Brand Perception Research: How To Measure Brand Perception

When Kloo Coffee founder Claudia Snoh ran a brand perception study during her company’s soft launch, she discovered major perception gaps. 

“Anyone who heard the brand story directly from me knew what made us unique,” Claudia says on the Shopify Masters podcast. “People who discovered us randomly online mostly thought that we were just another coffee concentrate brand with a cool bottle.”

To improve brand perception, she created a video telling her mother’s story—how she invented the company’s proprietary brewing process after immigrating to the US—and explaining her certification as a Q Grader (a credential from the Coffee Quality Institute). The investment in strong brand perception paid off. It created an emotional connection with her target audience and gave customers a genuine understanding of the brand, one they came to associate with care and passion for coffee.

Businesses large and small invest in brand perception research to shape their reputation. Here’s a look at brand perception measurement and ways to use it for stronger brand positioning.

What is brand perception?

Brand perception is how consumers view and feel about your brand based on their experiences with your products, customer service, marketing, and public brand reputation. 

For example, a company that sells electrolyte packets for hydration might try branching out into meal kits. But if customers perceive the brand as a hydration specialist, breaking into a new category could be tough. The company’s decision makers might conduct perception research, then adjust its strategy or marketing to better align with—or reshape—how the brand is seen.

Brand perception is distinct from brand identity, which stems from a brand’s mission statement and product portfolio, and brand personality, which is the set of human traits attributed to a brand, expressed through its voice, visual identity, and overall character. Identity and personality are largely shaped by the business itself; brand perception is shaped by how customers feel about the business. 

Brand perception also differs from brand awareness, which measures whether consumers recognize your brand at all. A company can have high brand awareness (meaning most people in your target market know it exists) while still suffering from negative brand perception.

Core brand perception metrics

Since perception lives in the minds of your customers, you need a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to track how consumers perceive your business. Here are multiple metrics used to track brand perception:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS measures customer loyalty by asking one simple question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?” High scores indicate a perception of high value and trust.

• Brand recall and recognition. These track how easily a consumer can identify your brand. For example, if a customer is asked to name a retailer of “high-quality heavyweight tees” and immediately thinks of your clothing store, you enjoy strong brand recognition in your market.

• Brand sentiment analysis. Through a mix of social media monitoring and tracking online reviews, you can gauge the overall mood of the conversation around your brand. Consistently good reviews and favorable mentions in consumer forums indicate positive brand perception.

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT). CSAT measures how satisfied customers are with specific interactions, products, or services—a metric worth tracking given that existing customers account for 72% of a business’s revenue.

What is brand perception research?

Brand perception research is the systematic process of uncovering what customers actually think, feel, and say about your business. 

In ecommerce, your brand is the sum of every digital and physical touchpoint customers encounter. Treating brand perception research as an ongoing practice, not a one-time project, positions you to track shifts in sentiment as you launch new products, adjust pricing, or refine your marketing efforts. Even simple qualitative research, like asking customers why they chose your product or carefully reading your customer reviews, can reveal patterns that formal brand research might miss.

Why brand perception research is important

The valuable insights from perception research can give you real competitive advantages. Here’s what makes brand perception important for your marketing strategy:

• Bridges the gap between you and your customer. It’s easy for a founder’s view of their brand to be skewed by their own passion. Ongoing research acts as a reality check, highlighting where your brand’s strengths are landing and where they’re being misinterpreted.

• Reveals customer motivations. You may be surprised by what affects brand perception. For example, you might assume you’re competing on price, but qualitative insights reveal that customers are drawn mostly to your down-to-earth brand voice.

• Reduces wasted marketing spend. When you know just what resonates with loyal customers, your email, pay-per-click (PPC), and social campaigns become more focused—you’re emphasizing the brand attributes shoppers actually value.

• Humanizes hard data. Standard reports tell you what happened; perception research tells you why. For example, brand tracking can turn a stat about low email open rates into an actionable insight like, “Our subject lines feel too corporate for our audience.”

How to measure your brand perception

1. Monitor review sites and social media platforms
2. Conduct brand perception surveys
3. Have conversations with customers
4. Monitor media coverage and public mentions

Measuring perception requires a systematic approach to listening to your customer base. Tracking it across different touchpoints ensures your brand promise matches what your brand represents in customers’ minds. Here’s how to measure it:

1. Monitor review sites and social media platforms

Monitoring social media platforms gives you real-time insight into customer sentiment and emerging trends. Watch for praise, complaints, or signs of negative brand perception, which often surface quickly during events like a product launch or service issue.

Review sites are equally valuable, offering a rich source of qualitative data about the customer experience. Study your reviews to identify recurring themes around product quality, service reliability, and pricing.

