conceptual brand m@pping -a web-based approach to collect brand knowledge and its interpretation using network analysis

To create efficient marketing strategies, it is essential to be familiar with the consumers' brand knowledge. The main objective of this paper is to present a way to collect associative networks of brands. Therefore, a web-based method called CONCEPTUAL BRAND M@PPING will be presented here. Participants are asked to map their brand knowledge in an online experiment using dimensioning nodes and the relations between the nodes. As different technical methods are used, these maps will differ from Novakian concept maps (Novak & Gowin, 1984). With the exception of their intensity, the relations between concepts are initially not qualified, but a discussion of individual and aggregate maps after the elicitation makes it possible to distinguish relationships between nodes. In addition to a qualitätive interpretation of the maps an interesting way of evaluating the data is to interpret the associative network, mentioned as a conceptual brand map, using the tools of social network analysis.