CASE STUDY

Building a Global Brand: How Strategic Segmentation Insights Fueled International Success

A few years ago, The DRG partnered with a very well-known brand of vacuum insulated beverage containers (VIBCs) to evaluate their brand awareness, positioning in a competitive market, consumer purchase criteria, quantifiable market size, and other key factors impacting their growth. The VIBC company leveraged the insights to refine their brand positioning, visual brand identity, and consumer-facing campaigns to attract new audiences across the U.S.

A year of growth later, they had found massive, sustained success in the U.S. However, at this point the brand felt they were ready to expand their footprint globally and reached back out to The DRG for help.

Recognizing the increasingly competitive $2B (and growing) VIBC industry, the company needed a comprehensive understanding of their brand value and consumer behavior across key global markets. The goal was to establish a baseline for measuring marketing performance, define consumer segments to guide business opportunities, and obtain insights that would help develop content that resonates with global audiences.

consumer packaged goods

The Solution

To address these challenges, The DRG designed and executed a robust, multi-country brand measurement and market segmentation program to establish benchmarks and equip the VIBC brand with the insights needed to guide strategic planning and future product development. Our approach included:

  • Conducting an initial web-based study across five countries and gathering insights from 10,000+ respondents to represent three major global business regions of opportunity for the VIBC company: South America (Argentina, Brazil), Europe (Germany), and Asia (China, Japan). The objective of this study was to determine market sizes, levels of awareness, and purchase behaviors amongst participants in these markets.
  • Leveraging attitudinal and psychographic segmentation modeling, supplemented with brand and product variables like lifestyle and category behavior, to identify key consumer groups within markets of greatest opportunity.
  • Developing five unique consumer profiles, tailored to the three biggest countries of opportunity uncovered during the initial brand study, which enabled the company to refine its go-to-market strategies and product development efforts for each.

We provided significant consultation and hands-on support throughout the design and execution phases to help the client understand and eventually navigate the complexities of the segmentation process across three countries.

The Wins

Our brand and segmentation insights delivered critical intel that positioned the company for global growth.

Overall, we found that the brand was underperforming in several markets but identified significant growth opportunities in three of the five key countries. The findings were delivered via one comprehensive US Brand Awareness Report, one comprehensive Multi-Country Awareness Report, and three Country Segmentation Reports, and included:

  1. Demographic and Psychographic Profiles: We built five targeted customer profiles for each of the three biggest countries of opportunity – Brazil, Japan, and Germany. The profiles included demographic and psychographic insights that would help the VIBC brand develop a targeted and efficient market expansion strategy.
  2. Market-Specific Insights: We provided brand awareness insights across all key markets, including where the VIBC brand had the strongest foothold (a market with over 90% total awareness) and where their greatest opportunity was (a market with just 8% awareness but high future purchase potential).
  3. Competitive Positioning: We identified top global competitors and insights into their marketing and brand strategies to help the VIBC brand differentiate their offerings appropriately in the markets they wanted to break into.
  4. Purchase Behaviors: We identified how and where consumers were purchasing VIBC products and engaging with VIBC brands in the given market, and how likely they would be to recommend one brand over another to a friend. Insights included which channel dominated globally, which market led in future purchase potential, and which country showed the highest likelihood of recommendations (achieving an NPS of 66).
  5. Regional Customization: We identified opportunities for regional product, messaging, and marketing customization, recommending that local teams leverage segmentation insights to refine consumer personas, aligning them with regional market knowledge and cultural nuances.

The insights have been instrumental in shaping the company’s global strategy:

  • The company used brand awareness metrics to validate marketing strategies and allocate resources effectively.
  • Segmentation insights informed brand strategies, marketing content, and product development tailored to each region, market, and consumer profile.
  • Protect/grow/ignore designations for consumer groups, informed by our insights, focused efforts on high-potential opportunities.

Since implementing these strategies, the company has seen exponential growth. Sales of the company’s VIBCs nearly doubled year over year following this initiative, with global revenue climbing from $194 million to over $750 million in the course of 3 years. By leveraging segmentation insights and The DRG’s strategic recommendations, the company has achieved market leadership in the competitive VIBC industry.

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