Brand Image and its Determinants: A Stochastic Frontier Approach Analysis

Abstract This paper addresses an important issue to find relationship between the brand image and its determinants. Based on a data set of 136 brand characteristics measured for 700 top American national brands obtained from a survey of 4769 respondents as well as secondary sources (Lovett, Peres, and Shachar. 2014. “A Data Set of Brands and Their Characteristics.” Marketing Science 33 (4): 609–17), this study adopted an established econometrics approach (Stochastic frontier analysis) that has not been extensively applied in the marketing literature. The approach discussed in this paper can be used as an analysis framework where the concept of efficiency is brought into the picture in analyzing the relationship between the brand image with its associates. It is found that competency and familiarity are two main features that increase brand equity, whereas perceived risk and excitement decreases it.