THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRAND PREFERENCE. An investigation into how consumers develop preference for beer brands over time

In today’s consumer market, consumers have to make more choices between different brands than in the past. For almost every product, there are multiple brands to choose from, often placed right next to each other on the shelf. Therefore, creating brand preference among consumers is essential for brands. Previous studies have focused on quantitatively showing which marketing concepts affect brand preference. However, these studies only focus on brand preference at a certain point in time. In addition, the focus on quantitatively establishing correlations between marketing concepts does not provide knowledge on how brand preference is developed. This study takes a qualitative approach to answer the following research question: How do consumers develop a preference for beer brands over time? The three main constructs that are used as the basis of the research are brand equity, self-congruity, and brand experience. These constructs have been quantitatively proven to influence brand preference and are therefore an excellent starting point to study how brand preference develops over time. Semi structured interviews with 11 beer consumers are used to gather data and a thematic analysis with theory driven themes is used to analyze the data. The results show that for brand preference the development over time indeed plays a crucial role. For beer brands, it is mainly developed through close contact with the brand and most importantly, repeated usage of the brand. This helps to create brand experiences while it simultaneously plays a role in developing brand equity. Marketing efforts also play a role in the development of brand preference, but for the participants it is not as important as previous studies suggest. The results show that for consumers, sensory experiences and positive brand associations are important. High self-congruity is not a reason for consumers to prefer a brand. However, low self-congruity, a complete mismatch between the self-concept and brand-user image is a reason for consumers to not prefer a brand. Lastly, the results show that the development of the three main constructs cannot be seen as separate processes, but together contribute to the development of brand preference, while also affecting each other.