MT450 Unit 2 Fountain Pen Brand Audit Example

Craftsmanship on the Box, Ink on the Fingers: An MT450 Unit 2 Brand Audit of a Fountain Pen Maker

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT450: Brand Management Strategy

Unit 2 Brand Audit

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Tremont Pen Company, its touchpoints, the reviews and the interviews are composite; the sources cited are real.

Purpose and Method

This audit examines the Tremont brand, the flagship name of Tremont Pen Company, a composite Fort Wayne, Indiana fountain pen maker founded in 1921. It follows the two-part method Keller and Swaminathan (2020) describe. The brand inventory records what the company puts in front of customers: names, claims, packaging, prices and channels. The brand exploratory records what customers actually think and say. The inventory is completed first, so the company's intended meaning is fixed in its own words before any customer speaks.

The Brand Inventory

Fourteen touchpoints were read for claims: the website's home and product pages, the pen box, the box insert, the warranty card, the dealer catalog, shelf cards in independent stationery shops, three years of print ads in two writing magazines, the trade show booth panels, the company's social media profile, email newsletters, the order confirmation email and the service request form.

Each claim was tallied once per touchpoint where it appeared. Craftsmanship leads with 31 appearances, often as "hand-tuned nibs" or "made by craftspeople." Heritage follows with 22, built around "since 1921." Indiana appears 17 times, usually as "made in Fort Wayne." Smooth writing appears 9 times. The lifetime factory nib service, under which any Tremont pen can be mailed back for nib adjustment or replacement at the cost of postage, appears on only three touchpoints: the warranty card, the service request form and one page deep in the website.

The Brand Exploratory

The exploratory drew on two sources. First, 612 customer reviews of Tremont pens posted from 2023 through 2025 on four retail sites were coded for associations rather than star ratings. Second, fifteen owners recruited through the company's newsletter gave short telephone interviews about what the brand meant to them.

How the Reviews Were Coded

A coding scheme of associations was built from a first reading of 100 reviews and then applied to all 612. A review could carry several associations. To test whether the coding was reliable, a second reader coded 60 reviews without seeing the first reader's codes, and their codes matched in 88 percent of cases. The two categories where they disagreed most were "heavy" and "well made," since reviewers often praise a pen's heft and its build in one phrase. Krippendorff (2019) recommends reporting agreement this way, so that readers can weigh the frequencies for themselves.

Nine Associations, Ranked

The coded reviews produced nine recurring associations. Writes smoothly appears in 41 percent of reviews. Messy filling, meaning ink on fingers or a converter that is hard to use, appears in 34 percent. Heavy in the hand appears in 19 percent, praised and criticized about equally. Good gift appears in 17 percent, lasts for decades in 12, old-fashioned look in 9 and too expensive in 8. Craftsmanship appears in 6 percent. The factory nib service appears in 4 percent, almost always in reviews written by owners who had used it, and those reviews are among the most enthusiastic in the sample.

The company's most distinctive service is mentioned mainly by the few customers who have used it, and they are its loudest admirers.

What the Interviews Explain

The interviews explain why customers rarely mention craftsmanship. Eleven of fifteen owners said they assume any pen at this price is well made, so the claim tells them nothing. Several said they learned about the nib service from another pen owner, not from Tremont. Muniz and O'Guinn (2001) describe how members of a brand community pass knowledge to one another, and the interviews suggest that Tremont's most valuable association travels mostly by word of mouth among enthusiasts.

The Gap Chart

A gap chart sets every company claim beside its customer frequency. Craftsmanship, the company's leading claim at 31 touchpoints, sits at 6 percent of reviews. Heritage, at 22 touchpoints, is close to invisible in reviews except as the old-fashioned look, which is as often a criticism as praise. Smooth writing, the association customers raise most, appears on only 9 touchpoints. Messy filling, the second most common association, is not addressed anywhere the company speaks. The nib service, at 3 touchpoints and 4 percent of reviews, is the one place where low company effort and strong customer feeling meet.

Recommendations

Each recommendation cites a row of the gap chart, and none requires an advertising campaign. First, put the nib service on the box insert and the order confirmation email, so every buyer learns of it at the moment of purchase rather than from another owner. Second, address messy filling where it happens: include a one-page filling card in the box and offer a cartridge in every new pen. Third, lead product pages with how the pen writes, the association customers already hold, and move craftsmanship to supporting copy. Keller (1993) locates equity in associations that are held with conviction, liked and not shared with rivals; the audit finds Tremont spending most of its words on an association that passes none of those tests with its own buyers.

References

Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700101

Keller, K. L., & Swaminathan, V. (2020). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity (5th ed.). Pearson.

Krippendorff, K. (2019). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (4th ed.). SAGE.

Muniz, A. M., Jr., & O'Guinn, T. C. (2001). Brand community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 412-432. https://doi.org/10.1086/319618