METHODS

OF
MEASURING BRAND
EQUITY

Introduction
Marketers need to construct detailed
mental maps of consumers.
This is to understand what exists in
their minds concerning brands Thoughts
Feelings
Perceptions
Images
Beliefs
Attitudes

Introduction
As a result, many large companies
conduct exhaustive research studies
to learn as much as possible about
consumers.
It is very important for the Brand
Manager to understand what
customers Know, Think and Feel
about various brands.
It involves measuring sources of
Customer Based Brand Equity.
This involves measuring

Methods for Measuring

Brand Equity:
Qualitative Techniques

Quantitative Techniques

Comparative Methods

Qualitative Research
Techniques
Qualitative Research Techniques are
relatively unstructured measurement
approaches whereby a range of
possible consumer responses is
permitted.

Qualitative Research
Techniques
The various qualitative research
Techniques are:
1. Free Association
2. Projective Techniques
3. Experimental Methods

Qualitative Research
Techniques
1. Free Association

The purpose of free association tasks is

to identify the range of possible brand
associations in consumers minds.

They may also provide a rough

indication of the relative strength,
favorability and uniqueness of brand
associations.

Qualitative Research
Techniques

Free association
What do you like best about the brand?
What are its positive aspects?
What do you dislike? What are its
disadvantages?
What do you find unique about the
brand? How is it different from other
brands? In what ways is it the same?

9.8

Qualitative Research
Techniques
Free association
To elicit more structure and guidance, consumers
can be asked further follow-up
questions about what the brand means to them in
terms of the classic journalism who, what,
when, where, why, and how questions:
1. Who uses the brand? What kind of person?
2. What types of situations do they use the
brand?
3. When and where do they use the brand?
4. Why do people use the brand? What do they
get out of using it?

9.9

Free Associations
ATTRIBUTES
User Imagery

Usage Imagery

Western, American,
Appropriate for outdoor
blue collar, hard-working,
Blue denim, shrink-to-fittraditional, strong, work and casual social
situations
rugged, and masculine
cotton fabric, button-fly,
two-horse patch,
Brand Personality
and small red pocket tag
Product-Related

LEVIS
501
High quality, long lasting,
and durable
Functional

Comfortable fitting
and relaxing to wear

Honest, classic,
Contemporary, approachable,
independent, and universal

Feelings of self-confidence
and self-assurance
Symbolic

Experiential

BENEFITS

9.10

Qualitative Research
Techniques

2. Projective Techniques

Projective Techniques are diagnostic

tools to uncover the true opinions and
feelings of consumers when they are
unwilling or otherwise unable to
express themselves.
Here the subject is given an incomplete
or ambiguous stimulus that might not
make sense by itself.
Eg. Rorschach Test-present ink blots to subjects
and ask them what the ink blots remind them of. In
responding, subjects may reveal certain facets of

Qualitative Research
Techniques

2. Projective Techniques

Types of Projective Techniques:

Completion & Interpretation Tasks

Comparison Tasks
Brand Personality and Values
The Big Five: factors of Brand personality
a. Sincerity
b. Excitement
c. Competence
d. Sophistication
e. Ruggedness

New approach: ZMET

Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation

Technique (ZMET)
ZMET is a technique for eliciting
interconnected constructs that
influence thought and behavior.

9.13

ZMET

The guided conversation consists of a

series of steps that includes some or all of
the following:

Story telling
Missed images
Sorting task
Construct elicitation
The most representative picture
Opposite images
Sensory images
Mental map
Summary image
Vignette

9.14

Brand Personality and

Values

Brand personality refers to the human

characteristics or traits that can be
attributed to a brand.
The Big Five
Sincerity (down-to-earth, wholesome, and
cheerful)
Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative,
and up-to-date)
Competence (reliable, intelligent, and
successful)
Sophistication (upper class and charming)
Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough)

9.15
Jennifer Aaker, 1997

Brand Personality Scale

Measures

Identifying Key Brand

Personality Associations
BUSH

KERRY

Coffee
Dunkin Donuts
Starbucks
Technology IBM
Apple
Auto
Ford
BMW
Retail Kmart
Target
Fast Food McDonalds
Subway

2004 U.S. presidential election, random sample of undecided voters

9.17

Qualitative Research
Techniques
3. Experimental Methods

These methods involve approaches

which go beyond traditional qualitative
techniques to research consumers in
their natural environment.

Eg. Giving a Polaroid camera to a

business traveler to document their
feelings and actions in hotel rooms etc.

Experiential Methods

By tapping more directly into their actual

home, work, or shopping behaviors,
researchers might be able to elicit more
meaningful responses from consumers.
Advocates of the experiential approach
have sent researchers to consumers
homes in the morning to see how they
approach their days, given business
travelers Polaroid cameras and diaries to
capture their feelings when in hotel
rooms, and conducted beeper studies in
which participants are instructed to write9.19

Quantitative Research
Techniques

Awareness
Image
Brand responses
Brand relationships

9.20

Awareness

Recognition

Ability of consumers to identify the

brand (and its elements) under various
circumstances

Recall
Ability of consumers to retrieve the
actual brand elements from memory
Unaided vs. aided recall

9.21

Awareness

Corrections for guessing

Any research measure must consider the issue

of consumers making up responses or
guessing.

