Introduction
Brand analysis is the process of identifying, understanding, and evaluating a brand and how it interacts with its audience within the marketplace. Through doing so, brand managers can understand how their brand is performing both as an offering and as a relationship with their target market. It allows the managers to gain insights in order to make strategic decisions and improvements to ensure their brand performs as best as possible. This essay will provide an analysis of a brand, with a specific focus on how well the brand is aligned with the needs, wants, and desires of its target market. Firstly, we will provide an explanation and justification of these terms. A literature review will describe the academic understanding of an audience, as well as a brand. An exploration of different perspectives will provide a framework for assessing how brands interact with an identified audience.
The 'needs, wants, and desires' model can generally be considered as a hierarchy of needs. In this model, audiences can condense themselves to a particular demographic, such as age or social class, and manifest a wide range of characterization types. Brand analysis goes beyond this rudimentary understanding and seeks to align brand interactions with consumer identification through the building of a brand personality, or an 'archetype.' From a brand perspective, added value is generated through the establishment of purpose and 'soul,' or emotional connection, rather than a focus on the functional properties. An analytical starting point in the brand management process should be discovery and therefore audience identification as a necessary factor in better reaching the targeted market, a point that concurs is the initial stage in the classic framework developed by a marketing communications specialist, mainly noted for the principle that advertising is not a science; it is persuasion. This system has eight stages which begin with market analysis; idea development followed also by the development of an advertising strategy.
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Target Audience of Ryan
This understanding of the three tiers of experience and audience members showcases the kinds of people Ryan brings into its brand experiences. This first tier of audience members cannot get enough of what Ryan has to offer; they desire the underground, exclusive nightlife experience that Ryan is selling. The people that fall into the second tier are looking for impulsive, wild, and thrilling nights out and are attracted to the idea that they are going to be partying with people who share a passion for something else, making them feel uniquely special. Finally, the third tier is the crowd that goes out on the weekends looking for something off the beaten path of the mega clubs. They think of themselves as the furthest thing away from 'basic' and are attracted to trendy, up-and-coming parts of the city. The Girls Night Out trope is evident in this ad as well, with the focus on women getting dolled up, dancing, and sipping on drinks with glamorous smiles plastered on their faces – the exact kind of ad Ryan tries to avoid.
Understanding the house spectrums and their desires is necessary information in order to construct a brand and image that will appeal to the 'right' kind of nightlife-loving audience. Market segmentation is a way to represent a social form without reducing it to traditional approaches to economics, marketing, and product analysis. Since the start of civilization, market positioning, customer experiences, and consumerism have been critical in the evolution of products and services. Our current society can be analyzed by looking at market trends, specifically through the perspective of purchase decisions. Experiences, fitness, and wellness are at the top of the list. These trends are influential in the targeting and positioning of message delivery and construction, creating popular societal experiences. Ryan's brand interaction is unique because it is specifically branding based on what the potential audience wants and what that 'want' represents in terms of an audience. In the case of Ryan in Memphis, the brand is exclusionary (you have to be someone special or do something special to come here), exciting (this is a change of pace), and connected to self-interest (I love these things, so if the bar has these things, the bar is cool). These wants and desires help create the sales and branding teams. Thus, in order to best diagnose changes that our mock brand should undertake, it is important to understand our audience – the people that Ryan would appeal to – it is a Memphis crowd, so assume that the kinds of people are largely in the 18-34 age group, making up a significant portion of the population and largely female, also with a concentration of state college students potentially in Memphis as well as alumni living in the area (preferred social association). It is important to understand the specific consumers when creating a brand, as hitting directly on wants, needs, and desires gives the brand tailored ad strategies.
Meeting the Needs of the Target Audience
Ryan stops are designed to meet a variety of needs through durable, valuable, and convenient experiences. The types of needs include functional, or the consumer product features and benefits a producer provides; emotional, or the types and amount of consumer feelings or emotions a product or service could be expected to facilitate; or social, or the alteration in a consumer's relationships related to the possession or use of a product or service. Both Ben and Shawn, managers of Denver and San Francisco Ryan stops, respectively, highlight how important it is to identify what "you think people want when they come in here to shop." They believe that by doing so, "our satisfaction will increase and our customer base will be loyal." They asked the question, "why are you Troy Ryan's?" Both managers expressed major corporate value in aligning the needs and rank of their customers with the Ryan product.
