Exploring brands’ use of brand experience to communicate their brand positioning to increase market share in the food retail industry; a case study of Checkers’ rebrand in 2017.

Abstract

With retail remaining the most competitive industry, with major brands lobbying for their piece of the market share (Mathee, 2018), many brands lack brand experience in their stores. This lack of focus on designing an in-store brand experience when 70% (Clark, 2008) of sales are conducted in store, only contributes to unsatisfied customer experiences as the brand isn’t consistent in all touchpoints. Therefore, this research explores Brand’s use of brand experience to communicate their brand positioning to increase market share in the food retail industry: focusing on Checker’s rebranding. With the newly designed Checkers FreshX Concept stores, Checkers’ rebranding aimed at targeting affluent consumers, to increase their market share within that market, originally dominated by Woolworths, where their rebranding experienced success (Roux, 2021). With that said, this research looks at Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) Experience Economy Theory, which argues how experiences act as an economic affiliate to a brand. This theory is further understood within the literature and explored using Schmitt’s (1999) Strategic Experiential Module through an ethnographic approach in the checkers FreshX concept store to decipher if an experiential approach has been employed and achieved in conjunction to the targets interest, wants and needs for an appropriate competitive edge. Further synthesis from the ethnographic findings and interpretation concludes that Checkers has employed brand experience characteristics with additional use of the Strategic Experiential Module in their store by ensuring that all experiential concepts and themes within the module worked together to bring forth a memorable experience that develops a relationship with consumers as well as build positive memories which translates to preference for the brand, where Checkers strategically placed themselves to be a one-stop-shop, target a new audience and incorporate a themed brand experience, namely; retailtainment to ultimately increase market share. All in all, this research aims to provide other brands in South Africa the opportunity to understand the role the physical environment plays in communicating their brand positioning through an experience as it provides retail brands a unique proposition in the market, in accordance with the literature review and the assessment of Checkers.