ESOMAR 2003 Best Paper Awards

A paper by Research International on 'Managing global brands to meet consumer expectations' has won two of the three main awards from ESOMAR's 2003 Congress in Prague, Czech Republic. Two speakers from GfK Germany won the other award.

ESOMAR's 56th Congress ran from 14 to 17 September with the theme 'Management, accountability and research. The Quest for the objective truth', and was attended by around 1000 participants from more than 60 countries.

'Managing global brands to meet consumer expectations' was presented by Malcom Baker, Research International Qualitatif, UK; Earl Taylor, Research International, USA and Greet Sterenberg, Research International Qualitatif, Netherlands and won the overall Fernanda Monti Award for the best paper in any field, with a prize of EUR 2,500.

The paper is based on extensive qualitative and quantitative research on how consumers around the world relate to global brands and analyses decision criteria for strategies on globalization and localization. It looks at when, where and how brand strategists should customise their approach for local cultures and for individual consumers, and the new technology and information sources available to assist them. Are global brands merely those that are distributed worldwide, or can 'globalness' itself be an element of a brand's equity?

The paper was described by the jury as 'Highly actionable and useful to global marketers - an outstanding contribution on the topic of globalisation'. It also won the award for the best case history with an interesting research application.

The Award for the best methodological paper went to 'A new generation of brand controlling. Evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the complete marketing mix' by Siegfried Hoegl, and Oliver Hupp, GfK Marktforschung, Germany.

Starting with the assertion that brands are generally a company's most important asset and demand high investment in marketing activities in order to secure and build value, the paper contends that there are two main objectives for this investment: attractive brand positioning and differentiation in the eyes of the consumer; and its orientation towards profit. Put another way, return on brand investment should be assessed from a qualitative point of view and from a financially-oriented quantitative perspective.

The paper introduces an innovative approach to brand performance measurement which addresses both of these. The approach uses a model based on the statistical instrument of the causal analysis, developed to help management allocate future marketing budgets effectively and efficiently upon the different marketing instruments.

Members of the jury described the GfK paper as 'A sound contribution, providing new insights of value to many companies'.

The jury consisted of Fredrik Nauckhoff, Nestlé, Switzerland (ESOMAR President); Hans-Willi Schroiff, Henkel, Germany (Chairman Programme Committee); Susan Baker, Cranfield School of Management, UK; Simon Chadwick, NOP World, USA; and Tony Cowling, TNS, UK.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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