MEASURING BRAND EQUITY

Introduction

 Brand measurement is often alternatively referred to as Brand

equity measurement, because most of the parameters that are
commonly measured evolve from the concept of brand equity. When
we measure brands we are in effect measuring brand equity.
 Branding adds a dimension that differentiates a product other from
others that meet the same need. Regardless, whether the product is
a physical product, a service, a retail store, an organization, a person,
a place, or an idea, they are all subject to a branding process in
customers mind. In the brand realm ,reality is always perception
Methods of measuring brand equity.
According to the brand value chain, sources of brand equity arise from
the customer mindset. In general, measuring sources of brand equity
requires that the brand manager fully understand how customers shop
for and use products and services and most important, what customers
know ,think, and feel about various brands.
Measuring sources of brand equity and consumer mind set
encompasses following techniques:
1) Qualitative research technique
2) Quantitative research technique.
Qualitative research techniques
 Qualitative research techniques often identify possible brand
associations and sources of brand equity.
 Qualitative research techniques are relatively unstructured
measurement approaches that permit a range of possible consumer
responses.Because of the freedom afforded both researchers in their
probes and consumers in their responses, qualitative research can often
be a useful first step in exploring consumer brand and product
perceptions.
Main qualitative techniques used for measurement of brand
equity are as follows..
a. Free association
b. Projective techniques
c. Brand personality and values
d. Experimental methods
a. Free association
The simplest and often the most powerful way to profile brand associations
is free association tasks, in which subjects are asked what comes to mind
when they think of the brand, without any more specific probe or cue than
perhaps the associated product category.
Ex: What comes in our mind when we think of KFC chicken
Marketers can use the resulting associating to form a rough mental shop for
the brand.
For example, if many consumers mention” fast and convenient” as one of
their first associations when given “ Mc donald’s restaurant” as a probe, then
the association is probably a relatively strong one and likely able to affect
consumer decisions. Associations later in the list may be weaker and thus
more likely to be overlooked during consumer decision making. Comparing
associations with those elicited for competitive brands can also tell us about
their relative uniqueness.
 Cont..
 To provide more structure and guidance, consumers can be asked further
follow up questions to describe what the brand means to them in terms
of “ Who, what, where, why and How” questions such as following:
1) Who uses the brand? What kind of person?
2) When and where do they use the brand?
3) Why do people use the brand? What do they get out of using it?
4) How do they use the brand? What do they use it for?
Example:
Samsung mobile

Easy to use First phone

Latest technology Good reputation
b. Projective techniques
Projective techniques are diagnostic tools to cover opinions and feelings of customers
when they are unwilling or otherwise unable to express themselves on these matters.
The idea behind projective techniques is that consumers are presented with an incomplete
stimulus and asked to complete it or given an ambiguous stimulus that may not make
sense in and of itself and asked to make sense of it.
Kinds of projective techniques
a) Completion and interpretation tasks
Classic projective techniques use incomplete or ambiguous stimuli to elicit consumer
thoughts and feelings. One approach is bubble exercises which depict different people
buying or using certain products or services, Empty bubbles as in cartoons are placed in
the scenes to represent the thoughts, words or actions of one more of the participants.
Marketers then ask consumers to “fill in the bubble” by indicating what they believe is
happening or being said in the scene. The stories and conversations told through bubble
exercises and picture interpretations can be especially useful for assessing user and usage
imagery of brand.
b) Comparison tasks
Another useful technique is comparison tasks, in which we ask
consumers to convey their impressions by comparing brands to people,
countries, animals, activities, fabrics, occupations, cars, magazines,
vegetables, nationalities or even other brands.
Ex: During the 2004 US presedential election, a random sample of
undecided voters offered the following comparisons of the republican
candicate, president George W.Bush and the Democratic candidate,
Senetor John kerry, to various popular brands.
Con….
ASSOCIATION BUSH KERRY
Coffee Dunkin’ donuts Starbucks
Technology IBM apple
Auto Ford BMW
Retail K mart Target
Fast food Mc donald’s subway
C) Brand personality and values
Brand personality is the human characteristics or traits that can
be attributed to a brand. Brand personality can be measured in
different ways, as given below
 Perhaps the simple and most direct way is to solicit open
ended responses to a probe such as following:
I. If the brand were to come alive as a person, what would it like
be like?
I. What would it do?
II. Where would it live?
III. What would it wear?

