CHAPTER 9: MEASURING SOURCES OF BRAND EQUITY:

CAPTURING CUSTOMER MIND-SET

1. Learning Objectives:
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
1. Describe effective qualitative research techniques for tapping into consumer brand
knowledge.
2. Identify effective quantitative research techniques for measuring brand awareness, image,
responses, and relationships.
3. Profile and contrast some popular brand equity models.

2. List of Contents: Chapter 9 Measuring Sources of Brand Equity: Capturing

Customer Mind-Set
1. Qualitative Research Techniques

1.1 Free Association

1.2 Projective Techniques
1.3 Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique
1.4 Neural Research Methods
1.5 Brand Personality and Values
1.6 Ethnographic and Experiential Methods

2. Quantitative Research Techniques

2.1 Brand Awareness
2.2 Brand Image
2.3 Brand Responses
2.4 Brand Relationships

3. Comprehensive Models of Consumer-Based Brand Equity

3.1 Brand Dynamics
3.2 Relationship to the CBBE Model

3. Description of Contents:
1. Qualitative Research Techniques

There are many different ways to uncover the types of associations linked to the brand and their
corresponding strength, favorability, and uniqueness. Qualitative research techniques often
identify possible brand associations and sources of brand equity. These are relatively
unstructured measurement approaches that permit a range of both questions and answers and so
can often be a useful first step in exploring consumer brand and product perceptions.

1.1 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.

 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?

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?
5. How do they use the brand? What do they use it for?

Figure 9.1 Free Associations of Levi’s

 Guidelines:

The two main issues to consider in conducting free association tasks are
 What types of probes to give to subjects?
 How to code and interpret the resulting data?

Ask consumers first what they think of the brand as a whole without reference to any particular
category, followed by specific questions about particular products and aspects of the brand
image.

1.2 Projective techniques

Diagnostic tools to uncover the true opinions and feelings of consumers when they are unwilling
or otherwise unable to express themselves on these matters

 Consumers might feel that it would be socially unacceptable to express their true feelings

 Projective techniques are diagnostic tools to uncover the true opinions and feelings of consumers

 Examples: Completion and interpretation tasks, Comparison tasks

1.3 New approach: ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique)

  ZMET is “a technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and
behavior.” 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

1.4 Brand Personality and Values

Brand personality refers to the human characteristics or traits that can be attributed to a brand.

 The Big Five Factors of Brand Personality:

 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)

1.5 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 write down what they’re doing when they are paged.
Marketer such as P&G seek consumers' permission to spend time with them in their
homes to see how they actually use and experience products.

2. Quantitative Research Techniques

 Brand awareness
 Band image
 Brand responses
 Brand relationships
2.1 Brand 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

 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’
minds—as reflected by brand recall performance—can have profound implications
for consumer choice and marketing strategy.

2.2 Brand 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.

Open-ended measures can tap into the strength, favorability, and uniqueness of brand
associations, as follows:

1. What are the strongest associations you have to the brand? What comes to mind when you
think of the brand? (Strength)
2. What is good about the brand? What do you like about the brand? What is bad about the
brand? What do you dislike about the brand? (Favorability)
3. What is unique about the brand? What characteristics or features does the brand share with
other brands? (Uniqueness)

2.3 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)

2.4 Brand Relationships

2.4.1 Behavioral Loyalty:

To capture reported brand usage and behavioral loyalty, we could ask consumers several
questions directly. For example, in case of batteries, question can be like -

 Which brand of batteries do you usually buy?

 Which brand of batteries did you buy last time?
 Do you have any batteries on hand? Which brand?
 Which brands of batteries did you consider buying?
 Which brand of batteries will you buy next time?

2.4.2 Brand substitutability

This measure is based on a scale produced by the answers to two questions. –

 Which brand did you buy last time?

 If the brand had not been available, what would you have done?

2.4.3 Other brand resonance dimensions

For example, in terms of engagement, measures could explore word-of-mouth behavior, online
behavior, and so forth in depth.

3. Comprehensive Models of Customer-Based Brand Equity

3.1 Brand dynamics

The Brand Dynamics model adopts a hierarchical approach to determine the strength of
relationship a consumer has with a brand.
The five levels of the model are:

Figure 9.2 Brand Dynamics

3.2 Equity Engines

This model delineates three key dimensions of brand affinity—the emotional and intangible
benefits of a brand—as follows:

 Authority: The reputation of a brand, whether as a long-standing leader or as a

pioneer in innovation

 Identification: The closeness customers feel for a brand and how well they feel
the brand matches their personal needs

 Approval: The way a brand fits into the wider social matrix and the intangible
status it holds for experts and friends

3.3 Relationship to the CBBE Model

The five sequenced stages of Brand Dynamics model —presence, relevance, performance,
advantage, and bonding— can be related to the four ascending steps of the CBBE model
(identity, meaning, responses, and relationships) and specific CBBE model concepts (such as
salience, consideration, performance or quality, superiority, and resonance).

