The pioneer’s advantage in the perception of brand attributes: the case of mobile telephony in Brazil

Abstract

Empirical observation of the Brazilian mobile phone market indicates that the consumers of the operators tend to have an image of the pioneer’s brand attributes that is better than that of the brand of the operators that entered the market later. On the basis of this observation the authors checked the relevance of a scientific study that could prove the hypothesis that the customers’ general perception of the brand attributes of mobile phone operators follow their market entry order and that for this reason the pioneer brand would have a significant advantage over the others. For this purpose a transversal study with quantitative field research was conducted in Curitiba, PR, where there are four mobile phone operators, and several statistic tests were applied and their data analyzed. The theory review is based on studies about Pioneer Advantage and about brand image and attributes. The results indicate that there is an apparent advantage of the pioneer’s brand image over the later entrants in the attributes that were examined. However, when the operators’ global brand grades where assessed on the basis of the sum of the evaluation of individual attributes, it was found out that the difference between them was not significant.

Key words: marketing, advantage of the pioneer, brand attributes, brand image, mobile telephony.