Assessing Corporate And Brand Image
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Image, either corporate image or brand image, has little value unless placed in some comparative context. Therefore, the effort to measure and understand image has value to the extent that it can be related to a critical behavior, such as current market share, or future purchase intent. Knowing "image" as a static snapshot, or single point-in-time measure holds some value, of course. But Burke image analysis goes beyond the current situation in order to add maximum value to image research, by identifying the most critical underlying dimensions of brand or corporate image, and associating those dimensions in a predictive fashion to an important marketplace outcome, such as current market share, or probability to repurchase or recommend to others in the future. This approach enables clients to focus resources on elements of corporate or brand image that have the greatest payback potential in terms of future sales or market share.
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Burke MIRROR® (Market Image Research)
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The MIRROR image analysis technique is designed to collect, consolidate, and analyze information about client and competitive images. It collects attribute ratings of each competitor in a given market, contrasts the ratings, then relates these images to a critical behavioral measure in order to identify perceptual strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations for improvement.
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There are four primary phases to a MIRROR analysis:
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- Identify the primary underlying perceptual dimensions customers or potential customers use to evaluate the items of interest (brands, corporations, etc.).
- Determine which dimensions are most important in driving a key market criterion, such as share of requirements, purchase intent, likelihood to repurchase, overall satisfaction, etc. This step ultimately reveals which dimensions most differentiate among products or services, and influence buyers to choose one over another.
- Determine the current strengths and weaknesses of the client company or brand versus competitors on the most important dimensions.
- Identify the image dimensions that offer the maximum "payback" to the client brand or company in terms of alternative changes or improvements in image.
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Case History - Corporate Image Analysis Using MIRROR
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A major global maker of personal computing devices and peripherals had a need to understand how the corporate name was perceived by the market. The key research questions were:
- What are our perceptual strengths?
- What are our perceptual weaknesses?
- Given our strengths and weaknesses, what positioning strategy gives optimal payback to the company?
Answers to these questions would be used for long term strategic planning, and for short term changes to tactical marketing messages being crafted for TV, print, and the web. Burke worked out a two-stage research process, starting with qualitative research in order to craft proper image ratings scales in the "voice of the customer." Next, a large scale quantitative survey was conducted among three critical business-to-business segments to the client: CEOs/CFOs, Process Managers, and IT Managers. Burke was able to demonstrate that the client's corporate name was held in high esteem among upper management types (who have less "hands on" involvement with equipment) than it was with lower level managers. From this information, the client was able to create messages to simultaneously reposition the name among two different types of decision makers, and gain insight about how to most efficiently deliver these messages through different media.
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