Consumer Preference Analysis
of three brands of anti-aging foundations
Summary
The purpose of this study was to analyze the change in brand preferences in three brands of anti-aging foundations before and after exposure to advertisements. Specifically, Lancome Renergie Lift Makeup, Shiseido The Makeup and Clinique Repairwear were examined for this study.
This research is based on a survey designed specifically to collect initial and post advertising exposure brand opinions. By subtracting pre-exposure purchase intention from post-exposure purchase intention, the constant sum scale is intended to measure the effects of advertising.
Due to time and budget constraints, this study used a non-random (convenience) sampling. People who were considered as samples were asked to complete the survey online. An email was sent to the "target audience" to request participation for this study. It was decided that a sample size of at least 60 would be decent enough for statistical analysis of this study. Out of 70 questionnaires returned, 60 were used for this study. The data was then transferred into SPSS for analysis.
Shiseido's advertisement seems to have had more positive influence on the viewers toward the product than the others. Shiseido also showed more women not changing their attitudes toward the product and less negative outcomes. Therefore, we can conclude that the ad for Shiseido did not necessarily contribute to more positive attitudes of female respondents, but had the most influence preventing favorability diminish.
There seemed to be very little relationship between change in brand favorability and ad favorability. Clinique had the closest relationship between all factors in question, meaning that these factors did relate to how they favored the advertisement shown.
The sample shows obvious differences in favorability toward the brand by age, indicating that older women were more skeptical that the product would make them look younger. The difference of preference by age was more prominent especially for those who had changed favorability toward the brand after exposure to the ad.
Overall, Lancome is the brand liked the most followed by Shiseido and Clinique. However, many of the results are non-consistent and are not statistically significant enough. One of the reasons may be because of the small sample size of 60 people. Moreover, these people were selected as convenience samples rather than random samples. Also, no control group was included in the study and randomization was not used in the questionnaire to lessen order biases.
Although having some limitations and not indicating large differences between each brand, it still provides some interesting information and can serve as a basis for future analysis and discussion.