Early on, Ryan had identified the three main tenets in retail customer focus: the needs, expectations, and satisfaction of their customers. In an attempt to meet the needs and expectations of the customer, Ryan made many product features and services available since starting in the retail market in 2005. First of all, Ryan's products (clothing, gear, safety equipment, and potions) are made to be durable and last for years. They are good for "the rider's body," have easy-to-use technology features, and are made with beginners in mind. These products are "affordable, functional, and durable," and the "look and function" is a unique, proprietary, handmade style. Second, every location carries a variety of creameries selling everything from ice cream, tea, and coffee to salads, soups, and sandwiches. This food is displayed to attract sales, hold products, and maintain freshness. Third, their location is accessible by foot, bike, car, or ski. All locations have easy, free parking, and the store has the "vibe of a cozy alpine cabin." Fourth, each Ryan stop is staffed with knowledgeable, friendly, and accessible salespeople who create a relaxed atmosphere and are "genuinely concerned about customer satisfaction." And lastly, there are no return policies in place; simply, "we'll take anything back within any amount of time." Warranties and inventory are available in the store and on all Ryan product packaging necessary for the customer. The majority of product inventory is not available for purchase online. This retail strategy is necessary to experience the appeal to the consumer.
The Wants and Desires
Despite feeding into basic human psychological needs, wants often extend beyond consumer "needs" and are undoubtedly influenced by trends, image, and personal aspiration. These are, according to Maslow, "desires", more psycho-social and cultural-emotional. While the "need" likely demands a cheap route from A to B, the "desire" involves the aspiration to do so. Aspirational branding or emotional branding is the advertising of a projection of their ideal self, including an implicit understanding of their "wants".
If a company adequately meets even basic needs, how much more so do these "wants" they expect to meet? Some marketing campaigns strive to play off and even underhandedly manipulate customers by addressing their "wants" and "desires"; in other words, what they know they "shouldn't" have. This is done consciously enough, by coming up, for example, with the promotional campaign, "Flog-grown mums. Original, just like Business Class!" Customer loyalty in the wants and desires, however, can make the desire for a service or product both more "sincere" in the consumer's view and more likely to lead to brand loyalty. The space or gap between meeting someone's needs and meeting their expressed or projected sense of self, what they want, is a larger and more lucrative market.
The company has moved to addressing these wants and, dare I say, desires in recent years in shifts in its branding. The "Professional, Just as Original as a Typo in the Propaganda Dept" example serves to evoke pride in their loyal (and unpaid) customers, while also mocking the "professionalism" of their own, and thereby used to build up to the punchline – and implication – they're like all those stuffy corporates just like you.
Conclusion
This paper began with a discussion of the importance of understanding the needs, wants, and desires of a target audience in order to effectively manage a brand. Research insights about how relevant consumers perceive Ryan to be consistent with their own thoughts and beliefs, along with relevant industry findings about the needs, wants, and desires of university students, were synthesized to provide depth and understanding into the Ryan brand. Our analysis of these sources suggests that Ryan's brand is not resonating with a significant portion of its target. We began this analysis with a deep discussion of Ryan's target audience - University of Dayton undergraduate and graduate students - prompting us to argue that Ryan's potential target is too broad. We, therefore, suggest that our firm consider whether there are any other segments of students that currently do not visit Ryan. In particular, we are curious whether a visit to Ryan is cost prohibitive for some of our students, who rely on scholarships and student loans. Since these students make up the majority of our total enrollment, they represent less than 40% of dining services revenue. We believe that this offer should be investigated further.
It is further important to note that these discussions were designed to highlight the importance of learning and building upon consumer knowledge. Developing such insights is a process and inevitably requires continuous, integrative investigations. To that end, we recommend assessing the brand's mix to determine if it is aligned with the needs, wants, and desires of our strategic target. To facilitate the necessary decision of this examination, our team researched the brands that college students consider based on both need states and emotions: need states aligning with the overall brand summary of Ryan; emotion-based considerations examining the specifics of our potential segments' purchase decisions. Examining the insights facilitated decision-making based on the unique potential of different segments, as opposed to generic University of Dayton undergraduate or graduate students. The practical implications of our proposed brand strategy include recommendations for future marketing efforts, as well as a discussion of how a brand should ideally respond to future insights.
We believe Ryan should focus its marketing efforts to reach students who, prior to our decision, did not eat at Ryan. The general message should revolve around education about the brand and communicating offer change or improvement. Segmentation is thus necessary for more effective messaging. Future consumer insights will help Ryan capitalize on this strategy by catering to the creation of desire that we have uncovered as important to students. Overall, the present study reinforces the importance of consumer insights in the formation of effective strategies for brand success. Dynamic strategies responding to consumer desires play a pivotal role in competitive environments.
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