Case

Case 9.1: Online Projective Exercises Breathing New Life into Classic
Qualitative Research Techniques

For decades, projective techniques have been widely used within qualitative research studies as a
means of unearthing some of the underlying thoughts, needs, attitudes and emotions that research
participants often have difficulty articulating. Traditionally, such methods have only been
available for in-person studies, and have in many cases been logistically difficult to pull off.
However, the relatively recent emergence of online platforms for conducting qualitative research
– along with increased wired, wireless, and mobile broadband connectivity and (thanks to social
media’s ubiquitous adoption) the comfort that most people have with sharing their lives’ most
intimate details online – has created a fantastic new arena for administering projective exercises
via online methods.

What we at Accelerant Research have found is that several classic projective exercises translate
wonderfully into online methods. What can we say? There’s a reason why these techniques have
stood the test of time, and online qualitative platforms present yet another avenue for leveraging
the insights that these techniques provide, oftentimes in an easier-to-execute fashion than their
offline predecessors. Participants love these types of exercises, because they are given an
opportunity to be creative and have some fun with their responses, and marketers love them,
because of the emotional connections and clues into appropriate product/brand positioning that
they can offer.

PERCEPTION MAPPING

When your objectives are to understand the competitive landscape in a given industry or to
literally reveal the “white space” that exists among target customers, then perception mapping
can be a very useful exercise to give participants. In essence, the moderator creates a map
comprised of two axes, each axis representing a specific attribute of the product/brand/category
you are studying (e.g., price vs. quality). The poles of each axis are labeled at the extremes,
creating a quadrant where participants are asked to place a certain number of brands, products,
slogans, etc.

Including these types of exercises in traditional face-to-face qualitative studies, while very
useful, can be a bit clunky to pull off from a logistical standpoint. Using white boards, paper-
and-pencil, or easel pads can be messy at times, and compiling the results can be a nightmare.
However, administering perception mapping online via drag-and-drop exercises is quite easy to
set up, engaging for participants (tapping into the hot topic of research gamification), and allows
researchers and clients to instantly view aggregate results.
Source: Accelerant Research, http://www.greenbook.org/marketing-research/online-projective-
exercises-37076

Collected from: Website: www.greenbook.org

Case 9.2: Understanding Categorical Brand Recall

A classic experiment by Prakash Nedungadi provides a compelling demonstration of the
importance of understanding the category structure that exists in consumer memory as well as
the value of strategies for increasing the recallability or accessibility of brands during choice
situations. As a preliminary step in his research study, Nedungadi first examined the category
structure for fast-food restaurants that existed in consumers’ minds. He found that a “major
subcategory” was “hamburger chains” and a “minor subcategory” was “sandwich shops.” He
also found, on the basis of usage and linking surveys, that within the major subcategory of
national hamburger chains, a major brand was McDonald’s and a minor brand was Wendy’s,
and within the minor subcategory of local sandwich shops, a major brand was Joe’s Deli (a brand
in his survey area) and a minor brand was Subway. Consistent with this reasoning, in an unaided
recall and choice task, consumers were more likely to remember and select a brand from a major
subcategory than from a minor subcategory and, within a subcategory, a major brand rather than
a minor brand.
Nedungadi next looked at the effects of different brand “primes” on subsequent choices among
the four fast-food restaurants. Brands were primed by having subjects in the experiment first
answer a series of seemingly unrelated questions—including some about the brand to be primed
—before making their brand selections. Two key findings emerged. First, a major brand that was
primed was more likely to be selected in the later choice task even though attitudes toward the
brand were no different from those of a control group. In otherwords, merely making the brand
more accessible in memory increased the likelihood that it would be chosen independent of any
differences in brand attitude. Second, priming a minor brand in a minor subcategory actually
benefited the major brand in that subcategory more. In other words, by drawing attention to the
minor subcategory of sandwich shops—which could easily be overlooked—the minor brand,
Subway, indirectly primed the major brand, Joe’s Deli, in the subcategory. The implications of
Nedungadi’s research are that marketers must understand how consumers’ memory is organized
and, as much as possible, ensure that the proper cues and primes are evident to prompt brand
recall. In sum, brand recall provides insight into category structure and brand positioning in
consumers’ minds. Brands tend to be recalled in categorical clusters when consumers are given a
general probe. Certain brands are grouped together in memory because they share certain
associations and are thus likely to cue and remind consumers of each other if one is recalled.

Sources: Prakash Nedungadi, “Recall and Consumer Consideration Sets: Influencing Choice
Without Altering Brand Evaluations,” Journal of Consumer Research 17 (December 1990):
263–276; Joseph W. Alba and J. Wesley Hutchinson, “Dimensions of Consumer Expertise,”
Journal of Consumer Research 13 (March 1987): 411–454; Kalpesh Kaushik Desai and Wayne
D. Hoyer, “Descriptive Characteristics of Memory-Based Consideration Sets: Influence of
Usage Occasion Frequency and Usage Location Familiarity,” Journal of Consumer
Research 27 (2000): 309–323.

Collected From: “Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand
Equity”, Kevin Lane Keller, 4th Edition, PEARSON

Questions:

1. Pick a brand from Bangladesh Service Sector. Employ projective techniques to attempt to
identify sources of its brand equity. Which measures work best? Why?

2. Profile the brand personalities of Pepsi brand using Aaker’s brand personality inventory?

3. Take Dhaka University as an example, how would you use quantitative measures?

4. To measure the behavioral loyalty of Mojo soft drinks, which types of questions would
you ask?