Measuring Brand Equity: A Brand’s Beating Heart

Authored by: Vanessa Taylor and Richard Newman

Measuring brand equity is crucial for understanding physician and patient perceptions in a highly competitive pharmaceutical landscape.

Building on our previous articles on future-proofing tracking studies and harmonizing programs, we’re now sharing the importance of brand equity in pharmaceutical marketing as a predictive measure of brand health and performance, demonstrating how strong brand equity influences prescribing behavior and market share growth.

Maintaining Strong Physician and Patient Recognition

Humira provides a live example of brand equity contributing to a change in prescribing behavior. Despite the availability of biosimilars, Humira has maintained strong physician and patient recognition as a trusted treatment for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease. Physicians consistently express high trust and preference for the brand, according to multiple tracking studies. The relationship between brand equity and prescribing behavior is well established, and from our research, we agree – physicians who feel positively about a brand are more likely to prescribe it. Strengthen that sentiment – and strengthen the market position.

It’s why we believe brand equity should be central to tracking brand health and performance.

Why Brand Equity Matters in Pharma Marketing

Faced with drugs or therapies with similar positioning, brand equity provides a route to differentiation in a crowded market. Brand equity is concerned with the value a brand adds beyond its functional features. It’s built on how customers perceive, feel about, and trust a brand – its awareness, associations, loyalty, and emotional resonance. In short, it can influence a physician to choose one product over another, even when efficacy, safety, and all other clinically meaningful features are equal.

And most importantly, it’s a forward-looking indicator. Tracking brand equity provides the ability to anticipate shifts in market sentiment, identify risks, and intervene before loyalty begins to fade. Strategically, this is a lead indicator rather than a lag indicator.

Measuring Brand Equity in Healthcare

At Research Partnership, our brand equity model is built on a core set of metrics – typically satisfaction, loyalty via NPS (Net Promoter Score^[1]), leadership, and access – designed to capture emotional and rational dimensions of brand belief. We develop and pose questions that are adapted to the therapy area context, product portfolio, and client objectives, and according to our own knowledge and experience. These equity metrics are central to our brand tracking studies because they transform the value of the insight we provide and move beyond the typical awareness, trial, and usage metrics.

Brand Equity Profiling Drives Market Share

Because of the relationship between prescribing behaviours, brand equity then becomes more than a measure – it is a lens to forecast the future. Higher brand equity is predictive of market share growth, while lower brand equity can indicate market share is at risk. By segmenting physicians into high and low equity groups, we can uncover what’s truly driving belief and behavior and provide recommendations on actions to take to drive increased market share.

For example, in research for a client in a crowded oncology therapy area, we found that physicians with high brand equity for the client’s product perceived the marketplace as differentiated, while those with low equity saw it as undifferentiated. High-equity physicians recognized the client’s product as leading on progression-free survival, whereas low-equity physicians were less aware of this advantage. Based on these insights, we advised the client to prioritize messaging around progression-free survival (rather than their existing lead message) and ensure consistent communication across all customer groups, helping close awareness gaps, build broader equity, and reinforce the brand’s leadership position in the category.

Profiling of this kind transforms brand equity from a static score into a strategic diagnostic tool – one that helps pinpoint what will move the needle.

Brand Equity as a Key Indicator of Brand Health

When brand equity is part of a tracking program, a pulse is not only taken to measure perception – essentially, it’s like tuning into the heartbeat of a brand. It helps answer not just how a brand is performing, but why people believe in it – and how to build that belief further. Understanding what makes hearts beat for a brand can change minds, shape behavior, and consequently, grow market share.

Our experts are happy to take you through the brand equity model we apply within our brand tracking programs – feel free to reach out to us to find out more.

Reference:

1. Net Promoter Score, a metric based on likelihood to recommend, is a proven indicator of customer loyalty, developed in 2003 by Bain & Company and widely adopted.