Assessing the effect of branding on the performance of bottled mineral water producing companies in Ghana

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July, 2015.
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There has been a high influx of many brands of bottled water in the Ghanaian market over the decade but a few have been competitive. This work was carried out to determine the effect that branding has on the performance of bottled water producing companies in the Ghanaian market. Price, as a factor, was revealed not to be of much influence on customer choice of bottled water, as much as poor taste, colour or odours in water were. The study also revealed that 5 out of the 32 bottled water companies command about 80% of total market shares presently, leaving the other companies struggling to be competitive. This was the motivation for the study. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for the study. A sample size of 275 respondents comprising of 175 consumers, 50 distributors/retailers, 40 employees and 10 managers, 2 each from 5 selected bottled water companies were selected using convenience sampling. The work was analysed using comparison of means as the tool. The Lack of platforms for consumer feedbacks, inadequate training and capacity building of employees and distributors, quality standard adherence challenges, poor distribution of products constitute some of the main findings of the study. These factors establish that strong branding has a positive relation with performance of the companies in terms of their growth, market share and profitability. It is clearly revealed that branding of bottled water basically bother on quality. The study recommends that a more customer-focused approach is adopted to ensure quality standards to appeal to consumers. Also, an integrated approach to ensuring the promotion of brands by enhancing flow of information along the supply chain to address the performance gap. It is also recommended that, sufficient resources be allocated for brand promotion and quality management in bottled water companies.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Marketing and Corporate Strategy, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Business Administration (Strategic Management & Management Consulting).
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