Abstract

Despite the availability of cheaper alternatives, some consumers in the noodles market exhibit a preference for premium brands with higher prices, resulting in increased demand for these products, posing a serious challenge in understanding consumer behaviour. Competitiveness analysis, applied in industries, provides brands with valuable insights into the competitive landscape, enabling them to identify potential competitors and devise effective customer retention strategies. Thus, this research adopts Markov theory to estimate transition probabilities, which shows the consumers' movement from one brand to another, consumers brand loyalty, each brand market share, and the steady-state-probability of each noodle's brand, level of competition, and product acceptance by consumers of noodle products in the current market race. Primary data was collected via a Google form, and the Markov theory was adopted for the analysis. Some calculations of the descriptive statistics (quantitative and qualitative variables) were made on the observed responses. Determination of appropriate sample size, derivation of some essential measures, including but not limited to transition probabilities such that
j=0 ∑ Pij =1 , transition diagram with their corresponding probabilities-matrix, which shows the consumers' movement from one brand to another, and the steady state probabilities were explored. The steady-state probabilities of Indomie, Golden penny, Mimee, Minimee, Chikki Chikki, Honeywell, and Other are 0.6303, 0.1747, 0.0750, 0.0766, 0.0258, 0.0077, 0.0099, respectively. Hence, the steady-state analysis reveals that Indomie is the dominant brand in the market, with a significant lead over its competitors despite being the priciest option.