A Framework for Marketing Image Management

AS MARKETS GROW more competitive, companies need to improve their understanding of their target customers’ needs, attitudes, and buying behavior. They must design their offers and their images to be competitively attractive. The target customers carry images in their heads about each supplier’s product quality, service quality, prices, and so on. The images are not always accurate, but nevertheless they influence supplier selection.

Suppliers sometimes attempt to measure their image among target customers. A manufacturer of stereo components, for instance, found its share slipping. The president commissioned an image study to learn how his company was perceived relative to its two main competitors. The president thought that the company would rate higher than its two competitors on product quality and customer service. In fact, his company ran a weak third. His first reaction was to attack the image study as flawed. But when he looked at several of the transcribed statements from customers, he began to realize that he was not seeing his own company the way the customers were seeing it.

Although many companies commission an occasional image study, few do it systematically and on a regular basis. We would argue that companies should design and operate an image tracking and management system, which we define as follows: a system of periodically collecting, analyzing, and acting on information that describes how different publics view key attributes of the company’s performance.

The main advantages of an image tracking and management system are that (1) the company can detect unfavorable image shifts early and act before they hurt the company; (2) the company can identify key areas where its performance lags behind its competitors and work to strengthen those areas; (3) the company can identify key areas where it outshines its competitors and can capitalize on those strengths; and (4) the company can learn whether its corrective actions have improved its image.

While numerous articles describe the nature and importance of images and image measurement, the literature gives little guidance on designing and developing an image tracking and management system. Some Fortune 500 corporations have designed such systems but their features differ and they are not widely known. Since these systems are costly, they need to be designed correctly, if their value is to exceed their costs.

This article describes a method for designing and operating an image tracking and management system, and addresses, in particular, two critical concerns of the company—identifying its image and its competitive standing.

The Nature and Importance of Image Analysis

We use the term “image” to represent the sum of beliefs, attitudes, and impressions that a person or group has of an object. The object may be a company, product, brand, place, or person. The impressions may be true or false, real or imagined. Right or wrong, images guide and shape behavior. Companies need to identify their image strengths and weaknesses and take action to improve their images.

Figure 1 suggests a starting point for image analysis. It shows the relationship between a company’s reputation and level of public awareness. Suppose the residents of an area are asked to rate four local hospitals; A, B, C, and D. Their responses are averaged and displayed on two perpendicular axes. The horizontal axis shows awareness of the organization and the vertical axis shows attitude toward the organization. Hospital A has the strongest image; most people know it and like it. People are less familiar with Hospital B but those who know it like it. Those who know Hospital C view it negatively; fortunately for Hospital C, not many people know it. Hospital D is in the weakest position; everyone knows it and thinks it is a poor hospital.

Each hospital faces a different task. Hospital A must work at maintaining its good reputation and high community awareness. Hospital B is doing a good job but must bring itself to the attention of more people. Hospital C needs to find out why people dislike it and take steps to improve its service, while keeping a low profile. Hospital D would be well advised to lower its profile (avoid news), mend its ways, and wait to attract public attention until it is a better hospital. In general, sometimes the company needs to improve its performance and sometimes it needs to communicate its actual performance level more effectively.

The above assumes that negative reputation correlates with negative performance. In fact, a perceived weakness may not be real. In that case, the company needs to direct communications to correct this misperception.

Marketing Image Framework

A company has not one, but many images, depending upon the specific object being studied, the public whose view is being assessed, and other conditions. Figure 2 lists the components that make up a company’s image: factors—the company’s controllable image mix elements; offerings—the particular objects being measured, such as brands, products, or services; and publics—the various constituencies whose perceptions the company would like to measure. Clearly, a company’s image depends on the particular offering and the particular public. For example, a local hospital’s image will vary with the offering (emergency room, birthing center, surgery, etc.) and the public (local residents, physicians, nurses, etc.). Its image may vary even within a public, as when affiliated physicians see the hospital differently than unaffiliated physicians.