2. Conduct brand perception surveys

Brand perception surveys offer direct insight into your audience’s feelings about your brand. With thoughtful survey design, you can ask respondents what your brand represents, whether you live up to your reputation, and how your company stacks up against competing brands. Use the results to guide decision-making around marketing, pricing, expansion, and overall brand strategy.

Jessica Lee and Lizzie Agnew’s Modern Citizen brings a fresh, luxurious aesthetic to women’s workwear—and they know how customers perceive them, because they ask directly.

“One of our favorite things to do every year is an annual customer survey,” Jessica says on Shopify Masters. “We ask 40 to 50 questions and a lot of free responses for people to give us feedback about their experience with us. That covers how they’re feeling about the macroeconomic environment and shopping in general, but also really getting a sense for a customer’s relationship with us. What does she like from us? What is she expecting from us? What would she like to see us do?”

3. Have conversations with customers

It might seem obvious, but talking directly with customers—in-depth interviews, short video chats, or even small focus groups—can reveal insights that numbers alone often miss. These conversations can help you understand why loyal customers stay loyal, what influences new buyers, and which attributes people associate with your brand.

Gloria Hwang, founder of helmet brand Thousand, conducts deep qualitative and quantitative interviews to uncover customer insights, rather than just asking what features people want. A customer won’t always tell you exactly what to design, but questions like, “Why don’t you like to wear X?”—or having them draw their perfect product—can surface pain points. “It’s not just hearing what the customer is asking for,” Gloria says on Shopify Masters. “It’s kind of inferring the larger pain point that you need to resolve for them when you’re designing a product.”

4. Monitor media coverage and public mentions

Monitor media coverage—news reports, blog mentions, and video content—to track opinions specific to your brand. Set up Google alerts so you’re notified when your business is mentioned online. This helps you understand how the public at large perceives your brand.

How to improve your brand perception

Once you’ve identified the gap between how you see your brand and how the world sees it, take action to align the two. Here’s how:

• Survey customers. Use tools like Fairing Post-Purchase Surveys or Zigpoll Customer Surveys to ask targeted questions like, “What surprised you most about your order?”

• Personalize the post-purchase experience. Use Shopify marketing automations to send a personalized follow-up email. Personalized, proactive communication after the sale sets you apart from competitors who only seem interested in the transaction.

• Respond to comments. Use social media management tools to monitor mentions. When you encounter negative perception, respond in a helpful, down-to-earth tone—and then act on the feedback.

• Use virtual customers alongside real ones. Use a tool like SimGym to deploy AI shoppers to report on store navigation, checkout experience, and pricing. Pair this with human analysis and feedback from real shoppers to get a broader view of how your store is perceived.

• Align messaging with what customers value. If customers associate your brand with speed, craftsmanship, sustainability, or price transparency, emphasize those strengths consistently across campaigns. Using the marketing section in Shopify to track channel performance and identify which campaigns resonate most.

Examples of brands that changed their brand perception

If your brand perception research shows that you aren’t resonating with customers as intended, make changes—whether that’s adjusting your messaging or rethinking your product line entirely. Here are two brands that pivoted their strategy in pursuit of long-term profitability:

De Soi

De Soi sells sparkling non-alcoholic aperitifs, but early on, CEO Scout Brisson discovered that customers were misreading the products. The disconnect came into sharp focus when De Soi released its Champignon Dreams flavor.

“It was an interesting consumer psychology study,” Scout says on Shopify Masters. “We had these cute packaging colors, and we talked about these juicy strawberry notes. And then customers were trying it, and it was this really kind of bitter, savory flavor.”

Scout concluded that the drink’s cute, lilac-and-orange packaging led consumers to expect something sweet and fruity, but the actual product was more complex—“aperol spritz on acid.” This mismatch taught De Soi that its packaging and branding needed to clearly communicate what the customer was buying into. The brand has since discontinued the flavor and pivoted to flavors that better align with customer expectations: St. Moritz Mule, Haute Margarita, Très Rosé, and more.

Elavi

Elavi CEO Michelle Razavi realized her low-sugar, high-protein desserts weren’t fully connecting with her target audience. To understand why, she used a Costco roadshow to sample products in front of 70,000 consumers.

“We got to test our product, our flavors, our packaging,” Michelle says on Shopify Masters. “We got to see the real-time responses, chat with people, and dig deeper into what their experience was like, what they would like to see.”

The team ran brainstorming sessions each evening to recap what they’d learned. “We got so many insights into where we were missing the mark, where consumers were confused, where people were struggling with pronouncing certain ingredients.”

Michelle took those findings to a brand agency and redesigned the packaging for retail, a shift away from the original packaging, which had been designed for online. “The roadshow produced data insights that helped us create what you see today, and we cannot be more grateful for that opportunity.”