Here is the link to my paper, as I promised.
(With great gratitude to my dearest brother!)

 

Blijkbaar kan je dus niet teveel tekst in één keer 'publishen'. Had niet helemaal door dat dat de oorzaak was waarom het vrijdag niet lukte. Hier dan alsnog de online versie. Met de noten is het niet helemaal goed gegaan, maar dat is hopelijk niet zo erg. Ik zal vanavond nog een link geven naar mijn paper als een geheel, voor de duidelijkheid. (Dit komt pas vanavond aangezien ik daar iemands hulp voor nodig heb!)

Groetjes Eveline

  

‘CAN BEER TRAVEL online?”

---

Introduction.............................................................................................. 3

Heineken................................................................................................    3
Heineken as a brand....................................................................................  3
Branding history.......................................................................................... 5

E-branding..............................................................................................    6
Internet..................................................................................................... 6

Heineken’s strategy.....................................................................................  6

Functionality and features on the website........................................................ 7

Basics; provide ease of use........................................................................... 7

Brand value................................................................................................ 8

User experience.......................................................................................... 9

Consumer behaviour.................................................................................... 10

Increasing Internet use................................................................................ 11

Segmentation and targeting .......................................................................   11

 

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...   12

 

References………………………………………………………………………………...   14

‘CAN BEER TRAVEL ONLINE?”

 

-Introduction-

 

With the introduction of Internet, the world became smaller since it gave companies and people the possibility to interact and do business with each other without the former geographical constraints.[1] This created a new business environment and a new expression; E-branding. This electronic commerce is rapidly expanding into a fast-moving, open global market with an ever-increasing number of participants (Beltz, 1998). Did this make the branding become more successful or has the Internet taken branding to far? Adbusters.org came up with a new campaign of symbolic protest called ‘Unbrand America’. This July 4th, culture jammers are launching a blast of symbolic disobedience at America’s corrupt power structure – by swapping the Stars and Stripes for the Corporate America flag. This flag is a symbol of what’s wrong with 21st-century America, the country that has sold its soul to corporate rule. Besides this they feel ‘consumerism has become our new religion’. I was wondering whether this is caused by the Internet and how the Internet influenced the branding process, but that unfortunately aren’t questions feasible for me to answer. I’ll therefore focus me on the E-branding with perspectives on further research.

‘Beer can travel’ once were the words of A.H. Heineken. These words have been converted to deeds; Heineken hasn’t only been the biggest brewery in Europe, but also has exported the most beer globally. Since the roots of this success are in Holland, this brand is very special to us. In this paper I’ll take a closer look at the phenomenon e-branding and I’ll specify this to how Heineken stresses its distinctive features online in order to maintain an international leading brand. Alfred Heinekens words became reality through the process of offline branding. I will now look at how Heineken uses E-branding, with most of the practical and economical constraints of the physical world removed, in order to rephrase Alfred Heinekens words into ‘Beer can travel online’.

 

 

-HEINEKEN-

 

Heineken as a brand

First of all it may be obvious Heineken ís a brand. ‘Heineken is in all sense a consumer-oriented brewery. We see our beer as part of the way consumers express their personality.’[2] This obviously corresponds with the definition that a brand is a name or some symbol or mark that is associated with a product or service and to which buyers attach psychological meanings. Advertising is what it’s all about in branding; ‘Advertising is a form of non-price competition by which firms attempt to exert control over the demand curves for their own products through psychological or cultural intervention, and hence represents a pressure away from formal rationality’ (Slater, 2002).

