We previously answered the questions, “What is brand equity and why is it important?” Now, we’ll share some guidelines for building brand equity and creating a brand equity survey that has been tried and true through our many years of market research. Let’s get started!
In order to build positive brand equity, you must measure where you stand in the eyes of consumers. And that is exactly what brand equity market research is all about. It grasps a complete profile of your brand by measuring your brand awareness, perception, consideration, customer experience, and more. This means, unfortunately, there is no singular metric or formula that can calculate your brand equity; You’ll need to take a holistic look at your brand.
Creating a Brand Equity Survey
Surveys are the easiest and most effective way to collect data for evaluating brand equity. Particularly, open-ended survey questions allow you to hear your customers’ opinions in their own words. This helps remove any bias that you or the survey designer may unintentionally implement in the survey. Respondents will reveal the brands that they prefer, and you will get the most honest results.
There are a handful of metrics and questions that you can use for your brand equity survey. Not all will apply to your brand, so choose the ones that will give you the most valuable data and an idea about where your brand stands. Here are some to consider:
Brand Awareness
Remember – brand awareness tells you how familiar customers are with your brand, and brand equity is the added value of awareness and loyalty to your brand.
Since brand awareness is an important component of brand equity, many brand awareness survey questions are great to incorporate into your brand equity survey. It can even be efficient to combine your brand equity survey with a brand awareness survey. Ask questions like:
Please list any clothing brands you are aware of.
Find more brand awareness survey questions to use here.
Brand Perception
The way customers perceive your brand is crucial to building brand equity. Positive brand perception will give you leverage over competitors, therefore building brand equity. Customers will also be willing to pay more for your product if they perceive your brand as good quality and trustworthy.
Consider asking word association questions to gauge how your audience perceives your brand. Here’s an example:
What words or ideas do you think of when you see [brand]?
You can also ask your audience this question about your competitors to understand how you compare. However, in order to get the most honest results, make sure you do not reveal which brand is hosting the study!
Brand Consideration and Brand Loyalty
It is also helpful to understand which brands customers consider when shopping. After all, this is the essence of brand equity – having customers consider and ultimately choose your brand over others. Ask brand consideration survey questions such as:
How likely are you to consider [company] next time you shop for [product]?
- Very unlikely
- Somewhat unlikely
- Neither likely nor unlikely
- Somewhat likely
- Very likely
If your favorite brand isn’t available, what brand would you consider?
How often do you buy this brand?
These questions will show customer buying behaviors across your industry, revealing important insights about you and your competitors’ brands. It will show you how loyal customers are (hopefully) to your brand. Loyal customers = leverage over competitors = brand equity. Easy!
Customer Experience
In order to build brand equity, customers need to have memorable and positive experiences with your brand. You must prove to customers that your brand is reliable, trustworthy, and valuable. Improving and measuring customer experience will build brand equity at the same time. Learn how to measure customer experience using retention-related and efficiency-related metrics here.
Calculate brand equity using financial metrics
Financial metrics allow you to better understand the true value of your brand name. You can implement your and your competitors’ brand names into a pricing survey study to discover what value consumers place on them. Ask questions such as:
How much would you be willing to pay for {X brand}’s {product}?
If {X brand}’s {product/service} was priced at ${price}, how likely would you be to purchase it?
- Very likely
- Somewhat likely
- Neither likely nor unlikely
- Somewhat unlikely
- Very unlikely
These types of questions will reveal the value of your brand name compared to your competitors. Besides using these survey questions, conjoint analysis is an effective way to discover the value of an individual variable. Using conjoint analysis, you can discover the value that respondents place on product attributes such as size, price, design, and of course, brand.
Learn more about how to execute a pricing survey and conjoint analysis here.
Measuring and managing brand equity made simple
It can be difficult to understand just how much your brand is contributing to your success. Isolating your brand name as a measurable variable is challenging; Asking the right questions is crucial. GroupSolver® will make sure your brand equity market research is done right the first time. We use customer-based brand equity research practices to uncover the emotions your brand evokes, the price premium you can charge, and your brand’s true worth.
When it comes to brand equity market research, this isn’t our first rodeo. Check out how we helped an iconic home products brand evaluate their brand equity and find their price premium.
Ready to start researching? Request your free demo here.
