Who are the major competitors?
To make out major competitors in the
handmade ice cream industry of Lisbon, we
conducted an online customer survey. Besides
general information about survey participants,
such as gender, age, nationality; the main objective of the survey was to find out ice cream
brands with the highest brand recall and
recognition rates. To measure brand recall
rates, we asked the participants, which ice
cream parlors come to their minds when
thinking of handmade ice cream Lisbon. In order to derive brand recognition rates, we provided the participants with the 24 most popular and highly ranked ice cream parlor brands
in Lisbon, according to the Internet rating
page “Zomato”, asking them, which of these
brands they know. To make sure that customers talk out of experience, participants were
requested to state, which ice cream stores
they already visited in Lisbon and, out of
them, to rank the top three.
Lastly, customers classified key success
factors for the handmade ice cream industry.
Participants were asked to tell, which success
factor they perceive as “very important”,
“somewhat important”, “neutrally important”,
or “not important”. We collected data for over
a week and evaluated our results.
Concerning brand recall rates, we
learned that the Santini brand is clearly the
top-of-mind in the handmade ice cream industry of Lisbon. Out of 86 survey participants
recalling the Santini brand, 68 mentioned it as
the first brand, coming to their minds. Nannarella is ranked second with high top-of-mind
rates. Out of 31 participants who recall the
brand, 21 mentioned Nannarella first. Amorino was 10 times declared top of mind, and
recalled 30 times, whereas Artisani was only 4
times the top of mind brand, but recalled 39
times. This low top-of-mind score proves that
Artisani ice cream is only weakly differentiated
from other traditional ice cream providers.
Santini’s success story is continued
when we examined brand recognition rates.
The Santini brand is recognized by 131 out of
total 163 survey participants. Amorino’s and
Artisani’s brand recognition rates are almost
identical, counting 91 and 88 recognitions respectively. We can see that Artisani ice cream
is not often recalled, but that brand recognition is rather high. Nannarella is recognized by
54 survey participants, having the lowest
brand recognition among the four ice cream
parlors of analysis.