Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com
Negative Brand Share

Recently while giving the presentation of "Researching Research" at a local university, the topic of "The Search for New Ideas" came up.  If there was ever a place in Consumer research where there was no clear cut set of protocols, it is in the search for new ideas.  New ideas or should I say, "opportunities" come from a variety of sources starting with your company heritage, or the heritage of your brand through any change in lifestyles, habits and practices, technology, and even legislation.  But my three favorite areas of opportunities are found in the exploration about how people think and act.  The three areas are:  habits and practices, category weaknesses and brand selection/rejection.  These three areas are my favorites for a number of reasons, namely they result in very actionable information, they usually result in new information and the research is fast and inexpensive.  They are so easy, fast and inexpensive that they should be utilized as training programs for consumer learning and understanding.  There are three test methods that I have used and recommend.  The three are:  Negative Brand Share (NBS), Accepted Category Beliefs (ACB), and the Expert Director Test (EDT).

All three of the above test methods can be of benefit in two major ways.  First, they can be an excellent internal training tool in employee consumer learning and understanding.  In this use, the employee would do a few interviews every six months to a year, just to keep up-to-date on consumer thinking.  The second use would involve large base studies aimed at uncovering potential new opportunities.

Last year on November 20, I wrote a Views on the topic of "Accepted Category Beliefs."  I don't think I have ever written about the "Expert Director Test" and I will in the near future.  However, on October 17, 1994, I wrote a Views about the Negative Brand Share technique.  In this Views I would like to cover it again in more detail.

The current rage in the business of consumer research is "Consumer Satisfaction."  It is not one of my favorite techniques.  I am not really as interested in my consumer's satisfaction as I am in "Dissatisfaction."  I want to know why people do not purchase my brand.  One company that I am familiar with, spends millions on customer satisfaction only to find out that people that purchase these brands are generally happy with them.  Ask yourself, why else would they have purchased them in the first place?  They only interview people that have purchased the brand in the past four or six months.  Most of these people will be people that have purchased the brand in the past and have been happy with it.  Few will be first time purchasers.  In one of their studies when looking at the consumer satisfaction of a competitive price brand, they found that the price brand had as high a consumer satisfaction rating as their market-leading, quality-priced brand.

The Negative Brand Share technique focuses on the basis for the consumer's acceptance of one brand over another brand.

There are three unique positions in the NBS technique.
 

  1. 1.  The technique focuses on "Why the brand is not purchased," rather than how well it is liked or not liked by consumers.
  2. 2.  The location of the research.  conventional satisfaction studies take place through the mail, in the mall, or in the agency's facilities.  the NBS technique takes place where the purchase decisions are actually made, at the time the purchase is made and in the context of the consumers' alternatives.
  3. 3.  NBS data are collected at the time a purchase is being made, yielding a fresh view of the decision process.  We have even found that "Reasons for Purchasing" collected in the store and at the time of purchase differ from the data collected in other locations.
The NBS technique can be utilized for two main purposes.  First, to look for new opportunities and second as a training exercise for new employees.  The training exercise helps them learn how the market is segmented and what attributes are important to the consumer.  In the new opportunity area, we are looking at how the brand might be modified to appeal to more category users.
  The data from an NBS study not only shows how you might increase share but will also show how to target specific competitive brands.

A Little Word Play:
 


[Back][Index][Forward]