Mental Availability is the propensity of the brand to be noticed and thought of in buying situations. Marketing’s aim should be to get the brand noticed and thought of by more customers in more buying situations.

1. A MAJOR SHIFT IN PERSPECTIVE

Marketing seems obsessed with brand evaluation. Obsession is a strong word and yet it appears justified as textbooks tell us we must deliver products and services that fulfil customer needs better than other brands; consultants tell us we need to make buyers love our brand; and our market research (from choice modelling to focus groups) is largely concerned with whether or not customers think our brand is better/best.

Yet the most important part of any buyer’s buying process (i.e., the part that should be of greatest interest to marketers) occurs almost entirely without notice. This is before buyers make any conscious evaluation of which brand to choose.

Often other brands are effectively ignored, even to the point where no evaluation between brands takes place (consideration sets of one) – sometimes if we want a mortgage we simply get one from our bank; we want legal advice so we ring our lawyer; we want toothpaste so we look for our brand on the shelf. This can occur even when standing in front of supermarket shelves filled with alternatives.

This screening out is natural behaviour, people do it all the time – screening out advertising, other people talking in the room, advice from parents etc. It matters little to buyers that there were many brands that they did not consider, because the ones they did consider perform well enough. It matters enormously to us as marketers however – we need our brand to be noticed/considered¹. Being noticed/considered is often the biggest factor in why our brand is (or is not) bought.

¹ On the flip side, this screening out does benefit marketers as it creates loyalty

We don’t notice ourselves not noticing things. So, as marketers and academics, we largely ignore this aspect of buyer behaviour. Both academic and commercial marketing researchers work from an evaluation-centred view of buyer behaviour. Billions of dollars are spent on researching brand features and perceptions as the dominant causes of whether buyers buy or not, a search which is largely fruitless because:

1. What buyers remember about brands (and what brands they remember) varies across buying occasions. Memories are imperfect and variable as buyers are busy with limited time to devote to any single purchase (or single market research question).
2. A buyer only considers a tiny subset of the brands they know, they do not evaluate most of the different feature-bundles on the market. We typically know a little bit about some brands and almost nothing about most brands. We rarely think about (the features of) these less familiar brands, let alone buy them.
3. Which brand a buyer buys, from the one or few they happened to consider on the day, depends on a myriad of factors due to the situation and circumstances. Sometimes they are feeling extravagant sometimes frugal, one minute patriotic the next not. Evaluation criteria can, and do, change “on the fly”. So any actual evaluation that occurs can vary wildly each time a buyer goes to buy.

Evaluation is therefore less important or predictable than our market research techniques assume.

In any market, many more people buy one brand over another, or one individual buys one brand more than all the others. This typically leads to the intuitive, but largely incorrect, conclusion that this must be due to some perceived difference between that brand and others. But perceived product feature or brand image/positioning differences can only do a little to explain why one brand is chosen more or less than another. It is screening out behaviour (and physical availability) that largely explains the vast and largely continuing market share differences that exist between even highly similar brands.

Competing brands are different from one another. They have different names for starters, and have different packaging or phone numbers. Despite these undeniable differences, brands compete as if they are look-alikes that vary only in popularity². It has taken decades of serious R&D for us to realise this. Competing brands all have predictably similar loyalty rates, and they share customers with other brands largely in ratio with the other brands’ various market-shares – not in line with positioning. And each competing brand sells to customers that look very similar in terms of demographics, media consumption, values, and attitudes³.

So why then are some brands much larger than others? Why, in the UK, will many more Fords be sold next year than Renault? A tiny part of the answer might be that on the buying occasions that buyers actively consider both Ford and Renault they prefer Ford – perhaps Ford is mostly better (yet this seems odd because in France Renault outsells Ford)? The main answer to the question is that many more UK car buyers remember to consider Ford than Renault. Renault seldom gets a look in. Not because people dislike Renault, or think that it lacks desirable features⁴. It is just that, outside of France, few people think of Renault. So the big marketing issue is how to get thought of, more often, in more buying situations. In other words, to build what we call Mental Availability.

