Factors influencing young African consumers' inclination for branded products

Brands are ubiquitous and young consumers associate themselves with brands whilst businesses contest through brand value. Consumers are encumbered with a barrage of market manipulated incitements modelling their consumer patterns of behaviour into a constant state of flux. Today’s extremely global brand-competitive environment makes marketers duty-bound to be acquainted with the importance consumers place on the factors influencing their brand inclination, specifically that of young African consumers – the focus of this paper. Gaining knowledge about these consumers’ brand inclination is important for the crafting of innovative marketing strategies seeing that the homogeneity and heterogeneity of influences enable refining brand positioning and target marketing. A descriptive survey with a self-completing questionnaire was undertaken in Mahikeng and young African consumers up to the age of 30 years were selected on a convenience sampling bases to participate. The data was statistically analyzed. The study disclosed that young Africans are brand conscious and price is the most important influence, followed by promotional offers. No statistical significant differences surfaced between the five populations descriptors and the importance placed on the six influencing factors. Marketing communication focusing on discounts should be directed at young African females and males will be influenced by brand image.