Time Efficient Brand Image Measurement - Is Binary Format Sufficient to Gain the Market Insight Required?

Ordinal scales have become the most popular format in questionnaire design for marketing surveys (Van der Eijk, 2001) despite both (1) causing a number of methodological problems (Scharf, 1991; Peterson, 1997; Kampen & Swyngedouw, 2000) and (2) taking longer to answer (Dolnicar, 2003). The duration of the survey is especially critical in brand image surveys, where including one additional brand leads to as many additional questions as there are attributes along which the brands have to be evaluated. This study aims at gaining insight into the consequences of asking respondents to evaluate brand-attribute associations in ordinal of binary format. This is done from three perspectives: (1) a pure practitioners view, (2) by testing significance of differences in agreement with single brand-attribute combinations, and (3) by determining individual cut-off points and trying to predict the binary answers with the ordinal information.