This sounds simple – to simply get people to think of a brand. Yet this is one of the greatest on-going battles any marketer faces – particularly to get light, occasional and non-customers to think of their brand.  Buyers have too many other more interesting (non-marketing) things to think about. Even brands with plenty of customers still have to fight hard for attention. Buyers have so many other things going on in their lives that each category (let alone brand) purchase is quite a trivial matter. Mental Availability is therefore required for both sales maintenance and growth.

² See Ehrenberg-Bass Institute report 26 “Double Jeopardy Revisited, Again”.

³ See Ehrenberg-Bass Institute report 7 “Brand User Profiles Seldom Differ”.

⁴ Like most brands it scores exceptionally low on any negative attributes included in image surveys, i.e. it is rather uncommon for many buyers to express negative attitudes towards a brand.

2. EXPLAINING MENTAL AVAILABILITY MORE THAN TOP-OF-MIND AWARENESS

The term Mental Availability is often used synonymously with top-of-mind brand awareness (e.g., the first financial institution recalled when asked – “which financial institutions can you name?”). However, we use the term “mental availability” to mean more than that.

Mental Availability is based on the network structure in buyer memory. For example, memory associations for a bank brand cover a range such as…

a branch near work
home loans
internet banking
friends bank there
high street
someone I know worked there
get some cash out
Visa
the colour, the logo, staff uniform…etc

A simple explanation about how our memory works is that memory consists of ‘nodes’ that hold information. If two pieces of information are associated (e.g., Coca-Cola and ‘red’) links are said to exist between these nodes. Buyers have a network of information (also referred to as attributes) linked to the brand name. So, for example, McDonalds is associated with hamburgers, yellow arches, fast food, etc. These links are developed and refreshed through experiences (1) buying the brand; (2) using the brand; and (3) when exposed to marketing activities such as advertising or other people’s experiences via word of mouth or observation.

There are other aspects of memory (such as sensory memory for smell and taste) as well as retrieval of emotions such as joy and pain. We are not ignoring these, but these are more often recalled after the brand name is thought of. So you think of McDonalds and you have fond memories of your child’s last birthday (or not!). Whereas for mental availability we are primarily interested in what makes a brand thought of in the first place.

The more extensive and fresher the network of memory associations, the greater the brand’s chance of being thought of or noticed in the variety of buying situations experienced by buyers. This also increases the chance of selection, when multiple options are present. So in Figure 1, a destination that is known as relaxing has a chance of being thought of when to relax is the attribute buyers use to think of options for their vacation. Likewise, a destination that is known as shopping has a chance of being thought of when shopping is the category attribute.

A brand with a wider network (in that it is known for both the attributes relaxing and shopping) has a chance of being thought of when either is the cue, and even more so if both are combined as a cue.

So building Mental Availability is about developing these different links to increase the scope of the network in memory – the brand’s share of mind.

A brand’s share of mind refers to both the quantity and quality of links to the brand. Quantity refers to the number of associations the buyer has about the brand name (i.e., how many). Quality has two aspects, strength of association and relevance of the attribute. Firstly, some links are stronger than others in that they are more likely to be activated. For example, for some people the cue ‘Elvis Presley’ may always bring to mind fried peanut butter sandwiches and vice versa. For them, this is a strong association – yet for others this may be a very occasional association. Secondly, some links are more relevant to buying situations than others. Elvis Presley is unlikely to be a cue that we encounter when in a peanut butter buying situation. However, this association is not entirely unimportant, as hearing an Elvis song increases the chance of people thinking about peanut butter generally, and by doing so, enhancing links to cues that do occur during buying situations⁵.