Sidney Levy of Northwestern University introduced the concept of “image” in 1955, and it has been applied since to various objects. First, there is the corporate image, the way people view the whole corporation. Second, there is the product image, the way people view a particular product category. Third, there is the brand image, the way people view a particular brand that is in competition with other brands.

We would like to introduce a fourth type of image, a company’s marketing image: the way people view the quality of the company’s overall marketing offer and marketing mix. The shaded box in Figure 2 highlights the components that make up a company’s marketing image. The company’s corporate image and its marketing image play different roles. The corporate image describes how the public views the company’s goodwill toward society, employees, customers, and other stakeholders. A company may have a very strong corporate image because it is a good citizen and invests heavily in communicating its good deeds. However, good corporate image may not contribute much to its bottom line, especially if the company suffers from a poor marketing image. thus the fact that the firm gives money to charities and civic organizations will not convince buyers to overlook product and marketing weaknesses.

A company’s marketing image consists of how customers and other publics rate the “exchange value” of the company’s offering compared to that of competitors. A company has a strong marketing image if customers believe that they get high value when they buy from it. The high value comes from such factors as good products and services, reasonable prices, and so on.

Both marketing image and corporate image management aim to influence behavior in various publics. Marketing image management seeks to encourage customers to purchase the company’s products and services and to recommend its products and services to others. Corporate image management, in contrast, seeks to inspire improved attitudes toward the company’s stock, desire to join and work hard for the company, and support of legislation favorable for the company.

Each image factor is made up of a number of attributes, as shown in Figure 3. Consider communications, for example. The image of a company’s communications is made up of the public’s perception of its advertising, publicity, promotions, direct mail, and telemarketing. By measuring these attributes separately, we might detect a particularly weak attribute within the communications mix.

In this paper we focus on tracking the company’s marketing image, not its corporate image. Consequently, certain factors, offerings, and publics are more important in our discussion.

The Image Management Process

A company attempting to measure and manage its marketing image must make sure the process is feasible, affordable, and repeatable, and that the attributes are actionable. The process involves four phases:

Design Phase

Let us assume that a company wishes to set up an image tracking and management system. Clearly, this company cannot hope to track the image of every one of its products and brands in every location and in the minds of every significant public. Since reliably sampling any single public costs thousands of dollars, the company must decide which image factors, for which products, among which publics, in which locations, it needs to track.

The company’s headquarters may want to track the corporate image. The general manager of a particular division may want to track the division’s overall image and the images of some specific products and brands within the division. The general manager of another division may not want to spend money to measure any of its images with any of its publics.

We believe that the task of measuring and tracking image should be assigned to the corporate marketing research department. Specialized talent can be developed in this department to hire research agencies, collect data, analyze results, and make recommendations. A centralized image measurement department can capitalize on economies of scale for data collection. Each division can then pay a general tax for measuring the corporate image and a separate fee for the specific image measurement projects that it requests.

During the design phase, the company determines the factors, offerings, publics, and appropriate competitors to track over time. Focus groups and one-on-one interviews are useful mechanisms for determining these. The following types of questions must be considered:

• What factors will be tracked? Is the company most interested in the image of the product, price, salesforce, distribution channels, communications, service, or support? This decision should be based on the attributes that most influence the purchase decision. To identify these, the company must first determine the various actors in the buying decision and the roles they play as gatekeepers, influencers, decision makers, purchasing agents, and end users. In group buying, each participant focuses on a different set of attributes. The researchers must avoid assuming that only one buying participant matters as they arrive at the right set of attributes to measure.
• Which offerings should be studied? The company must decide which offerings are most important to study, since image research funds may be limited. The offerings may be ordered by revenue contribution or market share or both. A company may want to emphasize those offerings with low market share, while others will study the key offerings with large revenue contributions.
• Which publics should be included in the study? This decision will vary with the particular offering. Table 1 shows the relative importance of different publics for three types of consumer buying decisions. The customer is always a key public. When a product is expensive, infrequently purchased, and unfamiliar to the buyer, the customer needs to gather information about the product. In that case, the consulting and media publics play a key role in the decision process and become primary publics for image studies. For consumer goods that are inexpensive and frequently purchased and where shelf space is a key consideration, retailers and distributors are a primary audience. A similar approach may be taken for industrial goods and services.
• How many members and which members of each specified public should be sampled each period? How should they be distributed by type, geographical location, and other factors? For example, a company might need to choose between large corporate buyers on the East Coast and all buyers. In the case of computers, one might need to decide whom to interview among data processing managers, department heads, end users, and so on.

