Abstract:
Global consumer spending trends indicate a growth in the popularity of premium products. Organisations with traditional consumer commodity products are faced with the challenge of how to profit from this trend through successfully delivering premium products to the consumer.The objective of the research was to develop a method to enable organisations to conceptualise and employ product differentiation to augment the brand building process for an existing consumer commodity product. The research was conducted at South African Breweries Ltd with beer as the consumer commodity product under review. A two phase qualitative research paradigm was used to address the research. Data collection comprised a combination of 5 technical focus groups, a technical expert discussion forum and 9 marketing and technical semi-structured interviews. Content analysis was then used to identify the key patterns or themes which emerged.The research established that the continued commoditisation of the local beer industry is as a result of several contributing factors not only related to product differentiation limitations. To ensure successful brand building of a consumer commodity product, an overall method is proposed which considers both product differentiation and the key organisation, industry and product category drivers.
