MKT 449 Week 3 Measuring Brand Recognition Example

Do Shoppers Know the Name? Measuring Brand Recognition With Surveys, Search Data and Social Listening for a Small Vermont Sock Maker

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/449: Marketing Analytics

Week 3 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Hollow Brook Sock Company and all survey and search figures are composites written for a model paper.

Hollow Brook Sock Company, the composite merino wool sock maker from Vermont studied in this course, learned in Week 2 that it reaches about 4 percent of target households in New England and only 1 to 2 percent in the Mountain West. Founder Grace Thibault believes the brand is well known among serious hikers nationwide and that the problem in the West is only distribution. Her marketing manager suspects many Western shoppers have never heard of it. Before money is committed to new shops or advertising, the company needs to measure recognition directly. This paper defines brand recognition, reviews research on its role, reports measurements from several sources and recommends a tracking plan.

Awareness, Recognition and Recall

Keller (1993) proposed a model of customer-based brand equity, defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on how consumers respond to the marketing of the brand. Brand knowledge has two parts: brand awareness and brand image. Awareness has two components. Brand recognition is the ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given it as a cue, such as seeing the name or logo. Brand recall is the ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, such as naming wool sock brands without help. Keller argued that awareness is a necessary base for building a brand image.

Why Awareness Matters for Choice

Hoyer and Brown (1990) ran an experiment in which consumers chose among brands of peanut butter, one of which they had been made aware of. Participants who were aware of one brand tended to choose it even when it was lower in quality than an unknown brand, and they sampled fewer brands before deciding. The effect was strongest among inexperienced buyers. Many shoppers buying wool hiking socks for the first time resemble those participants: they face several unfamiliar brands and pick one they recognize.

Advertising and Online Search

Hu et al. (2014) studied the effect of advertising on car sales and used online search data to separate two effects: advertising that raised interest, shown in more searches for the brand, and advertising that turned interest into purchases. They found that a large part of advertising's effect worked through generating search interest. For a small brand, branded search volume can therefore serve as an early signal that recognition is growing.

Survey Measurement

Hollow Brook commissioned a short online panel survey of 1,600 adults who hike, ski or run regularly, 400 in each of four regions. The unaided question asked respondents to name any brands of wool or performance socks they knew. The aided question showed a list of eight brand names and logos, including Hollow Brook, and asked which they recognized.

Survey Results

Unaided recall of Hollow Brook was 9 percent in New England, 4 percent in the Mid-Atlantic, 2 percent in Colorado and 1 percent across Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Aided recognition was 31 percent in New England, 17 percent in the Mid-Atlantic, 11 percent in Colorado and 7 percent in the four other Western states. The leading Western competitor had aided recognition of 58 percent in Colorado. The panel has a margin of error of roughly plus or minus 5 percentage points in each region, so small differences, such as between Colorado and the other Mountain West states, should not be overread.

Most outdoor shoppers in Colorado would walk past a Hollow Brook display without knowing the name.

Branded Search Volume

Monthly searches for the brand name, from a search engine's public trend tool, show a similar pattern relative to population. New England produced about four times as many branded searches per 100,000 residents as Colorado. Branded searches in New England rise each October with the company's fall catalog email and regional radio ads, which suggests that advertising there builds interest, consistent with Hu et al. (2014).

Social Listening

A social listening tool tracked public mentions of the brand over three months. About 1,900 mentions were found, 70 percent from the Northeast, most of them hikers posting photos with the brand tag. Share of voice, the brand's portion of all mentions among eight sock brands, was 6 percent nationally and 2 percent in Colorado. Mentions skew toward existing fans, so they indicate enthusiasm more than recognition among non-buyers.

Direct Website Traffic

Visitors who type the brand's web address directly, rather than arriving from ads or search, are another signal of recognition. About 22 percent of New England visits are direct, compared with 9 percent from Colorado.

What the Measures Show Together

The survey, search, social and traffic measures agree. Recognition is moderate in New England and low in the West, where a regional competitor dominates. The founder's belief that serious hikers everywhere know the brand is not supported. Distribution alone will not solve the problem in Colorado, since shoppers who see the brand in a new shop will often not recognize it.

Comparing With the Leading Competitor

The Western competitor's results show what strong recognition looks like in the same market. Its aided recognition of 58 percent in Colorado, unaided recall of 21 percent and roughly six times Hollow Brook's branded search volume there reflect years of sponsoring trail races and ski patrols. Hollow Brook does not need to match that level to grow. Penetration of 4 percent in New England came with recognition of 31 percent, so a realistic first goal in the West is to reach the low twenties, where shoppers who see the brand in a shop are more likely to recognize it.

Recommendations

Recognition-building should accompany the Colorado shop test designed in Week 2. Shop displays should show the brand's Vermont story clearly, and local search and social ads should run in the test area. A quarterly brand tracker will repeat the aided and unaided survey questions with 400 respondents per region, monitor branded search per 100,000 residents monthly and report share of voice quarterly. The goal is to raise aided recognition in the Colorado test area from 11 percent to 20 percent within a year.

Conclusion

Brand recognition is the foundation of brand equity, and research shows it can guide choice and appears in search behavior before sales. Multiple measures show that Hollow Brook is moderately recognized at home and largely unknown in the Mountain West. A regular tracker that combines survey and digital signals will show whether new shops and advertising change that.

References

Hoyer, W. D., & Brown, S. P. (1990). Effects of brand awareness on choice for a common, repeat-purchase product. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(2), 141-148. https://doi.org/10.1086/208544

Hu, Y., Du, R. Y., & Damangir, S. (2014). Decomposing the impact of advertising: Augmenting sales models with online search data. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(3), 300-319. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.12.0215

Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700101