• Who are the relevant competitors? The company’s management should not unilaterally decide who the relevant competitors are. The customers and distributors should be surveyed to discover who they think are the major competitors. A facsimile machine vendor may feel that other “fax” vendors are its competitors. But customers may consider “express mail” or “electronic mail” as competitive alternatives.
• How often should the specified images be tracked? Here, a company must strike a compromise between the high cost of frequent image measurement and the benefit of detecting attitude shifts as early as possible. Suppose, as an example, the image is tracked two times a year. If the image were tracked more often, it might show some shifts that were not meaningful. If the image were tracked less often, the company might miss some basic shifts. Since image tracking is costly, the division has to decide on a time interval that gives useful information while not costing too much. Generally speaking, the following circumstances dictate more frequent tracking: rapid technological change, changing competitors’ strategies, active government regulation, and other signs of market environment turbulence. Major events such as new product announcements or new communications campaigns may require additional tracking measurements.

Due to budgeting constraints and potential respondent fatigue, the company may want to perform a cost-benefit analysis to limit the number of attributes, competitors, and publics examined in the quantitative phase. The information for this analysis is obtained from the design phase (focus groups and in-depth interviews).

First, the company needs a qualitative measure of the importance of the attributes in the buying decision. Participants in focus groups can be asked to sort the generated list of attributes into categories of “most important,” “important” and “least important.” The researchers can then focus on the “most important” attributes in their image study.

Second, the company needs a qualitative measure of the key competitors. Participants can be asked to list and rank the key competitors.

Third, the company needs a qualitative measure of the salient publics. Participants can be asked to list and rank the most important publics.

It is important to include qualitative research for each of the salient publics, including purchasers and users, especially if they are not the same. This avoids the possibility of a misdirected image measurement.

In summary, the design phase should accomplish the following objectives:

• identify the major factors and attributes involved in the buying decision;
• explore the salient issues;
• explore the relevant publics;
• explore the language of the publics;
• Identify the key competitors; and
• develop hypotheses to be tested in the quantitative phase.

Data Collection Phase

After the design phase is finished, a company can proceed to collect data. Typically, the data will be collected by telephone surveys. The telephone offers several advantages over mailed questionnaires: the information can be obtained faster, a higher response rate can be obtained, and the interviewer can clarify questions that arise. In some situations, if the questionnaire is long or complex, for example, personal interviews may be preferred.

Image Gap Analysis Phase

In the next phase of the process, the marketing research department summarizes and analyzes the collected data, and graphically portrays the results. Typically, the image is portrayed on a set of bipolar scales. Figure 4 shows a bipolar mapping with five scales. Each scale runs from one (poor) to five (excellent). The two profiles plotted over the scales can represent many different comparisons:

• Two publics’ views. Profile A may represent how small buyers see the company and profile B may represent how large buyers see the company. Alternatively, profiles A and B may represent how buyers in two different geographical locations view the company.
• Two time periods. Profile A may represent the particular public’s view of the company last year and profile B may represent that public’s view of the company this year.
• The company and its major competitor. Profile A may represent the company and profile B may represent a major competitor.
• Two products. Profile B may represent the company’s major new product and profile A may represent the company’s current product.
• Actual image and desired image. Here management would like to improve its image from A to B. B may not represent the public’s desired (ideal) image of an excellent company. But it may cost company A too much to achieve the public’s ideal image. B represents a feasible image for management to pursue given the public’s desired image, the major competitor’s image, and the company’s resources and objectives.

