Top 6 Rules of Thumb for Designing Brand Equity Research

BEST PRACTICESMARKET RESEARCH NEWSCONSUMER INSIGHTS
Written By Athos Maimarides

Conducting brand equity research can be a complex task: it takes a lot of preparation, coordination and groundwork to ensure you are obtaining correct, actionable insights.

However, these ad-hoc or periodically conducted (tracking) studies are important in the understanding of the state of your brand, as well as measuring whether the brand is progressing according to internal expectations. The data captured through brand equity studies is extremely useful in the evolution and growth of brands.

Not only can these insights help to inform marketing, advertising, communications, and other strategic decisions, but they can also allow you and your team to keep a pulse on the progress of the brand and allow for corrective action to be taken when necessary.

Below are useful rules of thumb to consider when designing a Brand Equity Research Study. These tips can help guide your process and help you think through how to structure and frame your research to make it as actionable as possible:

1. Category:

Very important first step to frame the category and give respondents the right context.  If you define it too broad, respondents will compare your brand with brands that are not relevant to you. Define it too narrow and respondents will have a hard time naming any brands.

We recommend defining your category the way consumers talk about it – not using marketing lingo or your own internal definitions.


2. Audience:

Ensure respondents accurately represent the category and include both current category users and potential category users. You will typically want to define the category more broadly than narrowly so as not to exclude any potential category users. 

We recommend defining your audience using a combination of demographics as well as behaviors or attitudes.

3. Competitive set:

The competitive set refers to a group of brands that directly or indirectly compete with each other in the category. This set frames the responses and is very important for how the data will look at the back end, as respondents are basically answering the questions, always thinking of the category and the competitive set.

We recommend including up to 8-10 competitors that roughly make up 80% of the market share.


4. Sample size:

You will want to ensure the sample size is large enough to be able to determine significant changes from wave to wave, and enough in each subgroup or quota group you want to analyze. 

We recommend a minimum sample size for a brand equity study 500 responses or more. 

 

5. Quotas:

If we know our category skews one way or another (for example in demographic composition), establish quotas to mimic the category composition. Quotas should remain relatively consistent from wave to wave. Exceptions exist, especially for new categories, products. However be careful – establishing many nested quotas may make the study hard to repeat!

We recommend keeping fairly soft quotas to balance category composition with the difficulty of fielding the survey. 


6. Repetition:

A brand equity study can be repeated as often as monthly or as seldom as annually. Several factors impact when a brand equity should be repeated and we recommend considering the type of brand, lifecycle stage, media schedule and competitive activity before committing to a wave schedule to ensure you will be getting actionable insights that are worth your investment.

We recommend repeating brand equity studies at least once per year. This will allow you to identify and adapt to subtle changes within the category that could go unnoticed. 


Brand equity research, though sometimes challenging to conduct, offers insights that can inform marketing, advertising, positioning, and communication efforts. By following these key guidelines, brands can be sure their studies will yield actionable and meaningful data that can help monitor brand progress effectively.

Athos Maimarides

Athos has over 20 years of market research experience. He began his career in a boutique market research firm in Dallas before working for Millward Brown where he gained experience across different methodologies and industries. Athos has a Master’s in Market Research from the University of Texas, Arlington and a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from the University of Texas, Austin.

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