Strategic implications

The advantage of aided recall measures is that

they yield insight into how brand knowledge is
organized in memory and what kind of cues or
reminders may be necessary for consumers to
be able to retrieve the brand from memory.
The important point to note is that the
category structure that exists in consumers
mindsas reflected by brand recall
performancecan have profound implications
for consumer choice and marketing strategy. 9.22

Image

Ask open-ended questions to tap

into the strength, favorability, and
uniqueness of brand associations.
These associations should be rated
on scales for quantitative analysis.

9.23

Brand Responses

Research in psychology suggests that

purchase intentions are most likely to be
predictive of actual purchase when there is
correspondence between the two in the
following categories:
Purchase Intentions

Action (buying for own use or to give as a gift)

Target (specific type of product and brand)
Context (in what type of store based on what
prices and other conditions)
Time (within a week, month, or year)

9.24

Brand Relationships

Behavioral loyalty
Brand substitutability
Other brand resonance dimensions

For example, in terms of engagement,

measures could explore word-of-mouth
behavior, online behavior, and so forth in
depth

9.25

Quantitative Research
Techniques
Quantitative research typically
employs various types of scale
questions so that numerical
representations and summaries can
be made.

Quantitative Research
Techniques
The Quantitative Techniques
involves the measurement of the
following:
1. Brand Awareness
2. Brand Image

Quantitative Research
Techniques
1. Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is related to the

Strength of the brand in memory of the
consumers.
Brand Recognition: Here the
Consumers are able to discriminate a
stimulus- a word, object, image etc as
something they have previously seen.
Brand Recognition relates to
consumers ability to identify the brand
under various circumstances and can

Quantitative Research
Techniques
1. Brand Awareness
Brand Recall: Brand recall relates to
the consumers ability to identify the
brand under a variety if circumstances..
With brand recall, consumers must
retrieve the actual brand element from
memory with some relative probe or
cue.
Measures of Brand Recall:
a. Unaided Recall
b. Aided Recall

Quantitative Research
Techniques
1. Brand Awareness
Brand Recall: Brand Recall can provide
some insight into category structure and
brand positioning in consumers mind.
The category structure that exists in
consumers minds- as reflected by brand
recall performance- can have profound
implications for consumers choice
and ,marketing strategy.

Quantitative Research
Techniques
2. Brand Image
. Strong, favourable and unique
associations provide the foundation for
customer-based brand equity.
. It is important to measure the lower-level
considerations related to consumer
perceptions of specific performances and
imagery attributes relative to a brand.

Quantitative Research
Techniques
2. Brand Image
. Beliefs: these are descriptive thoughts
that a person holds about something.
. The qualitative research approaches
described previously are useful in
understanding the different types of
specific brand associations making the
brand image.
. The belief associations have to be
measured on the basis of strength,
favorability and uniqueness to

Quantitative Research
Techniques
Multidimensional Scaling (MDS):
It is a procedure to determine the
perceived relative images of a set of
objects, such as products or brands.
MDS transforms consumer judgments of
similarity or preference into distances
represented in perceptual space.
Respondents can base their similarity
between brands on any basis- tangible
or intangible.

Quantitative Research
Techniques
Brand Response
The purpose of measuring the higher
level considerations is to find out how
consumers combine all of the specific,
lower-level considerations about the
brand in their minds to form different
types of brand responses and
evaluations.
Purchase Intentions: Another measure
related to brand attitudes and
considerations is Purchase Intentions.

Quantitative Research
Techniques
Brand Relationships:
It can be characterized in terms of brand
resonance and offered possible
measures or each of the four key
dimensions:

Behavioral Loyalty
Attitudinal Attachment
Sense of Community
Active Engagement.

Behavioral Loyalty
Brand Substitutability

Comparative Methods

Comparative methods are research studies

or experiments that examine consumer
attitudes and behaviour towards a brand
to directly estimate the benefits arising
from having a high level of awareness and
strong, favourable and unique brand
associations.

Comparative Methods
There are two types of comparative
methods:
Brand-based comparative approaches

Marketing-based comparative approaches

Comparative Methods
Brand-based comparative
approaches:
Consumers may interpret the marketing
activity of a product with a general
product category knowledge.
It is very important to examine how the
consumers evaluate a proposed new
campaign.
Brand-based comparative approaches
help in understanding the brand
purchase or consumption research for a
new or existing products, as long as the

Comparative Methods
Marketing-based Comparative
Approaches:
Marketing-based comparative
approaches hold the brand fixed and
examine consumer response based on
changes in the marketing program.
It can be applied in other ways by
assessing consumer response to
different;

Comparative Methods
Marketing-based Comparative
Approaches:
This is further sub divided into 2
methods:
Conjoint Analysis
Holistic Methods

Comparative Methods
Marketing-based Comparative
Approaches:
Conjoint Analysis:
It is a survey based multivariate technique
that enables to profile the consumer
decision process.
Consumer preferences to specifically
designed product profiles are obtained.
The profiles are made up of set of attributes
as statistically derived by the conjoint
formula, called part value.

Comparative Methods
Marketing-based Comparative
Approaches:
Holistic Methods:
It places an overall value on the brand.
It attempts to net out various
considerations to determine the unique
contribution of the brand.
Residual Approach- it examines the brand
value by subtracting consumers brand
preference (based on physical attributes)
from their overall brand preferences.
Valuation Approach- places a financial
value on the brand equity for accounting