Do you know where consumers are in their relationship with you? We’ve been constantly amazed by the number of proposals we’ve written over the years where the potential client has no reliable data on this simple metric. As this is often a key input into costing a research project for them, we’ll go out and collect it ourselves.

We ask one simple brand franchise question phrased like this:

(Easily adapted for a product or service brand):

Thinking about the producer of stripey paint, Acme Corp. Which of the following statements best describes how you feel about Acme Corp.?

  1.  It’s the only brand of stripey paint I use
  2. It’s one of a number of brands of stripey paint I use
  3. I’ve used Acme Corp. in the past, don’t currently use them, but would consider them in the future
  4. I’ve used Acme Corp. in the past, don’t currently use them, and will not use them again in future
  5. I’ve never used Acme Corp., but would like to
  6. I’ve never used Acme Corp. and am unsure if I’ll consider them in future
  7. I’ve never used Acme Corp., and never will
  8. I’ve never heard of Acme Corp.
  9. I do not buy stripey paint

This enables us to fit the consumers into the following hierarchy:

Results might look like this:

This enables us to do two things:

Firstly, as is the case with Acme Corp. we can accurately cost a project on the basis that if we randomly select 4 adults, 1 of them will have a current or historical relationship with the brand (and in fact most times we can frame the sample universe to exclude the, in this case, 22% not in market). In other words we can very quickly profile both users and non-users.

Secondly, whether we win the project or not, we can provide some basic indications to the client with potential strategies to move people up the brand franchise hierarchy. In Acme. Corp., those in the market are generally aware of the brand (i.e. a high profile brand), but there is an issue communicating the benefits of the brand, and converting awareness to usage. We’d be advocating reviewing the ‘barriers’ to usage, and working on changing some of the ambivalence towards the brand into positive action.

Could your brand benefit from this type of basic data? Why not get in touch?