         What kind of brand is Heineken and how does it creates its value to its users? Quality is the keyword for the beer brand; thanks to that constant high quality did Heineken reach its leading position on the international beer market. Even though a beer can’t be seen as a functional brand, because there are no functional benefits which provide value to consumer due to the physical attributes of the product or service (Aaker, 1996), I do believe this constant high quality can be seen as ‘superior performance’  functional brands use as a strategy to ‘win’ from their competitors. Because of this supposed great taste, Heineken can be seen as an experiential brand, because by having this constant quality, the brand focuses on how the user feels while using, in this case ‘drinking’, the brand. But most of all I believe Heineken has become an image brand. Heineken is more then just a beer brand; it for instance also is the sponsor of many national and international sports- culture and music events. The choice for music and culture is because it’s intertwined with the nightlife, what indicated Heineken wants to be seen as an alive and surprising brand. With Heineken as a sponsor of Heineken Nightlife, Heineken Music Hall, Dance Valley, Holland Heineken House, Impulz, Pinkpop etcetera, has it become a concept in the field of entertainment. Important in sponsoring are consistency and credibility, i.e. support multiple events in a sponsor field and to have a similar sponsor policy in other countries.[3] International connection Heineken definitely has with music events like Heineken Jammin’ in Italy, the Jazzfestival in Montreux and Green Energy in Ireland. Sports on the other hand attract a very wide and divers public, so that is the main reason for sponsoring in that area. Heineken for example sponsors the KNHB and the KNLTB (the Royal Dutch Hockey- and Tennis union) and sponsors the Heineken Trophy. 

Heineken also creates their image by focusing on who uses the brand. Not to long ago there was a television commercial on the Dutch television, with Jennifer Anniston from Friends. Another good example is a commercial of Heineken in Britain. In 1969 the sales were sufficiently encouraging to brew a special version, which would deal with the problem of the punitive level of duty imposed on beer in Britain. The sales of this beverage soared thanks to one of the most memorable advertising campaigns in British history. With a sonorous voice-over from the Danish entertainer Victor Borge, the advertisements traced unlikely successes and reversals of historic fact due to the consumption of Heineken ‘which refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach’.[4]

        

Branding history

Heineken is one of the largest and most advanced brewers in the world. The Heineken brand is the most valuable international beer brand. Operating in over 170 countries, through its own breweries and through export and licensing partners, Heineken has the widest global presence of all international brewers. Europe accounts for over half of Heineken’s sales volume. At the end of 2003, Heineken owned over 115 breweries in more than 65 countries and employed 61,271 people.[5] Heineken’s goal at all times is to defend and strengthen this leading global market position and preserve its independence. One of Heineken’s strategies for attaining this goal is maintaining a strong portfolio of beer brands, with Heineken as the leading international premium beer. So the Heineken beer isn’t the only brand of the Heineken Group; it has a total of over 80 brands, with Heineken and Amstel beer as the two principal international brands. In this paper I’ll restrict me to the branding of the beer Heineken.

         For a leading company like Heineken, innovation in marketing, communication, packaging, brewing technology and supply chain management is important. The portfolio of beer brands must be developed and regularly updated to keep offering high added value for its customers and consumers. ‘We communicate brand value through a totally integrated marketing mix: packaging, point of sale material, merchandising, promotion, sponsoring, strong local advertising and the Internet.’[6] What I thought was striking about this quote is that they mention Internet as something separate. On the one hand that sounds logical because it is something new what has a lot of new opportunities in the branding process, but on the other hand Internet probably already is involved in the merchandising and advertising for example. Daniel Janal (1999) also points out how the Internet doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is a part of the sales chain, just as important as for example an advertisement in a magazine. Internet should be integrated into your marketing program just as you would use public relations, advertising, direct mail and outbound calls to make more sales. The Internet is but one more tool to use in your marketing program to build brand identity and sell more products and services.

Its worldwide success has been built on three key principles: product quality, understanding the diversity of the markets and relevant communication. Today’s Heineken is still brewed by the same dedicated family that has been brewing Heineken since the beginning, and its unique, unrivalled recipe still hasn’t changed. There hasn’t been advertising from the beginning. Continuing with Gerard Heineken’s philosophy that, ‘A good product is recommended by its use alone’, the company refuses to deploy advertising seriously, seeing it as useless and rather low-class. When Alfred ‘Freddy’ Heineken enters the business as a sales promoter in the US, he develops the marketing expertise to later internationalise the company in the 1950’s and 60’s. In comparison to Gerard Heineken, Alfred Heineken does believe in brand and marketing. He is living proof of the fact that, with slick marketing and advertising, you can bamboozle millions into drinking a brand regardless of any intrinsic merit.[7]  When he entered the company he realised that the brewery had to break from the restraints of the Dutch market and become an international giant. This means he had to cross many boundaries, what nowadays with the Internet would have been much easier.

