Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice: What Brand Perceptions are Made Of

Today, a brand is defined by what consumers perceive it to be, but what are consumer’s brand perceptions based on? A new study provides insights pointing to eleven components that determine how someone will feel about your brand.

Sure Your Customers Love You, But Do You Know What Brand Perceptions Explain Why?

Once upon a time, corporate marketers could tell people how they should feel about a brand. Today, consumers may or may not agree with your marketing department, based on at least eleven different factors people say influence their perceptions about a company.

For some business owners, controlling a brand identify based on consumer perceptions seems like an impossible task. Thanks to a new study about how consumers form their impressions of companies, marketers and small business owners can take some of the power back by improving their organizations in the ways that matter most to their customers.

Marketingcharts.com released findings from a new study by Vanessa DiMauro, Don Bulmer and The Society for New Communications Research which notes that quality is not the only measure that impacts the way your customers feel about your brand. A closer look at the eleven factors uncovered by the study can provide you with new ways to improve your business that align with what customers want most from your brand.

Quality tops the list of ingredients that combine to create the consumer’s impression of a company; however, it’s not the only ingredient in the brand-perception recipe. In terms of the factors consumers said influence their ultimate opinion about an organization, this is how the list stacks up:

• 80% Quality
• 55% Cost
• 37% Customer care program
• 34% Opinions of people they know
• 30% Customer reviews and comments on social networks
• 19% Perceived corporate social responsibility
• 18% Rewards program
• 15% Length of time in business
• 13% Media reports or stories about the company
• 10% Brand advertisements
• 7% Corporate social media activity and profiles

It’s important to point out that while items like ads, social activity and press mentions hover at the bottom of the list, some of these tools can also be used to fuel consumer’s perceptions of more important traits; for instance, social media and press releases may be used to help communicate an organization’s track record when it comes to quality or the corporation’s commitment to environmentally friendly practices or community give-back programs.

3 Ways to Improve Customer Brand Perceptions

A closer analysis of the list above yields a few important takeaways and actionable ways that you can work to improve consumers’ brand perceptions of your business.

“A bargain at any price.”

First, the relationship of quality and cost, at the top of the list. Rather than addressing quality and cost as separate issues, it might be more appropriate to combine them and re-label the most important item as perceived value. Work on improving the value that customers ascribe to your products and services, and cost will become less and less of a factor.

“Give them something to talk about.”

Second, it’s important to realize that today’s consumer barely differentiates the value of personal recommendations and opinions of people they know and trust from those of complete strangers who leave reviews or interact with brands online. Work on actively encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews for your business online and post a line or two on your brand’s social pages (or tag you in status updates).

“Perception is reality.”

Third, don’t forego long-term image improvements for short-term sales. If your brand is infused with strong values in the way that you impact customers, employees, the environment or the community, people will find out. Sales occur in the here and now, but building a strong brand image is the foundation that brand-advocates need to recommend your business to the people they know.