Brand reputation plays a significant role in shaping consumer decisions in all walks of life.
From the clothes people wear to the cars people drive, consumer choices are heavily influenced by how they perceive different brands.
The healthcare market is no exception to this rule, with brand reputation being equally important when it comes to choosing medical devices.
This is where the concept of brand equity becomes important for medical device manufacturers.
Brand equity is the value that your brand holds in the minds of customers based on their perceptions, experiences, and associations with your brand - and it can have a significant impact on the adoption of new medical devices and ongoing business performance.
In this article, we’ll examine how IDR Medical can help you understand how your brand is perceived in the market through brand equity research, empowering you to manage, control, and improve it.
The importance of brand equity
Building strong brand equity offers medical device manufacturers a wide range of strategic benefits.
First and foremost, brand equity has been identified as a significant driver of customer loyalty. When customers recognize and trust your brand, they are more likely to choose your devices consistently.
Having strong brand equity has also been linked to the ability to charge premium prices. When customers perceive your brand as reliable and high-quality, they can be willing to pay more, translating directly into increased profit potential for your medical device.
A strong brand reputation can also make customers more receptive to new product launches, which can have a major impact on your market assessment valuation when you’re looking at bringing a new medical device to market.
But before you start taking steps to increase your brand awareness and strengthen your brand reputation, it’s important to understand your current position.
Without an understanding of a brand's current equity, medical device manufacturers can struggle to set clear brand goals and outline a marketing direction that will foster growth.
This is where working with an experienced medical market research company can help you gain valuable insights.
Introducing the Brand Equity Wheel
As specialists in medical market research, IDR Medical has spent decades delivering research projects across more than 30 countries.
From our experience, we've found that the Brand Equity Wheel is one of the most effective tools for measuring and understanding the equity of your brand.
The Brand Equity Wheel consists of 4 important dimensions of brand equity: Awareness, Loyalty, Quality & Leadership, and Positioning.
When we use the Brand Equity Wheel for brand equity research, we analyze each of these dimensions against specific criteria and assign them a score. These scores are then combined to form a comprehensive brand equity score that can be tracked over time.
Combining this score with an in-depth analysis of each of the dimensions can provide valuable insights into your brand strength, and identify opportunities to strengthen your brand equity across different markets, customer segments, and in comparison to competitors.
Let’s take a look at the different aspects of the Brand Equity Wheel in more detail:
Awareness vs. Competitors
Strong brand awareness can help to foster a sense of trust and reliability amongst potential customers.
This increased confidence in your brand can lead to greater acceptance of your medical devices and influence purchasing decisions.
We investigate different measures of brand awareness as part of a brand equity research project.
Prompted awareness occurs when customers recognize your brand after being given a cue or prompt. Measuring prompted awareness before and after a specific marketing campaign can help evaluate its effectiveness in increasing brand recall. If the percentage of respondents recognizing your brand after your campaign increases, it can be seen as an indication that your marketing and outreach efforts are having an impact.
Unprompted awareness occurs when your brand is recalled immediately without any prompting. It is usually found with more well-established brands and is a sign of market dominance. If your brand comes to mind immediately, it suggests a high level of brand awareness, which can translate to a competitive edge.
As part of our brand equity research, we’ll also look to measure your brand's perceived market share with actual data, to reveal how your brand's popularity is perceived compared to its true market performance.
Positioning vs. Competitors
Another key part of brand equity research is understanding how your brand is positioned in customers' minds compared to your competition.
The approach we typically take here is to analyze both the ‘associations’ and ‘differentiations’ that influence your brand's positioning.
Associations are best described as what comes to mind when customers think of your brand. Our research will examine how customers perceive your brand's personality, core values, and business as a whole.
When looking at brand differentiation, we assess how distinct your brand is perceived to be, and what specific qualities customers believe you have that set you apart from competitors.
These combined insights can be used to help you reinforce positive perceptions and take action to address any potential weaknesses.
Loyalty vs. Competitors
Customer loyalty is strongly linked to brand equity and can directly impact your long-term success in the medical device market.
Our brand equity research into customer loyalty focuses on two key areas - customer satisfaction and your ability to charge a price premium.
We first research customer satisfaction levels with your brand and benchmark this against customer satisfaction amongst selected competitors. This can help track not only how satisfied customers are but also their potential likelihood to switch to a competitor if they are perceived to offer a better customer experience.
We next look at one of the strongest indicators of customer loyalty: your brand's ability to command a price premium. By carefully assessing how much more customers are willing to pay for your devices compared to competitors, using methodologies such as conjoint analysis, you can gain a solid understanding of your current brand loyalty.
Quality and Leadership vs. Competitors
Perceived quality is another fundamental aspect of brand equity.
When customers believe your devices are superior to the competition, this can positively impact your ability to command premium prices, encourage adoption, and drive long-term market success.
Our research into brand reputation and quality considers both comparative ratings of your brand against the competition, and also your perceived brand leadership.
By comparing your quality ratings to your competition, we can investigate customer perceptions to uncover potential areas of strength to capitalize on and also identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.
When assessing your perceived market leadership, we consider how far customers see your brand as a leader in innovation and overall influence within the market. Understanding how customers view your leadership position in the market can help inform long-term marketing strategy to improve your perception.
Calculating your brand equity score
While each dimension of the Brand Equity Wheel offers valuable insights, combined analysis can achieve a more accurate and holistic measure of brand equity.
This is why we calculate a single overall brand equity score, giving you a clear benchmark for your brand's strength.
This consolidated score simplifies the process of tracking your brand equity over time, so you’re better able to measure the success of the strategies and tactics you implement to address it.
To gain the most actionable insights from brand equity research, it’s important to repeat the process frequently. Also, consider tailoring studies to specific geographic regions, customer segments, or product categories, as brand equity can differ significantly between different markets.
Choose IDR Medical to help you understand how your brand is perceived in the market
IDR Medical is a leader in healthcare market research, with over a decade of experience supporting medical device manufacturers across more than 30 countries
Our expertise in brand equity research can provide you with a wealth of actionable insights, helping you gain complete clarity about how your brand is perceived in the market and empowering you to strengthen your brand reputation to drive long-term success.
Want to find out more about our approach? Read our guide to brand equity in healthcare.
Ready to unlock the true potential of your brand? Contact IDR Medical today.