Freddy Heineken's major role in the explosion of his beer's sales internationally was brand image and marketing. ‘I don't sell beer, I sell warmth,’ he once famously said. Warmth, curiously, meant the colour green. Green labels and green logos abounded and became synonymous with the name of the company wherever the beer was sold[8] No matter where you are, the green bottle always signals the natural, refreshing vitality of the brew and there is no technology, not even Internet, which can change that! This already was a great establishment, the recognition and psychological meaning people attached to the green bottle alone, made Heineken a successful brand. Then Winning the gold medal of honour at the world Exhibition in Paris, having Heineken supplied tot the Eiffel tower restaurant and being honoured with a special jury prize in Paris all before 1900, makes it almost seem unnecessary to advertise any more. In 1999, in the Netherlands, the Heineken brand is voted ‘Brand of the Century’ and Alfred Henry Heineken is proclaimed advertiser of the century. The very first commercial-utterance dates from before the world war two, ‘Heineken’s bierbrouwerij maatschappij N.V.’ advertised with slogans like; ‘Heineken’s beer, het meest getapt. This happened by means of wall paintings. The slogan ‘Heerlijk Helder Heineken’ dates from 1958, which now is the most frequent and recognisable form of advertising for the consumer. A very memorable form of advertisement took place in 1928, when an aircraft wrote a Heineken ad in the sky above the Olympic Games in Amsterdam and in 1968 the first Heineken advertisements appeared on TV and radio. According to Wyckoff and Colecchia (1999),  marketing and advertising are the sectors in branding that are probably most affected by the use of the web. I’ll now take a close look at how Heineken applies e-branding and how marketing and advertising needed to be adjusted online.

 

 

-E-BRANDING-

 

Internet

E-branding refers to activities carried out when using digital technologies to build or maintain brand equity (Brattö and Gustavsson, 2001). Just before I’ll look at Heineken’s E-branding strategy, I want to look at the characteristics of these digital technologies, which have affected business extensively and how brands could be build.

         First of all Internet has an incredible information richness since it is text base and there are almost an innumerable amount of websites online, which each present information on different kinds of issues. This simultaneously makes the business environment more transparent, since Internet offers the possibility to access this information and for instance, compare prices. Second, in contrast to other mass media like radio and television, Internet offers the possibility for users to interact with each other. The information gathered by the company can be used in order to present messages that are developed with regards taken to the individual user, thus is it possible to personalize this message. Since the online users are not communicating directly, face-to-face, the web can be claimed to be anonymous. Very important is then, how Internet is increasing the globalisation. This is because the Internet is a network of connected computers, which is owned by no one and is more or less worldwide covering. These characteristics all have direct influence on the E-branding strategies, compared to the offline branding. In de rest of this paper it will become clear how these characteristics are involved in E-branding strategies.

 

Heineken’s strategy

Advertising a new brand online or adjusting your branding strategy to these new opportunities the Internet offers isn’t easy. That’s one of the reasons why there is a lot written about marketing online, e-commerce and e-branding. Dan Janal for example, is an internationally-recognized speaker, Internet marketer and best-selling author. His most famous books are ‘Dan Janal's Guide to Marketing on the Internet,’ (John Wiley & Sons, 1999), and ‘Online Marketing Handbook.’

 

 What's an online marketer to do to get people to come to their websites? Go offline. You can't rely on banners and search engines any more. You have to use traditional marketing methods to boost online visits (Janal, 1999).

