Brand health tracker: Assignment 1

Imagine that you have been appointed an Assistant Brand Manager for a brand of your choice.  As part of the role, you have been asked to design and construct a Brand Health Tracker (BHT) survey for your brand.

Brand health tracking surveys collect information from consumers on a routine basis over time, usually through quantitative measures of brand performance on a number of key dimensions.

However, before you can write a brand health tracker survey, you must identify what dimensions of brand performance are relevant to your brand and the type of questions that will best measure them. Therefore, your task for this assignment is three-fold: i) understand the key dimensions of brand performance that are of interest to you as the Assistant Brand Manager; ii) select appropriate measures; and iii) write the survey.

Your report should include the following:

1. Brand context: (aprox 800-1000 words)
   1. Overview of the brand: What industry does the brand operate in? What geographical markets does it serve? What size is the brand (is it the market leader or a small, local brand?)
   2. A description of how consumers think, feel and act towards the brand using Keller’s brand resonance model

• Analysis of brand positioning

1. Summary of key dimensions of brand performance to measure:
   • Needs satisfied/category
   • Performance and imagery associations (including POP and POD)
   • Judgments and feelings
   • Resonance
   • Brand usage
2. Selection and justification of questions: (aprox 300-400 words)
3. Justification of questions for each measure
4. Brand health tracking survey (not included in word count)

For each of the assignment’s components above you will receive the required ‘training’ in the form of in-class activities, thus creating a portfolio/skill set suitable to a junior brand management position in the industry. You can use such activities as a guide for compiling your assignment. However, it is essential that you expand this portfolio with additional research and reading (e.g. by using relevant academic papers and textbook in support to each section of the report).

Finally, to further facilitate and guide you, you have been provided with the following information on brand health tracking surveys.

Brand health tracker: Guidelines

Key brand health tracking areas to measure:

(adapted from Romaniuk, 2013)

Options for measures:

1. Brand awareness (1-3 questions) – your choice of any/all brand awareness measures (see Romaniuk, Wight and Faulkner, 2017)
2. Brand performance and imagery (1 question) – MUST use a pick-any brand attribute association measure (pick 8-10 attributes to test, which are a mix of POP and POD for your brand) (see Dreisener and Romaniuk, 2006)
3. Brand judgments and feelings (3-4 questions) – your choice of scale and/or ranking measures (see Dreisener and Romaniuk, 2006)
4. Brand resonance (1-2 questions) – your choice of scale, ranking or pick-any brand attribute association measure (see Dreisener and Romaniuk, 2006)
5. Brand usage (2-3 questions) – past purchases and frequency of purchases relative to competitors (see Romaniuk and Nencyz-Thiel, 2013)

The survey should have 10 - 12 questions in total. 

To create your brand health tracker, use QuestionPro, which is available to you free via La Trobe University (see link on LMS). Once you have written your survey in QuestionPro, download it in a word file and include it in the main body of your report.

Report Requirements:

The assignment must be undertaken individually. The report should be consistent with the following structure:

1. Title page of your choice (not included in the word count)
2. Table of contents (not included in the word count)
3. Introduction (preferably less than 1/2 page, aprox. 200 words)
4. Core of the report (addressing the points a, b and c above) – 1,000 words
5. Conclusions (preferably less than 1/2 page, aprox. 200 words)
6. Reference list (not included in the word count)
7. Appendices (not included in the word count)

Guidelines for completion:

The sources of information used to compile your report must be clearly stated, with appropriate in text referencing (Harvard style). A minimum of five academic references should be used (note that this excludes web references).

The report should be typed with numbered pages, using 12pt. Times New Roman and 2.5cm margins throughout (A4 page set up). The completed report (excluding, title page, table of contents, survey, references and any appendix) should be 1,500 words +/- 10%. Reports exceeding the word limit or not conforming to the formatting guidelines are subject to a grade penalization. Reports substantially shorter than the word limit will also be penalized with a deduction from the final grade proportional to how much shorter the report will be.

Appendices can be used in the report, but these should be relevant and feature supporting material only. Diagrams and tables that are important to the discussion should always be featured in the body of the report.

Finally, your assignment must be submitted electronically via LMS in a PDF format.