Knowing how customers see your brand is one of the most important things brands should know. Brand perception is the sum of feelings, attitudes, and experiences with a product or a service. Measuring brand perception will therefore be useful to assess if there is a gap between what the brand wants to convey and what people are thinking and saying about the brand. Therefore, improving the perception of your brand starts with listening to your customers.
The Daily Sportswear has conducting a survey to understand how French people feel about Under Armour (UA).
UA: a performance and high-quality brand according to French customers
French value the innovation, the quality and the design of UA’s products
Nike and Adidas are the two other brands that French customers consider the most when purchasing UA’s products
UA is associated with positive feelings from customers (reliable / trust, inspiring, joy)
The accessibility is the major downside of UA
French customers are likely to recommend UA to others
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Given the small amount of time to conduct this survey, the results do not aim to generalise French consumers’ perception of UA, but it can give us some good insights. Among the 96 answers, all of them have heard of the brand and 80% of them have already bought UA.
Performance and high quality are the two words used the most to describe UA
100% of French people, customer or non-customers of UA, have chosen “Performance” as the word best describing the brand. This totally aligns with UA’s strategy from the beginning. Kevin Plank, the founder, and now Patrik Frisk, the new CEO since 2019, have emphasised that the brand would focus on being a performance-wear company over anything else.
Moreover, surprisingly, French customers do not seem to miss any athleisure aspects in UA’s products: 80% of French who have already bought UA selected “Fashionable” among the words that best describe UA. This is quite surprising as it is more and more common to hear that Under Armour is an “old brand” and not trendy.
Under Armour is not accessible enough to customers
That’s the main reason given by French who have never bought UA’s products. Also, most respondents write accessibility as the main aspect of improvement for UA. Even 15 years after being public, UA, unlike its competitors Nike and Adidas, operates mainly in North America: 68% of its net sales revenue in 2019 is from North America (Ivey Business Review). The brand is more and more present in Asia, but it is still under-represented in Europe, and in particular in France where there are no branded stores, and where the first pop-up store goes back to only 2018 in Paris. Therefore, most of them have purchased UA’s products through sports retailers and through UA’s website.
Due to the weak exposure of UA’s products, only 5% of French customers do not consider other brands when shopping for Under Armour. Nike and Adidas are the two main competitors selected by French UA’s customers.
References:
· Reagan, C. (2017, October 11). Teens say Under Armour is an ‘old brand,’ as Adidas and Vans grow more popular. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/11/teens-say-under-armour-is-an-old-brand-as-adidas-vans-win-new-fans.html
· Under Amour Pop Up Store à la Cremerie de Paris N°1. (2018). Cremerie de Paris. https://cremeriedeparis.com/underarmour/
· Li, J. (2020, March 28). Under Armour: The Only Way Is Through Brand Partnership. Ivey Business Review. https://iveybusinessreview.ca/7206/under-armour-the-only-way-is-through-brand-partnership/
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