 

An advantage Heineken had when they first launched their website is that they already had leading position in the offline world. Besides that there is no obscurity possible about the URL of de website; every country has its own URL which exists out of ‘Heineken’ and the concerning domain extensions and all the websites have a similar layout. Besides that you can reach all the websites from the different countries via Heineken.com. According to Janal (1999), this is important because consumers don't like to be confused. If they have the slightest hesitation about you, your brand, or your identity, they will pass you by. By integrating the web into your marketing program and using the same design, look and feel and messages, you will reinforce your image and themes to your customers, who in turn, will reward you with sales and loyalty. Even though Heineken already is very successful, the branding process never stops; a brand always needs to keep interesting their consumers and thus needs to keep coming up with new advertising strategies. Attracting a crowd of surfers to your site is just the first step, then you need to convert those browsers into buyers. Improving this conversion rate is one of the most effective uses. ‘Even a modest conversion rate improvement offers a huge upside potential,’ noted Jeff Seacrist, director of marketing for Web analytics firm WebTrends.[9]

Key factors for competing in online markets include to create strong brand recognition, to build user communities and attract advertising, to provide ease of use, variety of value-added services, functionality and features and quality of support, to establish strategic alliances and to expand on international markets (Wyckhoff and Colecchia, 1999). I’ll now look at how Heineken uses the opportunities of the Internet through e-branding in differentiating itself from their competitors who provide a product that appears to be identical in order to keep their leading position.

Functionality and features on the website

 

-         Watch all the television commercials e.g. Donny

-         Read facts about Heineken (brewery’s, work etc.)

-         Read about Holland Heineken House

-         ‘Schreeuw oranje naar de cup en jezelf naar Portugal’ is a campaign for the EK which started last 12th June.

-         There is an online Heineken shop

-         Downloads, e.g. screensaver and wallpapers.

-         ‘Heineken weekend’ gives you the opportunity to choose a city and read all kind of party tips for the weekend.

-         The link to feestje.nl gives you all kind of tips for throwing a great party, without forgetting anything to take care of.

-         ‘Biertje’ gives you the opportunity to invite friends to come over for a beer in a very original way.

-         You can listen to music, from house to lounge.

 

Basics - provide ease of use

A very important thing to remember as an E-branding company is the age-old exhortation to keep it simple. ‘Increasingly web developers are enamoured of special effects and forgo the kind of simplicity that's key for a good customer experience,’ says Steve Telleen, managing director of Giga Information Group's Website ScoreCard, ‘Consumers come to the web for ease of use. Take that away from them and they're not coming back.’ This ease of use is one of the basics that must be taken into account, when it comes to e-commerce. Experts say companies would do well to remember one of the most basic elements of delivering a good customer experience: making sure that pages load quickly, even when the site is barraged with traffic. Telleen advises companies to avoid using flashy technologies that eat up server space and slow down page loading times. I definitely agree, because it’s incredibly annoying when you’re surfing online and every navigation you make seems to take for hours. Besides that it’s fatal when surfers can’t see the website appropriate because the content is formatted in a way that it can’t be viewed by earlier versions of a web browser. What’s correlated with this are websites who use in-line links (hyperlinks through an image or icon). When there are no plain hyperlinks offered and the images don’t load properly, users don’t know were to navigate anymore. ‘At beer-brewer Heineken's site,’ Telleen says, ‘the lack of text navigation in the slow-to-load company store would make it impossible to buy a product should the images fail to load.[1]’ It’s not clear which website – which country - Teller means here and besides that this quote was in an edition of the CIO magazine in May 2000, so the website back then probably didn’t look the same as it does now. But on the Dutch and for example also in the USA site, navigation for the biggest part still goes through in-line links. But there is a difference; the USA site has the option to view the website in HTML or in Flash, so when the images don’t load properly, you can still now where to navigate. This in contrast to the Dutch site where this option is lacking and there also aren’t pop-ups or whatsoever when u navigate with your mouse through the images. Losing visitors due to this kind of mistakes can’t possibly be the intention. You would expect that such a successful company like Heineken could afford the best website builders to design a website which is appropriate for successful e-branding. Despite what’s said above, Heineken does have a good e-branding strategy which will become clear while reading the rest of this paper.

