Leading Experience Brands Differ Sharply From Traditional Brand Rankings.

Wunderman announced the results of a research initiative, the Wunderman Brand Experience Scorecard, which rewrites traditional brand rankings by demonstrating the pivotal role that consumer-brand experience plays in the brand building process.

While traditional brand studies focus on brand perceptions among the general public, the Wunderman Brand Experience Scorecard measures the quality of lived experience among brand users, revealing which brands
consumers believe deliver substance and value in their daily lives.

Leaders and Laggards

According to Wunderman’s research, the nation’s top five Experience Brand leaders for 2002 are: Saturn, Gateway, Wal*Mart, Palm and Costco. Among the biggest losers are banks, car rental and cable companies.

“Customers remain loyal to a product only if the quality of their daily experience with it is positive and growing,” said Wunderman CEO, Daniel R. Morel. “Companies are starting to realize that building brand loyalty has less to do with traditional brand imagery and everything to do with frequent, customized one-to-one communication and interaction with customers about their specific needs. Wunderman’s research–with the customer at the center–sets the stage for all marketers to create a new generation of experience-driven communications,” Morel commented.

“By using experience, rather than perception, as our gauge, Wunderman’s rankings differ sharply from traditional brand studies, which are typically dominated by big advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Nike. These are notably absent from the top ranks of the Wunderman Brand Experience Scorecard,” said Chip Walker, Managing Director, Strategy and Insights at Wunderman.

“These findings come at a time when marketers are feeling the squeeze of shrinking advertising budgets, and a paradigm shift in the psyche of the American consumer brought on by a growing distrust of corporate America,”
added Walker. “Consumers are tired of brands that make promises in ads, only to break them in reality. This research not only identifies the brands that truly walk the talk, it offers marketers an important new iagnostic tool to zero in on the aspects of the brand experience that trigger brand loyalty,” he said.

More than two years in development, the Wunderman study polled more than 10,000 consumers regarding their usage of 1,993 popular brands across 190 industry categories. Among other major findings:

– Brand experience drives brand loyalty. Consumers tend to use, to be more loyal to, and will pay a premium for brands they feel provide a better overall experience.

– Consumers cite three aspects of brand experience as most important:

1) Performance – whether a brand meets needs better than others;
2) Treatment – how favorable a consumer’s interactions are with a brand; and,
3) Community – the degree to which consumers identify with other brand users.