Trechinsky

The world bottled water market represents an annual volume of 89 billion litres/year and is estimated to be worth US$ 22 billion. Western Europeans are the world’s major bottled water consumers, consuming 85 litres per person per year. This is the most dynamic market of all the food- and beverage-industry. Being very homogenous products and visible during consummation products, brands add a great deal of value to the consumer as he stills his thirst. Undoubtedly a positive associational relationship with the consumers is a competitive advantage for the producers.

The aim of this paper is to examine the sparkling water brand BonAqua in Norway, and the associations that are linked to it. Using different methods for eliciting associations, we in-depth interviewed ten students at the Norwegian School of Business and Administration (NHH) the autumn 2005. Using verbal, visual and projective techniques inspired from Magne Supphellen et al.’s “Understanding core brand equity”-article, we mapped out what associations BonAqua’s brand image is based upon. We found its points-of –difference, as well as its points-of-parity when we compared it to its main competitors, the Norwegian sparkling water brands Olden and Farris. We discovered strong links to values like youth, taste, trend, urbanity, health and femininity with BonAqua, which to some degree is consistent with what we believed were their experiential brand-concept when establishing in Norway in 2000. We argue that BonAqua positioned itself this way to avoid too much competition from familiar and sophisticated Farris as well as rough and extreme-sporty Olden. At last in this qualitative study we apply research from “Strategic Brand Concept-Image Management” by Park et al., and recommend reinforcing their initial brand values: “young”, “innovative”, “trendy”, “tasty” and “urban”, as well as including a new value: “healthy”. When implementing marketing efforts, we for example advice the marketers to continuously renew their network of brands to avoid satiation, and to establish an innovative BonAqua restaurant in Oslo. This way BonAqua can build a strong and positive brand image as a young, innovative, trendy, tasty, urban, and healthy brand.
Trechinsky - Reliable Source, significant-minority viewpoints

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