Romanian brands still have a long way to go before attracting attention from Romanian consumers. A survey by market research company Synovate Romania and commissioned by Biz magazine shows no Romanian brand made it into the top ten brands that attract the greatest awareness among consumers. The top ten is made up of foreign brands only, with this year's number one being the same as last year, when the first survey was conducted. Coca-Cola remains on the top spot, this year sharing the number one position with Ariel. Both brands scored 100%. Next in line were Colgate-Palmolive (97%), Philips and Nokia (88%), Mercedes (86%), BMW (83%), Sony (82%) and Blendamed and Avon (81% each).
At first one might believe that the reason why Romanian brands are nowhere to be found in this list is due to their much smaller promotion budgets in comparison to those of foreign companies. However, the top ten brands still do not include mobile telephony operators Orange or Connex.
"We do conduct our own surveys, concerning telecom brands especially," said Andra Calin, Corporate & Services Data Manager with Orange Romania. "The Orange brand has been present on this market for only two years and mobile telephony's penetration is nowhere near that of the consumer brands." Carolina Tache, Senior Research Executive with Synovate, stated that respondents had mostly mentioned products, with service brands hardly coming up - people, its seems, relate to products. "Products are something you can touch," Tache said.
Romanian brands only came up when the subject was directed towards product categories. The non-alcoholic beverage category had the same amount of Romanian and foreign brands mentioned. Coca-Cola, whose 'first in the mind' (the first brand mentioned without interviewer prompting) awareness reaches 24% and its spontaneous awareness is of 74%, is followed by Izvorul Minunilor, Fanta, Borsec, Pepsi-Cola, Frutti-Fresh, Prigat, Dorna, Perla Harghitei and Sprite. At the same time, the Romanian brands also show up in the car category, where Dacia ranks number one, as well as in the alcoholic beverages, sweets and finance-banking categories.
The survey also focuses on a ranking of Romanian brands that arouse awareness among consumers. A noteworthy finding is that six out of the ten brands are banks.
Marina Zara, McDonald's marketing manager feels this is due to the higher confidence in the banking system, due the development of the retail banking segment. "Following the mortgage credit boom it is only natural that banks should prevail in this ranking because they have started to talk with the customer in person," Zara explained. "Banks have given consumers money for their daily lives and this is why people like them so much," she added.
Anca Bejenariu, Medicover marketing manager, also suggested that the high number of banks in the top ten is due to the fact that they have started to close deals with employers, meaning that people are getting their salaries paid directly into their card accounts.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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