⁵ Coming to mind in a buying situation matters most. In spite of the apparent obviousness of this statement it is currently fashionable for consultants to tell marketers that they should be aiming to make their brand famous (‘icon brands’, ‘beacon brands’) not merely (!) highly salient in buying situations.This is a romantic, if entertaining, distraction from the realities of real-world marketing.

When brands score well on traditional awareness measures but sales are disappointing the very common conclusion is that buyers don’t like the brand. Whereas the problem can often be that while buyers know of the brand (and may indeed find it acceptable) they seldom think of it when they come into buying situations.

Buyers use all sorts of different cues when retrieving brands as options for buying. For example, something low in fat, something healthy, or something quick are all cues for something to eat in the morning.  Buyers may also use more abstract cues like colour, package style/size to identify and notice specific brands.

Through building memory links to these attributes marketers can increase (a) the number of people and (b) the number of times for each person that the brand is thought of as an option to buy. Linking to these attributes means the brand now has some probability to be bought, which is an infinitely higher chance of being bought than when the brand is not thought of at all.

No buyer is wedded to one attribute all the time. This is a common mistake made in segmentation research. Rarely is someone always interested in buying something healthy in a product category (or in life!). The typical buyer might be thinking healthy one time, convenient next time, a treat the time after and so on. Buyers use different attributes at different points in time. Context matters – ice creams are more likely to be recalled as a food or treat option when at the beach, even on a rainy day. Buyers can also use multiple attributes at a single occasion (e.g., healthy and a treat). The attributes themselves can come from anything relevant to the buying context. So it is necessary for marketers to find out about the thought processes buyers go through before they even think of any brands as options to buy.

Different cues also mean that different competitors are likely to be thought of as options by the buyer at any one time. Competitive options need not even be in the same product category. For example, something to wake me up can conjure up options of a coffee, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, a brisk walk or even a swim. Often when we think of competitors we think of ‘functional look-alikes’. However it is better to think of competitors as ‘cue look-alikes’ instead. Competitors are all other options linked to the cue, as these are the ones that have a chance of being thought of and therefore compete for selection.

With different cues, different competitive sets are generated. For example, Figure 2 shows the proportion of buyers retrieving the brand for two different attributes. Particular brands are more likely to be mentioned for one attribute rather than the other.
For example, Subway is more likely to be thought of when the cue is a snack than when it is somewhere I can take the kids.

Being linked to the attribute gives any brand a chance of retrieval only. This probability of retrieval is evident when we ask the same people about the same attribute twice in brand tracking studies. For example, on average 60% of respondents give the same answer upon reinterview, to the question of which brands are associated with a treat I can have on a regular basis (illustrated in Figure 3). So, for example, if someone mentions McDonalds on the first occasion, even when the same cue is used, there is only a 60% chance that the same person will think of McDonalds the second time.

This change in response is not due to external influences (such as advertising, or usage), but simply a result of humanity’s ‘fickle’ memory. We see this instability across different product categories (e.g., high/low involvement) different measures (e.g. scales and ‘pick any’ style), and even respondents.

So, just because a buyer thinks of your brand on one occasion certainly doesn’t ensure they will do so on another. This emphasises the importance of reinforcing and refreshing links already in memory (as per Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report 13 for Corporate Members) as well as building the links to additional attributes.

Influencing Evaluation

The second stage of any choice process is actually selecting the option to buy out of options the buyer thinks of. Mental Availability influences selection in two ways:

Cue Matching

Just as links to specific attributes can influence which brands are thought of, specific attributes linked to the brand can also form the basis for selection. For example, buyers may use criteria such as the cheapest, the easiest to buy or the prettiest one. They may also trade off over a range of attributes (e.g. the cheapest one that takes Visa). A more extensive network means a greater likelihood the brand will be linked to any selection criteria. Therefore the brand is more likely to be selected.

Providing Assurance

Buyers have little interest in prolonging the buying process. Even with high value purchases, such as a home mortgage, buyers evaluate only a small fraction of the possibilities on offer (usually 3, 2 or even only 1 brand out of the many hundreds of options available). Buyers usually just ‘make do’ when choosing brands. That is, they buy something they are reasonably confident will do a good job (or very confident it will do a reasonable job) rather than worry about trying to work out the absolute best option.

