In the days when the customer journey was a linear funnel, brand awareness was the most important aspect of corporate marketing. In today’s age of connectivity, however, it is premature to assume that brand awareness is paramount.
Brand awareness is important in industries with short purchase cycles (consumer packaged goods, such as P&G, Unilever, Kao, Lion, etc.), but it is only a trigger in industries with long purchase cycles and high customer engagement (automotive, consumer electronics, etc.).
In other words, the most important thing for a company is to increase the number of customers who ultimately recommend the brand (loyalty), i.e. to achieve a higher brand recommendation rate than other brands.
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New Productivity Metrics What are PAR (Purchase Action Rate) and BAR (Brand Recommendation Rate)?
For marketers to properly measure the productivity of their marketing efforts, Kotler suggests that two new metrics should be introduced. The two new metrics that have been introduced in Marketing 4.0, along with the 5A customer journey, are Purchase Action Rate (PAR) and Brand Recommendation Rate (BAR).
PAR measures how well a company can “convert” people who are aware of their company into purchasing actions.
The BAR measures how well a company can “convert” people who are aware of the company into loyal advocates.
Identify problems by properly measuring purchase action and advocation rate
In other words, if the “conversion rate” from Aware (A1) to Act (A4) and finally to Advocate (A5) can be measured, companies can answer the question of which touchpoints to improve, how to make appropriate interventions, and how to increase the number of loyal advocates.
Marketers can calculate PAR by first dividing “market share” by “brand awareness”. This gives a rough estimate of how much market share growth is possible by increasing awareness. Then, by measuring conversion rates at all stages from awareness to advocate, we can identify hidden brand problems.
PAR and BAR can be measured with the “5A Loyalty Diagnosis” from transcosmos. We support you in formulating concrete and efficient strategies to strengthen loyalty.