You have recently been appointed as the Marketing Coordinator at Mars Inc.
Australia. Mars is a leading consumer brand company, providing products to local
and overseas markets in the Food, Pet Care, Chocolate, Gum & Confectionary
categories. Your role is within the Gum division. Mars owns gum brands such as
Extra, Eclipse, Hubba Bubba and Juicy Fruit.
Your Marketing Director is also new to her role and has commissioned some market
research to collect data on people’s gum buying behaviour. As you are a recent
Marketing graduate from UniSA, she asks that you analyse and interpret the data
and share your insights on gum buying behaviour with the department.
Your Marketing Director has given you a list of specific questions that she wants
answered. Prepare a 2000-word report that addresses the questions outlined below.
Provide an Executive Summary (approx 1 page) outlining the major findings of the
report and the implications for the brand Extra.

Section 1: Understanding Buyer Behaviour
1. Your new Marketing Director asks for your opinion about which of the two
theories, Cognitivism or Behaviourism, is the best approach to understand buyer
behaviour. Explain each and give reasons for your preferred theory.
(400 words approx.)
Section 2: Brand Performance
Table 1: Brand Performance Measures
Brand Market
Share Penetration
Average
Purchase
Frequency
Category
Buying
Rate
Share of
Category
Requirements
Sole
Loyalty
Orbit 37 75 2.2 5.2 43 22
Extra 27 55 2.2 5.4 41 13
Mentos 20 45 2.0 6.8 29 7
PK 12 35 1.5 7.2 21 0
Jila 6 21 2.0 7.9 18 0
Airwaves 4 18 1.0 9.5 11 0
Average 100 42 1.8 7.0 27 5
2. Are there any patterns evident between the brand performance measures in
Table 1? Describe the patterns and differences that you see between the
competing brands, and specifically for Extra.
(400 words approx.)
3. Your Marketing Director says “sole loyal buyers are the best type of buyers to
have, these buyers are the key to brand growth”. She wants to implement a
marketing strategy encouraging existing buyers to only buy Extra. Explain if this
is a good strategy to take. Why / why not?
(300 words approx.)
Section 3: Mental Availability
4. Describe Mental Availability. Discuss how mental availability can be built and
enhanced. What are the appropriate marketing strategies for building mental
availability? Name 10 category entry points that you would expect to be included
in an advertisement for Extra.
(400 words approx.)
Section 4: Demographics & Segmentation
5. Your Marketing Director believes that the Extra brand should be targeted towards
a customer profile of males, aged 26-45 years old, who earn more than $70,000
per year. Analyse Tables 4-6. Do you agree/ disagree with your Marketing
Director? Explain your answer.
(300 words approx.)
Buyer and Consumer Behaviour SP2 2017 – Assignment 3
Table 4: Demographics – Gender
Brand Male Female Male
Dev.
Female
Dev.
Average
MAD
Orbit 64 36 4 -4 4
Extra 60 40 0 0 0
Mentos 59 41 -1 1 1
PK 61 39 1 -1 1
Jila 61 39 1 -1 1
Airwaves 58 42 -2 2 2
Average 60 40 2 2 2
Table 5: Demographics – Age
Brand 16-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 16-25
Dev.
26-35
Dev.
36-45
Dev.
46-55
Dev.
56-65
Dev.
Avg
MAD
Orbit 16 35 18 13 18 -2 6 -6 -2 3 4
Extra 16 31 24 18 11 -2 2 0 3 -4 2
Mentos 18 27 23 16 16 0 -2 -1 1 1 1
PK 23 28 20 14 15 5 -1 -4 -1 0 2
Jila 19 24 27 15 15 1 -5 3 0 0 2
Airwaves 17 29 30 13 13 -1 0 6 -2 -2 2
Average 18 29 24 15 15 2 3 3 2 2 2
Table 6: Demographics – Total household income
Brand Less than
$50,000
$50,000 –
$70,000
More than
$70,000
<$50k
Deviations
$50-$70k
Deviations
>$70k
Deviations
Average
MAD
Orbit 23 29 31 3 6 -7 5
Extra 21 19 43 1 -4 5 3
Mentos 16 22 40 -4 -1 2 2
PK 21 22 39 1 -1 1 1
Jila 22 21 35 2 -2 -3 2
Airwaves 18 24 41 -2 1 3 2
Average 20 23 38 2 3 4 3
6. What marketing strategy recommendations would you make to your Marketing
Director as a result of your demographic and segmentation analysis above.
(200 words approx.)