Buyers gain assurance from the sense that the brand is one they know a lot about. Assurance therefore can act as a shortcut to choice.

3. MEASURING MENTAL AVAILAIBILITY

Historically, Mental Availability has been tied to the measure of being mentioned

(a) first (top of mind); and

(b) with the product category as the retrieval cue.

This measure is too narrow to properly measure Mental Availability as it does not fully capture the propensity of the brand to come to mind in all buying situations. A Mental Availability measure should:

1. Contain a representative range of attributes used to think of brands in buying situations. Examples are purchase/consumption situations themselves (e.g., at the beach), benefits (e.g., low in fat), and functional qualities (comes in red). The use of multiple cues also captures the propensity to think of the brand. Therefore it takes into account that retrieval is ‘fickle’.
2. Measure Mental Availability relative to competitors, rather than for a single brand in isolation. The attributes that buyers typically use in the majority of buying occasions are those where alternatives (competitors) are also likely to be retrieved.
3. Focus on whether buyers think about the brand (rather than seeking to determine how favourably they judge the brand). For example, scales – which are commonly used in brand attribute measurement – ask for evaluations of the brand. But we don’t retrieve something as 6/10 – we evaluate it when asked to come up with a score. So, scales are not appropriate for measuring Mental Availability.
   Note: This suggests that the measured attributes should not all be evaluations (e.g., ‘good service, ‘good value’, ‘tastes nice’).
4. Finally, measurement should focus on buyers’ overall propensity to mention the brand in contrast to traditional brand tracking that focuses on determining which specific attributes are associated with the brand.

A Mental Availability Measure

We are currently doing work testing a measure of Mental Availability that meets these requirements. Our Mental Availability measure draws on the responses from a brand-attribute association grid. A typical example might be:

For the next question I would like you to write down the following names on a piece of paper:
[Interviewer instruction: read from list below, order will be rotated]

I will now read out a list of attributes, one by one. As I read out each one, I would like you to say if you associate the attributes with any or all of the brands you have just written down. You may name as many or as few of the brands as you like for each attribute. It doesn’t matter if you use the brand or not.

The interviewer then reads through a series of randomised attributes. The respondent is asked which brands are associated for each attribute.

Typically these data are reported as raw percentages (46% said that Brand A was good value) or graphs or perceptual maps. We recommend a different approach to turn this into a Mental Availability measure. By adding up the total number of times a brand is mentioned across all image attributes, it is straightforward to calculate the brand’s share of the total number of attributes a person mentions across all brands (hence the brand’s “share of mind”). Such a measure fits the theory-based criteria for a Mental Availability measure:

1. It is an “all or none” type of measure whereby an attribute is either associated with a brand or not. This is similar to the process of retrieval from memory, whereby concepts are either retrieved or not from long term memory.
2. It incorporates multiple attributes and as such it could capture the probabilistic nature of memory. While the specific responses to individual attributes at a single point in time are systematically unstable, repeated measures (i.e., over many attributes) can give an indication of propensity for the brand to be retrieved from memory. If the attributes used are those relevant to the buying situation, then this should be able to give an idea of accessibility in a buying context, and therefore Mental Availability.
3. Responses are given in conjunction to competitors as opportunities are given to mention any, all or no brands at any one time. Therefore, either consciously or unconsciously, possible competitors are factored into each response, and links to alternative brands, which compete for retrieval in buying situations, are also factored into responses.

So it appears that a “pick any” based approach should reflect memory structures, subject to the inclusion of an appropriate range of attributes⁷.

As the aim is to gain an idea of propensity of the brand to be thought of, identifying the precise attributes is not as important as including a representative range. The reason for this is that at each choice situation the specific cues are many, varied and complex (“as-if random”).