 

Brand Value

A value proposition is the aggregated amount of value that a buyer experiences when buying a product or service. To what extent does Heineken use the Internet nowadays to enhance their value propositions? One of the main differences of making a value proposition online is that it is possible to fulfil the consumers’ need more effectively than traditionally.[2] The constraints in the physical world are most of the time defined in terms of functional benefits, like the assortment in a bookstore, and/or economical constraints. According to Max du Bois (2000) the benefits that companies receive when going online are the (generic) benefits of: convenience, choice and speed.

         On Heineken.nl convenience also is a used benefit. Via ‘info’, which is the last option in the menu, you can send an e-mail to Heineken. You can place a message or ask a question about different subject, like beer or annual reports and you can order an information package, which will be on you doormat only a few days later. By doing this, Heineken enhances its value proposition by removing the constraints of time and place. In comparison to other brands, Heineken doesn’t offer their main product online, you obviously can’t buy a beer online (except for the ‘beertender’ a tap for at home). So in buying convenience this differs from other brands, but Heineken offers many other products in their online shop, where just as good the constraint of time and place are removed. The benefit of choice originates from the fact that the web is information rich, so it’s easier to present all products and services a consumer may buy. As I mentioned before Heineken doesn’t sell their main product, the beer, but there definitely is lots of information given about their product. You can for example read about every kind of Heineken beer (cans, bottles, special beers). Speed in applying information and in responding to customers is also applied on the website. Especially because of all the click through-options you have faster access to an uncountable amount of information then through any other medium.

         Personalization, as I mentioned before as a characteristic of Internet, is a key word when it comes to creating emotional benefits online.[3] One argument for building brands online is that it is easier to personalize information and processes, thereby making customers feel special and selected. On Heineken.nl are several options where you need to fill out a form, when you want to subscribe to the newsletter ‘Heineken highlights’, when you want to tell a friend about the site, when you want to participate in  diverse actions or in the options ‘biertje?’ and ‘feestje’. In every case they ask you to fill in your first and second name, your zip code, your date of birth and e-mailadress. With the information Heineken gathers with these forms, they can personalize future messages to their customers. On Heineken.nl the personalization is not very impressive,  but there are Heineken websites, who have more personalization through a log in possibility. The Dutch site is probably limited in personalization, because there are some risks restricted to trying to personalize information and processes online. I believe most important is that when you are dealing with people’s data you need to manage privacy. The privacy policy on the website, therefore says that the data Heineken receives won’t be used for anything else then the reason of the consumer to fill out the form. The privacy policy on the Dutch site is meagre compared to for example the privacy policy on the international site. Part of that privacy policy is about ‘cookies’.  They admit to use Cookies to collect other information during a visit, like the particular site areas you visit.

 

Cookies allow us to tailor a web site to better match your interests and preferences, and to speed up your future activities at our web site. With most Internet Browsers, you can erase Cookies from your computer hard drive, block all Cookies or receive a warning before a Cookie is stored. Please be aware that refusal of Cookies at the web site you entered may result in an inability to visit certain areas of the site or to receive personalized information when you visit the site.

 

Besides this they also mention that you agree with the terms of the privacy policy when you use the website, and if not they request you not to provide personal information on the website. I believe this is a smart way to avoid the problems that can be caused by creating emotional benefits. The privacy policy on the Dutch Heineken site is very incomplete and should be made comparable with the international policy, to avoid unnecessary problems.

