Research services: Brand Tracking

DRG offers brand tracking that covers every aspect of your brand performance – awareness, market share, associations, personality, positions and loyalty. Our tracking is flexible, so as your brand evolves, your research is able to accommodate any changes. Whether you’re looking for research that’s focused and fast to measure a small number of KPI’s or something more in-depth, we can create a bespoke solution to fit a variety of needs and budgets. We make sure you have a robust sample at a frequency that will provide useful data, whether that is after an advertising campaign run or over set time periods.

Approaches to brand tracking

The majority of brand trackers we run involve data collection online via our in-house online panel, Panelbase. Panelbase has over 370,000 registered UK members who are all ready to say exactly what they think about your client’s brand. Online data collection has the advantages of allowing us to target specific audiences quickly and efficiently and tends to be more cost-effective than other methods of data collection.

In instances where a target audience cannot be easily reached online, we can undertake brand tracking using telephone and/or face-to-face interviewing. These methods allow us to reach potentially offline populations but are typically more costly than online research.

Our brand trackers are entirely flexible and can be tailored in terms of robustness of sample sizes and frequency of tracking. A minimum recommended sample size would typically be 400 interviews per wave of research. A sample of this size has a margin of error of +/-4.9% at the 95% confidence interval which is generally considered to be robust within the market research industry. Frequency is largely dependent on client need and budget but typical frequencies are monthly, quarterly or bi-annual data collections.

The Measure

Questionnaire content – below is an example of a standard brand tracker measure (short versions):

• Demographics – Age, gender, social grade etc.
• Media consumption – Use of relevant media channels
• Spontaneous brand awareness – Open question asking respondents to name the first brands that come to mind.
• Spontaneous ad awareness – Open question asking respondents to name any brands they have seen advertising for
• Prompted brand awareness – This question prompts the respondent with a brand list including key competitors
• Prompted ad awareness – This question prompts the respondent with a brand list including key competitors
• Ad attribution – If a respondent states they have seen / heard advertising for the client brand we ask on which format from a prompted list of TV, Radio, Billboards, Print, Underground / Train advertising, etc.
• Ad recall and perceptions – Respondents are prompted with creative executions – asking if they have seen the ad. We then ask about their thoughts on the campaign – what do they feel are the main messages, does it promote key brand attributes effectively
• Brand consideration – How likely are they to consider interacting with the respective brand in the future? (Propensity to purchase) How likely would they be to recommend the respective brand to friends or family member? (Net Promoter Score)

An extended full tracker measure would include questions to elicit information on brand perceptions, personality, call to action and competitor analysis.

Understanding the impact on brand

Deliverables

Like all aspects of our brand tracker offer, deliverables are entirely tailored to your needs. We are available to provide as much or as little support as you require to interpret the tracking data produced and understand what it means for your brand. Basic outputs include either raw data or data tables after each wave of the tracker, but many clients also opt for bespoke reporting solutions. These can include a topline report detailing change in KPIs after each wave of research, an annual full report, face-to-face debrief and recommendations, or access to live data dashboards.

Example outputs:

Brand Health/Mapping

In addition to regular data tables, dashboards and full reporting, DRG can examine attitudes and perceptions of a particular brand against key competitors. This has the benefit of garnering insight into how consumers perceive the brand in the market place. This would be produced as a visual brand map after each wave of research, and can be included in a final report. This will enable the client to track perceptions of their brand over time on an easily understandable scale.

Examples of brand health/performance mapping:

Key driver analysis

We also offer key driver analysis (KDA), which aims to understand what truly affects your key performance indicators e.g. sales, brand recommendation, brand satisfaction, likelihood to purchase, what causes customers to switch brand? And what drives brand loyalty? If we find that brand trust is highly influential on a customer’s likelihood to purchase, we can visualise with KDA that if we increase brand trust by ‘x’ the affect this will have on a customer’s likelihood to purchase will be ‘y’.

Segmentation

Segmentation can be used to increase marketing ROI, differentiate products/services, and discover new business opportunities. Our in-house statisticians develop robust models based on accurate data. We then integrate the models directly into your brand tracking so you can monitor the segments over time.

For more information on our segmentation services including cluster analysis, principle component analysis and discriminant analysis, as well as view our Sky Sports case-study, please click here.

How much does brand tracking cost?

We’ll make sure that you have a robust sample at a frequency that will provide useful data, with a volume and depth of reporting that will make the most of your budget.

Though having said that, our research is completely flexible and we’ll work out the best solution for your brand. That means, of course, that the price is up to you – it’s totally dependent on the frequency, size and demographics of the sample.