Testing to Date

Our initial tests on the relationship between the number of attributes and future purchase have been positive.  We have tested the relationship between Mental Availability and future purchase (in repertoire markets) and loyalty/retention (in subscription markets)⁸ and found positive relationships using actual future buyer behaviour as measured by repeat interview or internal databases.

Even more encouraging is that these results are positive even when past behaviour is accounted for. This allows us to isolate the effects of Mental Availability versus habit.  Our ongoing R&D program⁹ will examine the following:

• Refining the measure – the specific calculation to determine share of mind relative to competitor brands.
• Validity testing – does the measure correlate more so with what we expect it to (other measures of knowledge/familiarity and long term repertoires) and less so with what we don’t expect it to (attitude, short term repertoire use).
• Attribute testing – we expect that some ‘batteries’ of attributes will be better Mental Availability measures than others, so we need to conduct testing to determine the composition of Mental Availability based attribute batteries.
• Modelling Mental Availability changes over time; how much does it change, what causes changes in Mental Availability and how does this relate to market share.

Reports on the results of this testing will be available in the near future.

⁷ In our experience, brand equity/health measures typically have an evaluation focus (eg, attributes such as excellent service, good value) and thus need modification to yield a satisfactory Mental Availability measure.

⁸ See Romaniuk Jenni, Sharp Byron (2003) “Brand Salience and Customer Defection in Subscription Markets”, Journal of Marketing Management Vol.19, p.25–44.

⁹ If you are interested in actively contributing to this by providing data collection opportunities or previous data please let us know.

4. BUILDING MENTAL AVAILABILITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR BRAND MANAGEMENT

Whether your brand is large or small, only a very small proportion of your customer base actually cares about your brand. If your brand were taken off the market few customers would grieve. Most would just buy something else, some without even noticing.

Fortunately, customers don’t have to care about your brand to buy it – they don’t need to think that it is the best, they don’t need to be emotionally bonded/committed to the brand – they buy without this, and most of your sales will always come from people who simply don’t care. Therefore the role of marketing is not to change this situation, that would be an Herculean task, perhaps impossible, and certainly expensive. Marketing’s task is to reach beyond the (few) heavy, very loyal customers and out to the great masses of occasional, light customers and non-customers, and ensure that they think at some time about the brand.

Building simple awareness and a positive attitude isn’t enough. It is reasonably straightforward to teach consumers that the brand is a good example of the product category that they buy. But to ensure that they keep thinking about this is a terribly difficult task. You possibly already know that Sara Lee makes very nice ice cream [awareness + attitude], but you seldom buy it, you think of (and buy) other brands of ice cream and other sweets much more often.

As marketers, we want to ensure that our brand often comes to mind and/or is noticed in possible buying situations, and that customers remember where and how to buy our brand, and remember what we sell. Refreshing this Mental Availability is difficult, because there are so many other things for buyers to think about. Buyers are busy, and (when outside of our focus groups) have many, many more important things to think of. And buyers screen out most of our efforts to remind them, particularly our light buyers and non-customers.

Buyers are typically very low involvement consumers of all marketing communications. Fortunately, we don’t need to get a great deal of information across to buyers. Even if they only notice our brand name this can have some effect to enhance Mental Availability of the individual memory associations they have of our brand. “Mere” numbers of exposure build familiarity and warm feelings.

Unfortunately, buyers seldom even notice which brand is actually advertising. This is partially due to their screening out mechanisms, but aided by the fact that much advertising is poorly branded. Too often it would require considerable effort and thought for the buyer to realise who is advertising and/or what they are selling. Few care about advertising enough to play “guess the brand”!

And much advertising is simply not interesting enough for a buyer to pay attention the first time, let alone want to view it twice. So its ability to keep on refreshing memories is severely hampered.

