Brand perception study (BPS) researches the perception of your brand in the eyes of your stakeholders, always in relation to your competitors. The perception is evaluated on the basis of attributes, values and personalities which are associated with your brand and its competitors.

Brand Perception Study enables you a quick and detailed evaluation of your brand’s image and its competitive position on the market. It tells you how consumers and/or other stakeholders perceive your brand’s attributes, values and personality in comparison with its main competitors. Such data are the foundation for brand positioning strategies.

Brand Perception Study is a research and strategic tool that offers fundamental data and support for long-term strategic planning and positioning decisions. It helps you determine and/or evaluate:

• Perceived Brand Image, which is evaluated on the basis of the main attributes, values and personality of your brand.
• Perceived Brand Images of your main competitors.
• Brand Core Elements or the unique and differentiating core attributes, values and personalities of your brand and it's competitors.
• Brand Position - its uniqueness, potentials for repositioning and possibilities for taking the position that is not occupied yet.
• Different Evaluations and Indexes, like brand perception index, perceived brand profile index, brand quality index, brand focus index, brand dispersion index ect.
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that derive from the position of your brand regarding the position of its competitors.
• Characteristics, values and lifestyle (personality) of your Market Segment.
• Potentials and guidelines for Repositioning decisions. 
• Comparison of perceptions of different stakeholder groups when conducting more BPS studies at the same time.
• Potentials of unoccupied places on the market with including a category “none of them” among competitive brands into the study.
• Changes in your brand's perception when perception is evaluated continuously in a longer time interval.

Based on these results, you will easily:

• design unambiguous and focused marketing communication;
• use your communication means more effectively and focused;
• find a way how to differentiate your brand from other competitors:
• check the efficiency of your marketing communications – BPS results will clearly show how your communications reflect desired intangible characteristics of your brand.

Brand Perception Study (BPS) was developed in line with latest theoretical background in the marketing and branding literature.

1. Firstly, BPS is founded on the fact that when defining the position of your brand, you always have to concentrate on the perceptions of your consumers, not on the reality of the product (Ries and Trout 1986).
2. Secondly, when studying the perception of your brand and defining its position, you always have to study it in relation with its main competitors. Therefore, the perception and position of competing brands also have to be taken into account, when conducting BPS.
3. Besides, BPS corresponds with the increasing research on brand image which stresses the importance of intangible attributes in brand positioning and differentiation. Therefore, intangible brand characteristics, like brand values and brand personality, play a great role in BPS. However, tangible characteristic are also taken into account when studying perception. To capture the whole perception of the brand, perceived brand attributes, values and personality are included into the study.

Brand Perception Study is a quantitative research that uses online survey methodology to gather data on consumers’ perception of specific brand in a wide market structure.

Quantitative approach based on qualitative insights

The specialty of the method is that it derives from a qualitative research of brand perception. The qualitative research uses personal interviews in which respondents associate brands with a range of attributes written on pieces of paper. We have adjusted this method to the online environment, which enables you to get an adequate number of responses, but most of all, a quick and easy insight into the perception of your own brand and its main competitors.

Conduct of the Study

Brand perception Study captures the real market structure and surveys the perception of your brand with relation to its main competitors. The first step is to select 3 to 9 brands that are direct competitors to your brand. 

When the market structure has been defined, you can start studying perception. In the course of the study, respondents associate various tangible and intangible Brand Core Elements to the brands:

• Brand attributes
• Brand values
• Brand personality

With a single click, respondents associate an attribute, value and personality to the brands in the study. Respondents click on a brand for which the displayed element applies to the highest extent.

The number of responses is displayed in real time. During the course of the study, you can see the first analyses. The greatest advantage of the Brand Perception Study is that all analyses and calculations are available immediately after the study has been concluded. 

Study’s methodology allows the use of small samples as the studies main output is a qualitative insight into the perception of a brand on a competitive market. Quality results are guaranteed with a sample of around 80 respondents. Analyses of the sample showed that any increases of the sample over 80 respondents would not change the results if you pay attention to certain rules of sampling.

Sampling rules and suggestions

1) When studying brand perception with brand users:

• Include in the study users of all brands – yours and the competition.
• No need that respondents use all surveyed brands. Enough is that they use one of the brands in the study.
• You will get the best results if you include the same number of user of each brand. If you study 9 competitive brands, you will get best results if 10 users of each brand plus any number of users of non-competitive brands fill in the survey. Plans “Plus” and “Premium” include the “data normalization” plug-in, which allows you to analyze normalized data (same number of brand users for each brand).
• If you do not know which brand a respondent uses, the survey will give you the answer to that question. At the end of the survey, respondents answer the question which of the surveyed brands they use most often.
• If needed, you can sort respondents according to gender, education, place of residence (urban, rural) etc. This option are available in “Plus” and “Premium” plans.
• You can choose between two sampling options: you can prepare the sample yourself according to your needs, or you can order the panel with our assistance through the application.

2) When studying brand perception with internal stakeholders:

• Include as many different stakeholders who are managing your brand within your company. You will get a clearer picture of how people working with your brand see it in relation to the competitors.
• If you have the possibility, study perception of your brand across various departments of your company (marketing, production, sales) and see how (in)consistent brand perception is within the company.

It is advisable to carry out the Brand Perception Study both with your internal stakeholders and with brand users. You will get many crucial information that will make strategic brand management decisions much easier.

All questions as well as brands among which respondents can choose are displayed in random order. This randomness is two-dimensional: both the order of questions that appear on the respondent’s screen and the logotypes of brands among which to choose, rotate the whole time.

This reduces the possibility of bias caused by the order in which brands are displayed on the screen. In addition, the questions are displayed randomly, in order to remove bias through several questions or statements being displayed in a fixed order. 

Brand Perception Study is used by people who work with brands and want to get a detailed insight into perception of their brand, its competitive position and/or want to define its profile and core. Such data are fundamental for developing long-term strategic brand plans and taking brand-positioning decisions.

Because you want to make strategic plans and positioning decisions for your brand(s) based on real data, not intuition. Besides, using Brand Perception Study can get you real data from real people and reveal you the real market structure. All it takes is about 30 minutes to create a survey and up to 5 days to collect responses.

Simply Start Free Trial or follow the process described in the Take a Tour section.

You can start using the Brand Perception Study after creating your own account. You can start with a Free Trial or choose one of the packages in the Plans and Pricing section.

No! Brand Perception Study is designed and programmed to work in your web browser without requiring any additional plug-ins or extensions.

Your survey can be filled in by anyone you send the URL of your study to.

Read more about how to get stared on Getting Started or Take a Tour. Or even better. Sign up and start creating your own survey!