Clearly, profiling the company’s marketing image on a carefully selected set of bipolar scales can yield rich insights. The one limitation is that the importance that the public attaches to each factor is missing, since people will assign different weights to different attributes. When collecting image data, the researcher must ask respondents to indicate the relative importance of each attribute. There are different ways to gather importance ratings. The direct method (“stated” importance) includes asking the respondents to simply rank the attributes by distributing a constant sum of points over the attributes, or using a rating scale (see Table 2). The indirect method (“derived” importance) can be obtained from the data using a regression or conjoint methodology.

The underlying theory is that to be effective, a company strives to achieve a high image rating on each attribute that is highly important to its target public. If a company cannot perform well on a highly important attribute, it will lose sales to its competitors. At the same time, a company may overspend on an attribute of low importance to the customer. It should consider shifting resources away from overperforming on less important attributes and toward improving its performance on more important attributes. Generally, one should devote resources to the various attributes according to their importance to the target market.

The importance of the attributes or factors will usually vary with the publics and the offerings. A customer who is a member of the consuming public may highly value good fuel efficiency when purchasing an automobile for commuting purposes. However, when that customer purchases a family car, the most important feature may be its roominess. The same individual, as a stockholder of an automobile company, may value its record for innovativeness.

The findings in Table 2 can be usefully graphed on an importance and image rating map. For this exercise, we will assume that A and B are companies. Figure 5 shows such a map of company As perceived image. Each quadrant of the map carries a different implication for management. Quadrant 1 indicates important attributes in which the company is performing well, in this case, support quality. Management’s task is to continue to maintain high-quality customer support. Quadrant 2 shows important attributes in which the company is not performing well and where action is required. In this case, the company is lagging in service quality, product quality, and salesforce quality. Here, early and substantial marketing improvement is needed. Quadrant 3 represents attributes of low importance in which the company is not performing well. In this case, the company has none. Since these attributes are less important to customers, the company need not bother to improve its performance unless it can gain a competitive advantage with some market segments that value these otherwise unimportant attributes. Finally, quadrant 4 represents attributes of low importance in which the company is performing well; for this company, such an attribute is communications quality. Unless the company has a specific reason for performing well on communications quality, it should think seriously about shifting resources away from communications and toward improving its standing on more important attributes or factors.

In Figure 5, the sampled respondents’ perceptions of performance and importance were averaged. Since each plotted point is an average, it is important to understand how specific or diffuse the image is. This can be accomplished by calculating the variance on each measure. In addition, one may segment the respondents on their importance ratings (benefits sought) or on their image ratings (attitudes). Each segment or cluster can be mapped on its own importance and image rating map. After segmenting and profiling the respondent set, the company can then select the target markets and position their products and services by adopting the proper marketing mix to meet the needs of the chosen segments. Service can be very important to one segment, while another segment is more interested in product quality. The company needs to prepare action plans for the target segments.

Image Modification Actions and Tracking Phase

The analysis thus far has yielded a picture of the company’s major strengths and weaknesses as perceived by respondents. However, before the company develops plans to modify any of its attribute standings, it needs to extend the analysis to include a picture of its competitors’ standings on these same attributes. For example, if the company’s chief competitor (company B) is also deficient in an important attribute, then the company may be less pressed to improve its standing. Or it may see this as an opportunity to “get a jump on” the competitor. Figure 6 compares company A with company B. A “plus” indicates that the company is performing significantly better than the competitor, an “equal” that it is performing similarly, and a “minus” that it is performing worse than the competitor. Company A is performing better in support than company B, but worse than company B in product quality, service quality, and salesforce quality. It is also performing better than company B in communications quality, but this factor is of low importance in customer decision making.

The firm’s standing in each quadrant has different ramifications for management action (see Figure 7). The plus attributes in the upper right hand quadrant are company strengths that can be highlighted in communication messages. The minus attributes in this quadrant are important items warranting improvement.

If a company is viewed as a “plus” on an attribute that falls in the lower two quadrants, then the company should try to raise the respondents’ perceptions of how important the attribute is. At the same time, if the company is perceived as a “minus” in the upper quadrants, then the company should try to reduce the respondents’ importance rating.