 

User experience

To give the stakeholders the best user experience possible, means the company must present the value propositions, I described above, in as appealing a way as possible. Presenting the value proposition efficiently means that it has to be simple and straightforward to navigate the page (see basics – provide ease of use) and the look and feel of the website has to be right for the brand stakeholders. A difficulty when making the architecture of the site is to take all brand stakeholders into consideration (Brattö and Gustavsson, 2001). Heineken really succeeded on supplying all different stakeholders the best user experience as possible. Costumers are often the most important stakeholders en thus often causes over focusing on their needs. On Heineken.nl there is no matter of over focusing, which I believe is again because the website doesn’t sell their main product. When this would be the case, things would be different, then much more attention would go to attracting consumers and converting them to buyers. The website as it is today pays attention to all kind of stakeholders at once. The features for the consumers are present for creating and conserving their image, like contests to win tickets for Heineken music- and sport events and options to invite friends to drink a beer or to plan a party. For potential employees is a various amount of information available divided in information for students and professionals who are interested in working for Heineken. The information is really specified with information about the main departments in the company and available vacancies for professionals and information about (international) traineeships, the Heineken Business course and functions to first start working, for students. Besides the current vacancies there is the opportunity to send in an open application letter. All the information is accompanied with interview of current employees. For journalists (and other people looking for information on Heineken) is a great amount of information available about the history of the brand and the latest annual reports and press releases. Above shows how Heineken takes al her stakeholders into account when it comes to satisfying their user experience, but how is Heinekens E-branding involved in their consumers behavior?

 

 

Consumer behaviour

The traditional brand model is based on the belief that a brand message should be communicated foremost by promotion to the stakeholders with the purpose of influencing their perceptions. Since the digital technologies are interactive, the user or customer is in charge of what messages he receives, thus he can choose which messages he wants to be subjected to and therefore is this traditional view not very advantageous when it comes to using digital technologies as a brand-building tool. (Brattö and Gustavsson, 2001)

 

With the Internet the so-called ‘Participatory culture’ evolved, which among other things signals the blurring of the boundaries between the categories of production and consumption. I believe this also is what Brattö and Gustavsson indicates as the reason why the branding model is changed. Is this also the case with Heineken? What opportunities consumers gained now they can participate online?

It’s for example really easy online to ‘link’. Companies can use this by inserting links like ‘tell your friends about this site’ and all kind of options which involve potential new users. On Heineken.nl you can see this several times. For example the option ‘Biertje?’. Through this link you can invite your friends to drink a beer together, important here is that you need to fill in all the e-mail addresses of your friends. First of all when your friends receive this information they will be linked to the website and second, now Heineken.nl owns those addresses for further advertising. This ‘viral marketing’ is something many

websites try to profit from; they ‘use’ their visitors to get new visitors this also is what’s mend by the blurring between consumer and producer. This example shows how the consumers take care of promoting the website in stead of the producers of the site. This again points to what I said before about how easy it is online to reach many people at once and this example shows how the consumer behavior has changed: the power (partly) shifted from firms to internet users. The way consumers will behave online, depends on many different aspects I already mentioned above, like brand value and user experience, but credibility also is a very important aspect, which has great consequences on how the consumers will be influenced by the E-branding. Creating credibility has traditionally been vital for a company’s success and it is getting even more important when companies conduct E-commerce.[4] Without the characteristics of the traditional business environment, like face-to-face contact between people and physical locations, it is harder to trust a brand. In comparison to many dotcom-firms, Heineken succeeded in creating a brand, in stead of a trademark. So Heineken can easily sell their product online, without dealing with the problem that customers do not trust the offers made online and hence prefer to buy in the traditional, ‘safe’ way. Very important thus is the fact that the E-branding of Heineken is ‘just’ an addition to the offline marketing. Therefore the contact area, for example, isn’t reduced to a sterile, anonymous environment, where it is difficult for customers to form impressions of the company. The contact area of Heineken exists,  besides the website also out of the ‘Heineken Experience’ for example, where an old factory is transformed into a place where consumers can take a look ‘behind the scenes’. Beside this Heineken also creates credibility online, by making the online experience as real as possible, for instance through the pictures and interviews with current employees at the company, which helps the users realize there are real people behind the cold Internet face.