This is why we urge that marketing communication be distinctive and interesting/likeable. It should generate an emotional reaction, but a very simple mild one –  interest/willingness to listen/watch. And it should be impossible for viewers to not know which brand is advertising. Advertising should pre-test with high scores for branding and propensity to watch/read/listen.  Everything else is secondary, and advertising briefs to agencies should make this clear.

This is not to imply that creating good advertising is simple, quite the opposite. And there is much to learn, e.g., advances in neuroscience are leading to insight into what encourages/discourages “screening out” of particular advertising, and may also lead to understanding of what makes ‘good branding’ of communication.

Once these fundamentals are in place there is still the complex objective of building associations to the relevant cues that occur in buying situations.

And media strategy takes on a whole new importance under a Mental Availability perspective. Issues such as when to advertise, where and how much are vital to the effectiveness of advertising efforts to refresh and nudge the propensity of the brand to come to mind in (the next) buying situation(s). There is much to learn about related issues such as advertising avoidance and a great need for R&D into media strategy¹⁰.

¹⁰ Media strategy/effectiveness is a growing part of the Institute’s research programs.

Mental Availability not Positioning

Building Mental Availability is not like building a brand position. The aim is to be thought of – more often, by more people – not to be known as different, or to be recalled for one particular situation. This requires both quantity and quality of memory structures. The more associations the brand has (quantity), the more likely it is to be recalled and the stronger/fresher each of these individual associations (quality), the more likely any cue will elicit that brand.

Going down the positioning route and continually focusing on a single attribute may limit the brand’s ability to be thought of, because it limits the cues the brand is linked to in buyer memory. If you always tell buyers your snack food brand is healthy, then they will have a chance of thinking of the brand when something healthy is the cue. However your brand will have less chance of being thought of when something quick, something easy to prepare, something that will last till lunchtime etc are used to think of snack options.

This does not mean that advertising campaigns necessarily need to change to focus on different attributes over time, only that they should not be too limiting. Many of the most successful marketing communications campaigns have been very consistent overtime. They have also been distinctive but not by focusing on building narrow positions (in spite of what Ries & Trout claim). Instead they often have almost meaningless but consistent imagery (like golden arches, the Scottish name, and a clown – none of which says much about hamburgers). This forms the platform to allow the person seeing the ad to easily know who is advertising. This imagery can allow the brand to build and reinforce quite rich memory structures, by communicating a range of messages over time such as have a fish burger for lunch, we now sell salads, come here for your child’s birthday, etc. while maintaining the simple, consistent brand message.

Be Creative

The role of any marketing communications is to build and reinforce these associations to increase the probability that the brand will be thought of in buying situations. The aim is to put the spotlight on the brand and to refresh the part of memory devoted to the brand.  Therefore we see advertising acting as a ‘publicity’ mechanism, rather than a tool to persuade the buyer that the brand is better than, or different from, competitors (see Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report 13 for Corporate Members for more on this).

Many advertising campaigns have therefore been highly effective while being devoid of any meaningful information. For instance, recently in Australia, Mitsubishi Motors achieved a rare thing in automotive marketing of a market share gain without launching a new model or price promotion. The gain was attributed to a breakthrough TV advertising campaign that featured people singing along to music in their cars¹¹. The campaign also propelled the song used in the commercial back onto the music charts. These advertisements featured no information about the cars, and perhaps partly for this reason people enjoyed watching (and listening) and so the advertising helped refresh and enhance Mental Availability for Mitsubishi. While everyone was aware of the Mitsubishi brand and that they made some fine cars, not many people would normally think of Mitsubishi very often.

¹¹ Mitsubishi Sings Praises of Quirky Pop Songs”, Australian Financial Review July 7, 2003, p.47.

As a final point, we should not overestimate the importance brands have in the lives of buyers.  In the context of life, love, work and family, brands are trivial things. This is why Mental Availability and marketing (and marketers) are important. 

REFERENCES & FURTHER READING

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report 13 for Corporate Members – Brand Advertising as Creative Publicity

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report 26 for Corporate Members – Double Jeopardy Revisited, Again