Getting the Most Out of Image: An Example from the Fast-Food Industry
Using a fast-food industry example, this study was designed to illustrate how a marketing practitioner might use a model of the brand choice process to identify a brand's optimal image, that is, an image which would be expected to maximize that brand's share. 219 upper-divisional college students expressed their beliefs about three fast-food restaurants, plus their preferred restaurant, and what constituted their ideal restaurant on 15 attributes. Also, they indicated the relative importance of each attribute. Using their image data, we then chose a brand-choice model to identify those changes in image that would be expected to maximize (and minimize) each restaurant's share of market.