About CBA
CBA / Consumer Brand Analytics is an annual survey designed by Richard A. Lipsey, founder and Publisher of SMA/Sports Market Analytics (formerly SBRnet), working with Irwin Broh Research (IBR), a greater-Chicago based market research company with nearly 50 years of consumer research experience. IBR conducts CBA field work and contributes to each study’s analytics.
Lipsey’s background includes broad market research experience, having served as market research director for three major consumer product companies, as well as director of sports research for market research firms and as founder and publisher of SMA/Sports Market Analytics (formerly SBRnet).
According to Lipsey, “my background, including exposure to leading research organizations such as Nielsen and Simmons, was extremely helpful in the process of developing CBA. It helped me recognize the great value for consumer marketers of having access to timely, reliable information about how their particular brands perform in the marketplace both in total as well as within every major demographic and behavioral segment.”
CBA is a product of a company founded in 1996 as SPORTING GOODS RESEARCH NETWORK, INC. SBRnet was the company’s original product, focusing on sporting goods and participation, and expanding in 2011 to add fan market reports. The sports-oriented study began with the name SBRnet, now renamed SMA/Sports Market Analytics. With the addition of CBA/Consumer Brand Analytics, the company is now able to serve needs of academic and commercial organizations involved in all aspects of overall marketing and sports marketing.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO STUDY CONSUMER BRANDING?
Marketing to consumers in today’s environment is a far cry from historical practices. New technology, social media, fragmented broadcast delivery systems, along with the combined challenge of marketing to individuals where there is a wide disparity between consumer segments as to demographics and who well the product satisfies a consumer need.
While marketing systems change with the times, one thing remains constant. That is, the need to deal with individual consumer brands given the wide variations that exist today and for that matter, have always have existed, when it comes to applying general principles to a specific product or service. Each brand tends to take on a distinctive image depending on a whole range of thing such as pricing, packaging, product features, market definition, and above all, how well the product satisfies the consumer need for which it is purchased.
Take for example soft drink brands. Why do leading brands have wildly different demographic profiles? Does coke really taste better to more people than any other brand? After all, Coke has been around for a long time, and plenty of astute marketers have taken shots at the brand. Would Coke lose market share if competitors were more astute marketers? Are other soft drink products just as appealing but their marketing is off base?
Any effort to understand what marketing is all about requires not only a discussion of how marketing works but also a clear understanding of the enormous differences and their market performance for products that serve the same overall marketplace.
No brand can survive long term if the product itself doesn’t satisfy consumers, if not all, at least a segment of the market. Even the best marketing practices won’t work for a brand that doesn’t have a segment of the market where it’s the best or among the best available options. For example, soft drink marketers know that high sugar brands are all but off limits to older consumers…for obvious dietary reason. One is hard-pressed to find a more brilliant product introduction than Diet Coke.
Richard Lipsey
President and CEO
Richard (Dick) Lipsey is the founder, president, and CEO of SBRnet. In addition to managing the company, Dick directs the subject matter and analysis of all research conducted by SBRnet. He has extensive experience in the sports business, market research, and consumer goods industries; and has been a major contributor to the field of sports market analysis throughout his distinguished career.
Dick began his sports business career during the seventies, when he became vice president and director of the Leisure Time Research Division of Audits & Surveys, Inc., a leading market research firm located in New York City. Dick created and managed continuing syndicated studies of consumer attitudes and behavior for the sporting goods industry. While at Audits & Surveys, Inc., Dick introduced the concept of syndication to the sports industry for consumer studies and retail auditing programs for golf and team sports equipment.
During the 1980’s, Dick served as the director of sports research for The NPD Group in Port Washington, New York, where he created and implemented ongoing point-of-sale research programs and managed the development of syndicated consumer studies of the sporting goods market.
It was during this time that Dick founded Sports Market Place, a sports industry directory that became the standard for directory publishing, serving all segments of the sporting goods and sport marketing industries. Dominating the market for more than 16 years, the directory included more than 10,000 organizations and 27,000 executives. Dick sold the directory in 1996 to set up SBRnet.
Prior to the sporting goods industry, Dick was a marketing research director for three leading consumer goods companies: Motorola, Inc. (Chicago); Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. (Chicago); and Liggett & Myers (now The Liggett Group) (New York).
Throughout his career, Dick has been involved with all segments of the sports industry, including manufacturers, retailers and organizations. Among his many achievements in the industry was to develop, while at The NPD Group, a study of sports participation to the National Sporting Goods Association, which today is still the industry's leading continuing study of sports participation.
Dick holds an MS in business from The Wharton School, University of Penn; an MBA from the University of Chicago School of Business; and has taken graduate work in psychology at DePaul University. He authored the textbook The Sporting Goods Industry, which was published in May 2006, and has been listed in Who's Who in the East and Who's Who in Advertising.