The chosen marketing strategy (including the branding as its integral parts) is highly important in this process. Nowadays, the brand becomes one of the basic motives for the consumers' choice of a particular food product. The importance of the product brand shall be seen primarily in its impact on consumers' choice and their loyalty through identifying and differentiating quality and origin, as well as creating additional values. The aim of this paper is to research the extent to which the consumer perceives the brand and how much it affects the evaluation of the functional characteristics of the product, primarily product quality. This paper analyzes the sales of tin cans (pate Âs) as well as explores the effect of the product brand on sales. The main conclusions of the paper are that consumers do not value products based exclusively on their physical characteristics and that in the process of making a purchasing decision when choosing an alternative, consumers will first perceive the brand as``a sign of quality'' and then other evaluation criteria (physical appearance and packaging, price, the reputation of the retail network).

In Spain, food distribution has been revolutionised over the past 15 years. Traditional food stores are in the process of slowly disappearing, while hypermarkets and supermarkets are increasing their presence, and more importantly, their market share. To understand better the causes behind this revolution, examines the existent literature on distribution trends, generally, in Spain. The Spanish distribution industry is marked by governmental deintermediation, consumers’ orientation toward value and competitors’ quest for efficiency through centralisation, as well as the development of new services and micro marketing actions, with the objective of increasing customer loyalty. Focuses on Spanish food product distribution, marked by the progressive drop in the number of traditional stores, the appearance of discounters specialising in the sale of own‐brands and having aggressive prices, the notable growth of hypermarkets because of their diversified offering and near‐cost prices, and the success of supermarkets, rooted in their ability to open multiple points of sale, positioning themselves between hypermarkets and discounters.

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The objectives of this article are to explain the importance of company culture and to point to the appropriateness of customer orientation as a method of expressing culture. The article further determines the connection between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction and points to possible resistance when creating company culture through customer orientation. It further defines the relation between company mission and culture and explains the significance of researching value and researching customer satisfaction as basic preconditions of customer orientation in culture.

The purpose of the paper is to determine the level of brand equity in the food industry in the Republic of Croatia, so according to this aim, research on five product categories from the food industry (coffee, chocolate, beer, milk, and carbonated soft drinks) has been conducted. Brand equity is most often defined as an added value that brands add to the products. There are two different approaches to brand equity – financial and customer‐based. With regard to used dimensions of consumer behavior, customer‐based approach can be further differentiated as cognitive and behavioral approach. A behavioral conceptualization of brand equity has been employed in this research. A telephone survey has been conducted on a sample of 495 respondents from all parts of Croatia, with proportional representation of counties in regard to population size. In order to determine brand equity, a measure of substitutability has been used. By this measure, consumers can be categorized into one of a possible six segments. According to this method, a repeat rate is a key indicator of brand equity. The brands with highest equity have been identified as an outcome of this survey.

Social media today represent a global community of different nationalities - the size of China in terms of population, and social networking sites are online venues where users can create and post content. Social networks have also become one of the most popular ways for people to socialize, connect with friends and family, purchase items and gather relevant information about current and political topics and views. The most popular and biggest social network is Facebook and its influence in every pore of our society is evident, e.g. potential misuse of its user’s data in different purpose including manipulation in political purposes. This paper will also cover the findings of a survey conducted in Croatia and Serbia about the perception of social media and social networks as a source of gathering relevant information.

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