MT450 Unit 8 Brand Equity Measurement Plan Example

Nine Measures and a Warning Line Each: An MT450 Unit 8 Brand Equity Measurement Plan for a Fountain Pen Maker

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Purdue University Global

MT450: Brand Management Strategy

Unit 8 Brand Equity Measurement Plan

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[Date]

Tremont Pen Company, its tracking study, its records and every baseline are composite; the sources cited are real.

Purpose

The pen maker in this course's case, a composite Indiana firm founded in 1921, has never measured its brand. It counts pens sold and service requests handled, but it cannot say whether more people know the brand this year than last or whether the associations built in earlier units are growing. This plan sets out what to measure, how often, against what baseline and at what level a measure should prompt action.

Two Frameworks, Used as a Map

Two frameworks organize the plan, used as a map rather than summarized. Keller and Swaminathan (2020) describe brand building as a pyramid of six levels: salience, whether people think of the brand; performance and imagery, what they believe about it; judgments and feelings, how they evaluate and respond to it; and resonance, the depth of their relationship with it. The pyramid gives the grid its vertical order, so a reader can see at once whether every level has a measure.

Aaker (1991) groups brand equity into assets: awareness, perceived quality, associations, loyalty and other proprietary assets. Aaker's categories form a second column, a check from a different angle. A plan that covered every pyramid level but measured no loyalty, for instance, would show a gap in the second column.

The Measurement Grid

The grid has nine rows and seven columns: the measure, the pyramid level, the Aaker category, the source, the cadence, the baseline and the warning line.

Unaided recall: salience; awareness; tracking survey; April and October; 14 percent of pen buyers name Tremont unprompted when asked for fountain pen brands; warning below 12 percent.

Writing performance rating: performance; perceived quality; survey; twice a year; 5.8 of 7 on "writes smoothly" among owners; warning below 5.5.

Nib service association: imagery; associations; survey; twice a year; 18 percent of all pen buyers link the service to Tremont; warning if it fails to rise for two consecutive waves, since the plan's goal is to build it.

Quality judgment: judgments; perceived quality; survey; twice a year; 62 percent of pen buyers rate Tremont above average against other pens they know; warning below 58 percent.

Feelings item: feelings; associations; survey; twice a year; 4.9 of 7 on how much Tremont feels "personal" rather than "formal"; warning below 4.6, and tracked separately for buyers under thirty-five.

Attachment: resonance; loyalty; survey of owners; twice a year; 41 percent agree they would be genuinely upset if Tremont stopped making pens; warning below 36 percent.

Service return rate: resonance; loyalty; company service records; yearly; 23 percent of pens sold in a given year are sent back for nib service within ten years; warning below 20 percent.

Serial registrations per pen sold: resonance; loyalty; registration records; quarterly; 0.31 registrations per pen; warning below 0.28.

Price premium: judgments; other assets; quarterly shelf price check; Tremont's average selling price 11 percent above a matched set of five comparable heritage pens; warning below 6 percent.

Two of the nine measures come from records the company already keeps and has never read as brand evidence.

Why These Sources

The six survey measures come from a composite tracking study of 600 people who have bought a pen costing over $50 in the past two years, fielded each April and October. Lehmann et al. (2008) found that survey-based brand measures cluster into a small number of underlying factors, so six well-chosen items cover most of what a longer questionnaire would. Twice a year suits a brand whose associations change slowly; quarterly surveys would mostly pick up the noise of individual advertisements.

The two behavioral measures use records the company already holds. Every pen carries a serial number, and the service bench logs each pen it handles, so the share of pens returned for service measures how many owners actually use the brand's central promise. Registrations, where owners record their serial number online, measure a voluntary act of engagement that costs the owner time.

The price premium is the plan's outcome measure. Ailawadi et al. (2003) argue that the revenue a brand earns over a comparable unbranded product is among the most useful single measures of brand equity, because it reflects what customers will actually pay. A matched set of five heritage pens of similar materials and nibs provides the comparison.

Reading the Grid Across

Coverage was checked in both directions. Every pyramid level from salience to resonance has at least one measure. Every Aaker category has at least one measure, with loyalty carried by three. The heaviest coverage sits at the top of the pyramid, which is deliberate: the Unit 3 and Unit 4 analysis placed Tremont's distinctive strength in its relationship with owners who keep and service their pens.

Three Patterns That Signal Erosion

Sales respond to brand problems late, so the plan names three patterns that would warn earlier.

First, steady recall with a falling nib service association. If people still know the name but fewer link it to the service, the brand's point of difference is fading even while awareness holds; the communication recommended in Unit 2 is not reaching buyers.

Second, a shrinking price premium accompanied by more dealer discounting. If Tremont must discount to keep its share, customers are valuing it less, even if units sold stay level.

Third, falling registrations and attachment among buyers under thirty-five while older owners hold steady. That pattern would mean the brand is aging with its customers, the problem the Unit 9 revitalization strategy addresses.

What the Plan Costs

The tracking survey is the only new expense. A panel survey of 600 qualified pen buyers, about twelve minutes long, costs roughly $9,500 a wave through an online research panel, or about $19,000 a year for two waves. The shelf price check takes a marketing assistant about a day each quarter, visiting dealer websites and six stores. Service and registration figures already sit in the company's systems and need only a quarterly report. The whole plan therefore costs about as much as one trade show booth, and it answers a question the company currently answers by guessing: whether the brand is growing stronger or quietly losing ground between sales reports.

Responsibility and Reporting

The marketing manager owns the grid and reports it to the leadership team after each survey wave, on one page, with any measure past its warning line listed first. The service manager supplies the return and registration figures each quarter. Baselines are reset only when the survey method changes, and any reset is recorded so that trends remain comparable.

References

Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing brand equity: Capitalizing on the value of a brand name. Free Press.

Ailawadi, K. L., Lehmann, D. R., & Neslin, S. A. (2003). Revenue premium as an outcome measure of brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 67(4), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.67.4.1.18688

Keller, K. L., & Swaminathan, V. (2020). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity (5th ed.). Pearson.

Lehmann, D. R., Keller, K. L., & Farley, J. U. (2008). The structure of survey-based brand metrics. Journal of International Marketing, 16(4), 29-56. https://doi.org/10.1509/jimk.16.4.29