-Reebok/RBK, which ranked sixth overall in “conversion” rate with 34.6% of “aware” Young Consumer survey respondents also purchasing the brand-saw a surprising drop off in female “conversion” percentage versus the male respondents.  One explanation may be the connection that the male young consumer has with the brand when it comes to sports licensed products.  When measuring the shift in brand “conversion” rates in the overall Brand Strength Report survey, the results were reversed, with more female “aware” respondents purchasing the Reebok/RBK brand versus the male respondents ages 13 and above.

The median conversion rate of the top 50 brands is 21% in the Young Consumer Brand Strength Report.  Nike has proven to be the best at converting potential customers into actual paying customers, evidenced by its 68.5% “conversion” rate, nearly 18 percentage points higher than the next highest brand, which is also over five and a half standard deviations higher than the median. Each of Adidas, Under Armour, Converse, New Balance, Reebok/RBK, Skechers, and Champion were greater than one standard deviation over the median which shows they are also very strong at converting potential customers.

Brand Purchasing levels is just one element of the Brand Strength Index. The Brand Strength Index was originally formulated in early 2009 by The SportsOneSource Group in an effort to more effectively measure the overall consumer perception of a specific brand.  Each brand measured was tested across four main criteria, with those criteria each individually weighted to reflect their importance in the overall indexing formula.  All four criteria were then combined using a proprietary formula to generate a single Brand Strength Index for each qualifying brand.  
Look for all the background on an individual brand’s strength index score in the SportsOneSource 2010 Brand Strength Report.  The Brand Strength Report is available now and is offered in various formats, including report segments based on age, race, gender and household income.  Specific Brand Strength Index reports have been developed for 72 brands.

The results of the survey can be projected to the U.S. population with a margin of error of +/- 1.5 percentage points.

To find out more about the report, contact The SportsOneSource Group at 704.987.3450 or e-mail at: research@SportsOneSource.com.