CALIBRATING YOUR BRAND IMAGE MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUE BY UTILIZING EMPRICAL GENERALISATIONS | | |
Calibrating Your Brand Image Measurement Technique By Utilizing Emprical Generalisations | | |
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Brand image measurement is arguably one of the most important market research studies that a firm can undertake. It assists marketing departments to understand perceptions of their company and products. Unfortunately, few of the rules that guide the design of brand image measurement tools have been based on sound research. The authors review what is currently done in brand measurement studies in industry and then question the lack of use of marketing knowledge in their design. This conceptual paper reviews empirical research into the development of brand measurement tools. It proposes a guide to instrument design based on the empirical research reviewed. | | |
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Over the last few decades, there have been articles prescribing branding strategies possibly numbering in the thousands. Very few of these prescriptions have been based on sound research, and even fewer have focussed practically on how marketing managers can measure whether they have hit the brand jackpot (assuming there even is such a thing). Unfortunately for the marketeer, most of the studies we take for granted were conducted on cross-sectional single studies, with samples often recruited from tertiary marketing student populations. | | |
As a result, market researchers who aim to understand the essence of an organisation’s brand are left with tools that have little empirical and generalisable evidence to support them. There have been fiery debates in the past over issues such as brand attitude to behaviour relationships; we attempt not to be biased in our prescription of methods recommended. This article does not enter debates such as brand prompting versus category prompting, as we believe this is a completely separate area to the issues covered in this article. The issues that are discussed are those solely relevant to the development of an effective brand monitor based on rigorous scientific enquiry. | | |
This article does not aim to conduct research of any kind, but is conceptual in nature. In the following sections we review what is currently common practice in industry, what is known from empirical generalisationalist studies conducted, and how this knowledge can be used to develop guidelines for a brand image measurement instrument. | | |
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There is a high degree of consistency in the manner in which brand monitors are designed, implemented, analysed, reported and how the findings are used within the commercial marketplace. It is also possible that the pressures of the commercial consulting environment, in which consultants are always attempting to fulfil the client's minimal requirements so that they can maximise their effective hourly charge out rate, have tended to stifle creativity and innovation. | | |
Typically, the objective of a brand monitor is to provide the client with an on-going measure of the degree to which their brand is meeting certain positioning objectives. This is usually expressed in terms of the degree to which the client's brand is associated with a set of approximately six to ten descriptive terms such as: 'flexible', 'suits younger people', 'innovative', 'reliable' and so on. | | |
It is usual practice to simultaneously measure the extent to which key competitors' brands are also associated with these and any other pertinent terms, such as the ones that have a well known association with a competitor's brand. Usually, budgetary limitations prevent the inclusion of many additional 'unassociated' or 'potential' terms or brand attributes. | | |
A client's positioning objectives are usually developed through a combination of qualitative research of the target market and internal and external strategic planning. In almost every case, the initial qualitative research will consist of a series of focus groups covering current and potential customers and the client's and the key competitors' brands. The focus groups will attempt to identify the fundamental criteria that are used by members of target market to evaluate the different brands in that category. This research will also seek to identify any characteristics that are currently ‘owned’ by any of the major or emerging brands. This information is then formed into a series of attributes or brand values of the type listed above. | | |
The attributes are then usually subjected to workshop review process by the relevant internal staff, including marketing and public affairs. In many cases, the attributes will be reviewed by the client’s advertising and/or public relations agencies. This process seeks to identify theoptimal short and long term brand positioning for the client relative to client based issues such as: their short and long term objectives, capabilities and historical associations, and current and anticipated brand positioning relative to competitors. The output of this stage is a set of attributes that, hopefully, reflect the client's current and ideal positioning, and that of the key competitors. | | |
Prior to their inclusion in an on-going monitor, some clients will quantitatively test these attributes in a special ad hoc study. In most cases, this will be motivated by a desire to reduce the criteria to a more manageable set using basic factor analysis procedures and a simple review of the degree of correlation between current brands and the attributes. | | |
The final brand attributes are then included into a structured monitoring instrument. Typically, this consists of a regular, (quarterly, or continuous, weekly) monitor of the target market. The outstanding cost effectiveness and ease of application of Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing procedures has made it the most popular survey approach, though there is still significant use of face to face and mail surveys for some specialised applications. | | |
In most cases, the survey questionnaire will consist of a number of sections including: | | |
• Brand attribute statements | | |
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• Recognition and message comprehension | | |
• Some loyalty indicators such as repurchase intent, disposition and recommendation of the brand. | | |
Typically, the brand attribute statements are asked as either as a forced choice question, for example, "To what extent (Likert scale) would you associate Saab with high performance?" or more indirectly using a free-choice method, in terms of ‘Which of the following motor vehicles would you associate with high performance?’. | | |
Analysis is most often conducted by a rudimentary graphing of the association scores for each attribute for each brand either based upon a mean score or on some combination of the positive responses in a Likert scale (e.g. top two boxes). Depending upon the sample sizes and the frequency of measuring, these scores may be reported as rolling averages, (e.g. weekly scores will be reported as a rolling average of the last 5 weeks’ scores). Often, the researcher will overlay various other information onto a chart that tracks brand associations for an individual brand. These overlays may include advertising flighting information, media spend, Target Audience Rating Points (TARPs), promotional activities, and information about any other market event that may have impacted upon the positioning of the key brands. | | |
