Companies invest money in creating logos, ads, marketing materials, packaging, and so on and then wonder why they’re not getting the results they expected — or they might assume that they can’t get better results. However, had they invested in brand research along the way, their stories could have been quite different.

What is Brand Research?

Research carried out to assist with the creation, development and ongoing management of brands. Research is often might be carried out at an early stage, to help determine strategy, and also at later stages, to assist in the development of specific aspects of the brand mix such as product formulation, naming, packaging and advertising. Once established, the brand may be monitored through ongoing brand evaluation or tracking research.

Learn how your best customers perceive your company, why those customers choose your services over competing brands, and how to express your brand effectively over multiple marketing channels to create a strong brand presence.

Brand research is about creating differentiation in the mind of the customer, understanding why customers choose to purchase certain products and how companies can leverage a strong brand to command loyalty – and potentially a premium price – from customers.

Researching Brand Emotions

You can easily measure and analyze sales data, but how do you measure subjective brand sentiment accurately? How do you measure consumers’ emotional involvement in your brand? Both of these factors are essential to brand and business growth and success, but few companies actually understand how to gather data to guide in the strategic brand decision-making process.

It is a fundamental truth that when consumers are highly emotionally attached to a brand, their loyalty and advocacy of that brand knows no bounds. Harley Davidson brand loyalists provide the perfect example, and as such, the Harley Davidson brand is one of the most powerful relationship brands in the world.

Typically a brand research will help answer: What do people think of your brand? Is your brand equity growing? These are just two of the questions that you need to be able to answer about your brand, and to get those answers, you need to conduct brand research. You can’t measure your brand’s performance without understanding what people think about it.