The Impact of Rebranding on the UK’s Generation -Y- Consumers. Calculating the ROI of the Ben Sherman Rebranding strategy and its effects on the behaviour of the target market.

ABSTRACT

Due to the need to adapt to the new preferences and behaviours of upcoming generations of consumers, brand changes have become a common practice in the fashion industry. The impending group of consumers are the so-called “Generation Y”, which despite the recession, appear to have an impressive purchasing power (Bergh and Behrer, 2011). They symbolise the commencement of a new era in which consumers and brands interact in a different ways. The reason for this is due to the consumer’s high standards and knowledge of marketing strategies, which in retrospect present a challenge for most fashion marketers to find new ways of interaction.

Taking into account the large quantities that brands spend on rebranding (Experian, 2010), marketers have to justify the reasons for which the brands investments are assigned to and control the returns expected. Despite this fact, it is generally accepted that brand sales do not only depend on brand perceptions of consumers but many various amount of factors. Thus, it is found necessary to find which strategies are successful amongst “Generation Y” consumers and to design a model to monitor the results of the investment (Kapferer, 2001).

Accordingly, this research is examining how rebranding strategies of a fashion brand impact on the perception, behaviour and performance that a specific target group (Generation Y) have of the brand, whilst analysing and studying the overall return on investment of a rebrand in terms of tangible and intangible incomes. For the purpose of this dissertation, the brand in question will be Ben Sherman.

Through the integration of two existent models, a new model was created to measure the Return on Investment of brand changes: the Consumer-based brand equity and the CRUSH Branding Model. The new model has the advantage of measuring intangibles from the consumer’s point of view, and allowing the ability to predict the tangible returns on investment of the brand whilst isolated from any external factors that could impact on sales.