Yet it should be acknowledged that changing the perceived attribute importance is usually more difficult than changing the perceived attribute rating. Suppose a car buyer is looking for a car with high acceleration. He enters a dealer showroom and likes the looks of a particular car. But he is disappointed to hear that it has a four cylinder engine. The salesperson can try three strategies to increase the buyer’s interest in the car:

• Decrease the perceived importance of “acceleration.” Tell the buyer that cars with high acceleration accelerate too fast for safety, that fuel costs will be high, and so on.
• Increase the perceived importance of other attributes that the buyer likes in this car, such as the car’s looks.
• Increase the perceived rating of an important attribute that the buyer had incorrectly assessed.

In the last case, suppose the buyer also values a car’s reliability (i.e., repair-free record). Suppose the buyer will perceive the car to have either average or high reliability. Furthermore, suppose the car’s actual reliability will be average or high. This leads to the four possibilities shown in Figure 8.

In cell 1 the buyer thinks the car has high reliability and he is correct. If the car’s reliability is even higher than die competitor’s reliability, the salesperson may mention this.

In cell 2 the buyer thinks that the car has high reliability but in fact it only has average reliability. If he buys the car and subsequently experiences only average reliability, he will be disappointed and will likely bad-mouth the car. Therefore, cell 2 portends a future problem for the company.

In cell 3 the buyer thinks that the car only has average reliability but in fact it is highly reliable. Here the salesperson needs to correct the buyer’s misperception; this will increase the customer’s likelihood of buying the car. She can quote consumer reports, cite authorities, display service records, and so on.

In cell 4 the car has only average reliability, which matches the customer’s perception. Here the company needs to consider building more reliable cars in the future.

Or, suppose a retail department store conducts an image study and discovers that its customers view the store as weak relative to its chief competitor in three areas; knowledgeable sales reps, modern facilities, and service. When management identifies more than one image gap, whether they are real gaps or perception gaps, they need to be prioritized. Management needs to consider the following five questions:

• How significantly does the gap influence buyer behavior? Here a company must ascertain the magnitude of each gap and how much it affects buyer behavior.
• What is the best strategy to close the gap? Suppose the department store management ascertains that the gap in modern facilities is the most serious. But is it a real or perceived gap? If it is a real gap, then management needs to renovate. If it is a perceived gap, then the department store needs to more effectively communicate the high quality of its facilities.
• What are the costs and benefits of closing the gap? Reducing an image gap involves a cost that depends on the strategy for reducing the gap and the amount of reduction sought. For example, the cost of improving sales reps’ knowledge will depend on the instruction method and the target level of improvement. This cost must be viewed against the expected benefit of increased sales due to more knowledgeable sales reps. The estimated costs and benefits must be further modified if the competitor is likely to retaliate.
• How much time is needed to close the gap? Here a company must decide how swiftly it can implement the image improvement plan, as well as how fast respondents’ perception will improve. Images tend to change slowly.
• Is it better to change importance ratings or attribute ratings? Here a company must conduct a cost-benefit analysis to decide the relative merits of reducing a particular gap or altering its perceived importance. If the department store is viewed less favorably on service, it may want to emphasize low prices and downplay the importance of service as a buying criterion.

In all cases of specifying strategies to close image gaps, a thorough cost-benefit analysis must include potential competitor responses. It makes little sense to invest resources and time in improving either the importance or image perception of a particular factor or attribute if competitors can close the image gap rapidly and at low cost. If a competitor bases differentiation on a particular attribute, then retaliatory moves may be more probable. In such a case, closing a different image gap may reduce the possibility of competitive countermoves and result in advantageous niche positioning.

By answering the questions above, management will be in a good position to prepare a sound image modification strategy. After the action plans are implemented, management can track whether the marketing image has improved in the desired direction.

Conclusion

An image tracking system permits management to measure and manage important components of the company’s marketing image. Management is able to determine where it can capitalize on its strengths, and where it must improve its image or its product. The system allows management to set priorities for addressing its image gaps. By periodic monitoring, a company can verify whether it has succeeded in improving its image standing on important attributes. The image tracking system may also be used as an early-warning system to identify present or future shifts in the company’s competitive performance.