STRATEGY OF THE REVITALIZATION OF CROATIAN FOOD PRODUCTS USING EMOTIONAL BRANDING

BA Senka Borovac Zekan1 University Centre for Professional Studies in Split Livanjska 5, 21000 Split E-mail: sborovac@oss.unist.hr BA Danijela Perkui2 University Centre for Professional Studies in Split Livanjska 5, 21000 Split E-mail: dperkusi@oss.unist.hr Fifteen years ago Croatian companies operated on the market of the former Yugoslavia which had more than 20 million consumers. During the history course that market narrowed down considerably to only 4,5 mil of consumers. Many of the Croatian brands had significantly disappeared from the market leaving behind a whole generation of consumers who had grown up together with them. The authors of this paper are particularly focused and interested in that generation. What brands were used 15 years ago by this generation, todays buyers and not consumers only? Should these brands be left behind, modified or should old consumers memories be recalled back? To what extent are they influenced by the attitudes and perceptions formed much earlier, at the time of the consumers childhood? The framework of this paper is the survey which was done on 54 examinees, age 25+, using the method of deep interview in order to find out how to revitalize some of the Croatian almost forgotten food brands using emotional branding. The research done showed that the attitudes towards certain product brands have been built up and formed yet in the period of adolescence and in addition, the pre-war consumers generation would be willing to buy products once consumed in the childhood, if they only found them on the market. From all of this we can conclude that the brand has been recognized on emotional level and that the most economical thing to do would be to revitalize once acquired image using emotional branding. As far as emotional branding is concerned it is the emotion that connects a customer to a brand and by mere revitalizing these emotions with our customers we revitalize our brand.

KEY WORDS: emotional branding, revitalization of products, image, profit

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