 Other means are possible to capture consumers point of view

Ex: Consumers could be given a variety of pictures or a stack of magazines
and asked to assemble a profile of the brand. These pictures could be of
celebrities or anything else.
 Big five:
We can assess Brand personality can be assessed more definitively through
adjective checklists or ratings. Jeniffer Aaker conducted a research project
that provides an interesting glimpse into the personality of a number of well
known brands, as well as a methodology to examine the personality of any
one brand.
Cont…

She created a brand personality scale that reflected the

following five factors with underlying facets of brand
personality:
1) Sincerity(down to earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful)
2) Excitement( daring, spirited, imaginative and up to date)
3) Competence( reliable, intelligent, and successful)
4) Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough)
Quantitative techniques.
Quantitative research typically employs various types of scale questions so
that numerical representations and summaries can be made quantitative
measures of brand knowledge can be employed to better access the depth
and breadth of brand awareness, the strength, favorability and uniqueness
of brand associations.
Quantitative measures are often the primary ingredient in tracking studies
that monitor brand knowledge structures of consumers overtime, it includes
following aspects.
Kinds..
 Awareness
 Image
 Brand responses
 Brand relationship
 Brand relationships
1. Behavioral loyalty
To capture reported brand usage and behavioral loyalty, consumers could be asked several
questions directly
For ex: the marketers of brand managers of Duracell batteries might ask the following
questions
 Which brand of battery do you usually buy?
 Which brand of batteries did you buy last time?
 Do you have batteries on hand? Which brand?
 Which brands of batteries did you consider buying?
 Which brands of batteries will you buy next time?

2. Brand substitutability
Industry consultants Longman and Moran have developed a measure of substitutability
related to brand behaviors that they see as a key source of brand equity, Their measure is
based on a scale produced by the answers to two questions
Cont…
 Awareness
Brand awareness is related to the strength of the brand in memory, as
reflected by consumers ability to identify various brand elements ie the
brand name, logo ,symbol, character, packaging, and slogan under different
conditions brand awareness relates to the likelihood that a brand will come
to mind and the ease with which it does so given different of cues.
 Image
One vitally important aspect of the brand is its image, as reflected by the
associations that consumers hold regarding the brand. Strong , favorable
and unique associations provide the foundation for customer based brand
equity.
 Brand responses
The purpose of measuring more general higher level considerations is to find
out how consumers combine all more specific, lower level considerations
about the brand in their minds to form different types of brand responses
and evaluations.
Cont..
I. Which brand did you buy last time?
II. If the brand had not been available, what would you have done?
(waited, gone to another store, or bought another brand, which one?)
Based on the responses they place consumers into one of six segments, of decreasing
value of brand:
1. People who bought your brand last time and who would have waited or gone to
another store to buy your brand.
2. People who bought your brand last time but would have accepted any other
brand as a substitute.
3. People who bought your brand last time but specified a particular other brand as
a substitute
4. People who bought another brand last time but named your brand as a possible
substitute
5. People who bought another brand last time and did not name your brand as a
substitute
6. People who bought another brand last time and would have waited or gone to
another store to buy that brand
Methods of measuring outcomes of brand equity
1. Comparative methods
2. Holistic methods

Comparative methods:
Comparative methods are research studies or experiments that examine
consumer attitudes and behavior toward a brand to directly estimate
the benefits arising from having a high level of awareness and strong
favorable and unique brand associations.
Cont..

There are two types of comparative approaches

 Brand based
 Marketing based
Brand based comparative approaches
Competitive brands can be useful benchmarks in brand based
comparative approaches. Although consumers may interpret marketing
activity for a ficticiously named or unnamed version of the product or
service in terms of their general product category knowledge.
Ex; The classic example of the brand based comparative approach is
“blind testing” research studies in which consumers examine or use a
product with or without brand identification.
.
Marketing based comparative approaches
Marketing based comparative approaches hold the brand fixed and examine
consumer response based on changes in the marketing program.
Applications;
There is a long academic and industry tradition of exploring price premiums
using marketing based comparative approaches. In the mid 1950’s, Edgar
pessemier developed a dollarmetric measure of brand commitment that
relied on a step by step increase of the price difference between the brand
normally purchased and an alternative brand. To reveal brand switching and
loyalty patterns, pessemier plotted the percentage of consumers who
switched from their regular brand as a function of the brand price increases.
For ex: Intel routinely surveys computer shoppers to find out how much of a
discount they would require before switching to a personal computer that
did not have an intel microprocessor in it or conversely, what premium they
would be willing to pay to buy a personal computer with an intel
microprocesser in it.
Conjoint analysis
Conjoint analysis is a survey based multivariate technique that enables
marketers to profile the consumer buying decision process with respect
to products and brands. Specifically by asking customers to express
preferences or make choices among a number of carefully designed
different product profiles, marketing researchers can determine the
trade offs consumers are making between various brand attributes and
thus the importance that consumers are attaching to those attributes.
Ex: one classic study of conjoint analysis, reported by Green and Wind
examined consumer evaluations of a spot remover product on five
attributes: package design, brand name, price, good house keeping seal,
and money back gaurantee.
Holistic methods
Comparative methods attempt to approximate specific benefits of
brand equity. Holistic method attempts to place an overall value for the
brand in either abstract utility terms or concrete financial terms. Thus
holistic methods attempt to net out various considerations to determine
the unique contribution of the brand.
Cont…

 The residual approach attempts to examine the value of the brand

by subtracting out consumers preferences for the brand based on
physical product attributes alone from their overall brand
preferences.
 The valuation approach attempts to place a financial value on brand
equity for accounting purposes, mergers and acquisitions or other
such reasons.