Xinwen (Fina) Xu

Brand Audit: Gatorade Xinwen (Fina) Xu

Research Paper from the year 2011 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: A, University of Florida, language: English, abstract: The Gatorade Brand is a dominating force in the sports drink industry. Throughout the past forty years, this company had created a sustainable competitive advantage by developing their marketing mix which include product strategy, pricing strategy, promotional mix, and distribution strategy. This brand audit aims to analyze Gatorade's marketing mix, and examine how it varies when it targets on multicultural consumers. Or in other words, how its marketing strategy varies when it applies to an international market. Executive Summary Gatorade is an extremely popular sports drink brand and has outstanding brand awareness and loyalty. It markets its unique products mainly to pre-?adult group who ages from 13 to 24. As what John Sicher, the editor of Beverage Digest, said, "the pre-?adult years are the cutting edge of where those sports drink brands are competing". This is a tough market for any company to communicate with, since the youth people nowadays prefer to avoid traditional media outlets. In order to overcome this obstacle, Gatorade tends to be not only a sports drink distributor but also a "lifestyle company", promoting an active and self-?improvement lifestyle. In order to reach its target market, Gatorade adopts a very competitive marketing mix to get its products sold. First of all, Gatorade spends lots of money on the product innovation and development. Secondly, its low-?pricing strategy makes the products more welcomed by the consumers. Thirdly, by using its parent company-PepsiCo's distribution system, Gatorade can get its products sold in the supermarkets, liquor stores, department stores, and so on. Besides, Gatorade's promotional mix which includes advertising, public relation planning, sales promotion and sponsorship, and personal selling, also contribute much to its dom