Be Aware of “Awareness Theft”
Blog Post
The guiding principle in brand health tracking is consistency. Sampling, survey design, and analysis should be as consistent as possible to ensure that any fluctuations in data can be attributable to “real change.”
Consumers are people, and we’re subject to a host of biases and psychological tendencies that are particularly applicable in consumer insights research. Making any changes to the survey itself (e.g., brand list, brand attributes, question order) make it difficult to know whether metric changes are driven by survey design or indeed reflect broader changes in the market.
Complication
Business needs to reflect the needs and realities of an evolving landscape. It would simply be unrealistic for a brand to never update their brand health tracker. Take an extreme example: would it make sense for Walmart to continue to include Sears (a near defunct company) as a competitor in Walmart’s tracker? Definitely not.
An Important Truth
One “truth” about capturing brand awareness is that respondents will only choose, on average, 9 brands when presented with a list of brands they may know. This “truth” is rooted in a respondent’s limited attention span and cognitive load, as well as complex psychology related to how we process information quickly. Put simply: if you are presented with 15 brands and asked to select the ones you have heard of, your brain will naturally select the 9-10 that you know best. If you know more, it might subtly discard the brands that you may have heard of (but do not know very well).
Awareness Theft
Awareness Theft is a phenomenon whereby replacing a brand in one wave for a higher awareness brand in a subsequent wave results in an overall decline in all of the brands in the competitive set. We have labelled it awareness theft because the “theft” is usually most impacted at the top of the funnel, but because subsequent stages of the funnel are conditional on awareness, it usually affects other stages, as well. It is illustrated in a fictitious example below:
Concluding Words
It is important to evolve brand health trackers to reflect the changing competitive landscape and business needs. However, any updates, particularly changes to the brand list or funnel, should account for biases rooted in psychology, like Awareness Theft. These changes can impact KPIs across the board, especially funnel metrics. As such, we should anticipate and contextualize fluctuations in metrics when making updates, and ensure that changes are interpreted within the broader framework of evolving survey design and consumer psychology.
DISCLAIMER: We base our research, recommendations, and forecasts on techniques, information and sources we believe to be reliable. We cannot guarantee future accuracy and results. The Langston Co. will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a reader's reliance on our research.