Magda Nienycz-Thiel: Companies investing in education have the greatest success
Magda Nenycz-Thiel is Professor at Industry Growth at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science and in the past Mars was Professor of Marketing. In 2013-2016, she led a research initiative at Mars Marketing Lab. Magda Nenycz-Thiel, together with a research team, conducts innovative research that identifies ways to increase the efficiency of the investments that companies make.
Nenycz-Thiel specializes in areas such as category growth, e-commerce and neuromarketing. She has published numerous articles in the prestigious journals Journal of Advertising Research, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Business Research. She is co-author of two chapters in ‘How Brands Grow Part 2’. Nenycz-Thiel is co-editor of the Journal of Advertising Research and regularly lectures at academic and industry conferences around the world.
Why is penetration important for brand and manufacturer growth? And is it different in the developed and less developed markets?
If a brand really wants to become a big brand, it has to win as many consumers as possible. Loyalty will follow because it is a function of how many consumers the brand has won. Growth depends on the number of potential consumers that the brand will reach. It doesn’t matter whether or not the brand is expensive or cheap, big or small, new or old – the acquisition of new consumers is key to growth.
Penetration is equally important in both developed and less developed markets. What is different, however, is the brand portfolio that enables them to participate in and contribute to growth. In developed markets, long-term sustainable growth is more dependent on the ability to increase the overall value of the category. This means that you need to have products in your portfolio capable of generating a higher price for the same volumes.
Marketers like to focus on communication, building brand ecosystems and so on. All of this is important, but what is really critical to the long-term growth of brands?
Every brand must invest in mental and physical accessibility – simply being the first in mind and the first to notice, as well as simply finding and buying in stores. The first prerequisite for mental and physical accessibility is intervention – we want to get the brand into the heads and hands of people and make it as easy to buy as possible.
Communication is part of mental availability. It is important to reach the maximum number of potential customers by using brand-specific and relevant communication, which increases the likelihood of purchases as the brand is reminded in purchasing situations. However, this must be complemented by high-quality and wide physical availability.
On the other hand, there are activities that are detrimental to long-term growth. For example, frequent and profound graduations, unproductive innovations, disintegrating and cannibalizing the standard offering, and decisions that lead to too narrow targeting of communication.
Read the full interview on Marketing & Media.
