Developing a new model for tracking brand equity as a measure of marketing effectiveness

Measuring the performance of marketing initiatives has been a long standing problem. Marketing performance can be measured from different perspectives such as effectiveness or efficiency. This study emphasising on effectiveness considers brand equity as a measure of marketing effectiveness. Reviewing the literature we address brand equity shortcomings and discuss them in terms of four categories: subjectivity of metrics, auditability of survey-based data, short-term/long-term horizon, and tracking versus measuring. The weaknesses exposed above in the measurement and tracking of brand equity suggest that a different approach is needed. This paper proposes a new methodology for tracking brand equity by employing objective behavioural metrics rather than subjective intangible measures. Such an approach would be based on the use of firms’ internal data to track the changes in brand equity by tracking the changes in its behavioural metrics in the long-term period.