 

Increasing Internet use

Though not everybody is happy with this development. It seems like you can’t surf online without consequences anymore. If you need to fill in your e-mail, they will keep bothering you and if you don’t fill in anything they seem to find you anyway! But it can’t be ignored that young adults are spending a decreasing amount of time watching television and an increasing amount on the Internet. Primetime television viewing by men ages 18 to 34 declined 7.7 percent last year, according to a Nielsen Media Research report. Studies also show Internet use is increasing among this group. The Internet is becoming so pervasive, that 14 percent of ads on television now display a website address so prospects can find more information online. As time goes on, this number will only grow (Danal, 2000).

 

Segmentation and targeting

What must companies take into account when it comes to segmenting and targeting their online consumers? One first important concept when discussing brands is brand stakeholders. The brand stakeholders are the players which the brand is targeted to manipulate, also indicated as the target group. The most important of these are for most companies its customers. The other important players that the brand should address are employees, investors, the community, vendors, and partners.[5] Many observers feel that the cost and complexity of the PC, which is currently the primary access device, is a key factor shaping the demographics of the e-commerce consumer (IDC, 1997b). But acceptance of technology has advanced to the point that online campaigns are accessible to a sufficient large part of the population. In 2003, 24.8 million households had broadband Internet access, which is projected to grow to 39.9 million by the end of 2005, according to New York-based research company eMarketer.[6] As I said before, it is not enough to just get as many hits as possible, but for being able to convert your target group into buyers, it is important that your campaign and/or advertising is appealing to the segments you selected. For suppliers, web advertising offers the ability to target directed messages to an audience with specific demographics and interests. These specific targeted messages are something what before, with the media used for regular branding, used to be impossible and thus can be seen as another advantage of e-branding. Second, there is the ability to collect, track, analyze and leverage consumer behavior/ buying patterns[7] better then ever before. Studying this information gives the e-branding company another head start, compared to regular branding.

Heineken uses multisegment marketing, because it’s a multinational brand, and thus needs to select many different segments for each country and needs to design marketing mix strategies specifically for each. In the US and the Netherlands for example, the legal age to drink alcohol is a (geodemographic) difference in the two segments, which both need their own different strategy. Besides that there are also many psychographic and behavior differences between Dutch and American people, that needs to be taken into account in their segmenting and targeting strategies.       The free downloadable music campaign of Heineken USA Inc. is an excellent example. Heineken USA INC is the nation's largest beer importer and a subsidiary of Heineken N.V. (Netherlands). The core demographic of Heineken USA Inc., are men from 21 to 34 years old, according to Mike McCann, brand manager of Heineken. According to David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer, in the first half of 2003, 34 percent of all Internet users from 18 to 34 years old downloaded music. Knowing this made a cooperation with an online music company very obvious. Besides this, over 85% of RealPlayer Music Store consumers were aged 21 or older, what made this partnership, as chief strategy officer of RealNetworks Richard Wolpert described ‘a tremendous way to reach a very large, massive audience.’ This year on the first of May, Heineken USA Inc. began selling specially marked 12-packs of Heineken with codes for consumers to access two free downloads from RealPlayer Music Store. The television commercial which comes with this campaign, launched one week later, shows a young man in his bedroom downloading music while his roommate tries to find salsa in a refrigerator crowded with Heineken boxes.[8] For the Dutch beer drinkers another strategy is necessary since the legal age to drink beer is 16 years old (though on the Dutch website is an age check for 18 years and older). This example shows how the Internet is very suitable for selecting an appropriate segment coverage strategy and how e-marketing can result in new business models, what among other things increased the profitability of not one, but twó companies in this case.

 

 

-CONCLUSION-

 

With all the new opportunities involved with the Internet, the marketing strategies of companies have gone through enormous changes. Internet definitely did change the branding process to a high level, but it didn’t per definition make it easier. Every technological development simultaneously causes improvements and a lot of new problems and challenges. With the introduction of the new technologies the business environment that companies act in has changed. This new environment has placed new demands on brand positioning. My goal was to show you how Heineken stresses its distinctive features online in order to maintain an international leading brand. I showed how brand value and user experience are important aspects to give special attention to, when building or maintaining a brand. Heineken certainly took care of the risks Internet brings along. Heineken dealt with the sterile and anonymous environment and profits from the opportunities Internet offers, like the information richness, the transparency, personalization and interaction between the users. Very important is the fact that Heineken didn’t start as an online brand, but originated in an offline business environment. Because Heineken already was a leading international brand, before launching the websites, many problems are eliminated like creating credibility online.

