Consumer Behaviour

Group Project

Herschel Supply Co.

Backpacks

Group n°

Anne Rousselot A00430832

Yaelle Fauchon A00430835
Ankur Islam A00404467
Kai McKay A00407761
Charbel Frangieh A0040633
 I. Introduction

When you are walking around a school or a university you can see a lot of people
with a backpack. This product seems to a high involvement product especially with
the young people and it is used either by women or men. That is why we have
decided to study on the consumer behaviour around the backpack use.

The manager of the brand of backpacks Herschel Supply Co. hired us to know more
about the brand position on the market and its opportunities of expansion. The brand
Herschel is a Canadian brand of backpacks. They are new on the backpack market
indeed, it was created in Vancouver in 2009. They had known a very quick expansion
by selling “old-school-inspired design” backpacks. According to the website Culture
trip, in 2009, the brand sold less than 10 000 of backpack and today they had
expanded across more than 70 countries and sells millions of products.

To study the market of backpacks and fulfill the expectations of the Herschel’s brand
manager, we have decided to compare the brand with two other major brands in the
market of backpacks. The two other brands we have chosen have a totally different
stage of development than Herschel. The first brand is Champion, an American brand
which was created in 1919. They sell backpacks in a more sportwear style. The
brand has known a big success in the 90s and the beginning of the years 2000.
Today the brand seems to be “in” again. The second brand we have chosen to
compare with Herschel is the brand Eatspak. This is also an American brand created
in 1952. This brand is mostly famous in Europe but they sell their backpacks all over
the world with an image of high-quality products.

II. Statement of research objectives

The operational objective is to provide to Herschel’s concrete results to help them

expanding their brand.

To reach this goal, we have informational objectives that our survey has to show and
prove.

First, we need to know who the buyers of the brand’s backpacks are, that means
their demographic profile, and why they use backpacks according to their age for
example. We have to find how people behave in front of the situation of a new
backpack.

Then, we should compare the importance they accord to different characteristics

such as price and appearance when purchasing a backpack.

We will also compare Herschel’s with Eastpak and Champion, two competitors of the
company, in order to show what are the strengths and weaknesses of Herschel’s
backpacks regarding the companies playing on the same market segment. This will
be done with the competition between these three brands about price, size, quality,
appearance, lightness and the number of compartments. That means evaluate what
Herschel’s buyers care about, and what the buyers of other brands are searching for.
This would permit to know how the company can expand and reach new consumers’
profiles.

Conclusion: We can conclude from our research and collected data is that although
there were many source of collecting and gathering information we still find limitation.
One of the very first limitation that arises in most of the cases in today's world can be
Dishonesty- While there are many positives to questionaries, dishonestly can also be
an issue. For example respondents may not be 100% truthful wit their answers. This
can happen for a variety of reasons, including social desirability bias and attempting
to protect privacy. Therefore to avoid situations happening like this we should value
their privacy.

Secondly , respondent may have hidden agenda as with any sort of research , bias
can be an issue. Participant in our survey may have an interest in our product, idea
or service. Others maybe influenced to participate based on our subject of our
questionaries. These proclivities can lead to inaccuracies in the data, generated from
an imbalance of respondents who see our topic in an overly positive or negative light.
We can also avoid situation like this , by simply organizing the questionaries and
filtering them, and make the questions look less directed.
Recommendation : The pace of the dynamic business world is increasing at a higher
rate than the last 50 years. With the invention of new technology, changes in the
demographic patterns , customers tastes and preference, most importantly
increasing rate of competition businesses strives to do better than others. The key
role to get customers attention and more sales is by gaining more and more market
share than others. Making their product look more superior than others. Spending
more on promotion, cutting down costs increasing efficiency and improving the
product quality can also read to better sales for a company.
References

https://herschel.ca/

https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/canada/articles/everything-you-need-to-
know-about-herschel-supply-co/