         Another great benefit company’s get from E-branding is the globalization which is possible because Internet is foremost accessible at all of the world’s strongest markets, like the Japanese, European and North American.[9] The connectivity, which is combined with this accessibility, meaning that companies can interact with each other globally through the Internet medium, is something Heineken really benefits from. Because Heineken in active in more then 170 countries, spread over every continent, it’s important that the ± 110 breweries in more then 60 countries, can easily communicate which each other. Also in E-branding Heineken benefits from this access all over the world, through all their websites, adjusted to all the concerning countries.

         According to Al and Laura Ries (2000) will the long-term winners of the Internet be those brands that can transcend borders and still express their uniqueness. What they exactly mean by ‘long-term’ is not sure, but to my opinion it’s to early yet to say anything about it. As I already mentioned in the beginning, I would like to know how the Internet influenced the branding process. With this paper I might have given an idea about the characteristics of the Internet and the digital environment, which are important for E-branding, but that doesn’t say anything about if E-branding is more successful then offline branding. Therefore a much broader research should be done and besides that, when I’d like to know how successful the Heineken E-branding strategy is, I would want to wait the same amount of time Heineken only used offline branding…and that is yet a long time to wait!

 

-References-

 

Aaker, D.A., Building strong brands, New York: The Free Press, 1996.

 

Du Bois, M., Why brands won’t be bland in the E-world, London: Marketing, 31-08-2000, pp. 25.

 

Braunstein, M. and Levine E.H., Deep branding on the Internet, Roseville California: Prima Venture, 2000.

 

Dayal, S., Landsberg, H. and Zeisser, M., Building Digital Brands, McKinsey Quarterly, Vol. 2, 2000.

 

Heineken Nederland B.V., ‘Infosheet; Heineken en sponsoring’, 23-06-2004

 

Neal, W.D., ‘Branding in the third millennium’, in: Marketing Management, Chicago, Summer, Vol. 9. Iss. 2. p. 64.

 

Ries, A. and Ries, L., 11 Immutable laws of Internet branding, London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.

 

Slater, Don. 'Capturing Markets from the Economists.' In: Du Gay, P. Pryke, M, (ed.) Cultural Economy: Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2002, pp. 59-77.

 

Tybout, A. & Carpenter, G., ‘Creating and Managing Brands’ In: Iacobucci, D. (ed.) Kellogg on marketing, New York: John Wiley and Sons, inc., 2001.

 

 

Online material

 

Author unknown, ‘Freddy Heineken dies’, in: Protz on Beer, 05-01-2002. <http://www.protzonbeer.com/documents/27660-001647.html>

 

Author unknown, Press Release: Heineken USA Begins 'Downloads' Promotion, 28-05-2004.

<http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040528/nyf061_1.html>

 

Author unknown, Unbrand America, adbusters, 15-06-2004

<http://www.unbrandamerica.org/unbrandamerica.html>

 

Brattö, O. and Gustavsson, K., Branding Online. Leveraging industrial brands in the digital business environment, Sweden, 15-02-2001.

<http://www.mot.chalmers.se/dept/ima/examensarbeten/PDF/bratt%C3%B6-gustavsson.pdf>

 

Dayal, D., ‘Getting people to your website’, July 1999.

<http://www.janal.com/beyond.html>

 

Heineken corporate fact sheet, 17-06-2004. <http://www.heinekeninternational.com/press/press_kits/corporate_press_kit.jsp>

 

Heineken International, ‘Our History’, 16-06-2004

Posted at Monday, June 28, 2004 by 0227773
Make a comment   Permalink