The Toyota Brand & Emotional Associations

Over the past few months, Toyota has recalled a number of its vehicles. Given all the negative press coverage from announcement after announcement of recalls, it is not a stretch to think that Toyota’s brand has taken a hit. Specifically, one could imagine that the Toyota brand – historically perceived as very reliable – is now suffering in the area of reliability.
Assuming Totyota has been tracking consumers’ emotional reactions to the Toyota brand, they probably saw a drop in the Brand’s equity, and in a specific area such as reliability, soonafter its very first falter a few years ago. But how impactful the drop was, may have been colored by tracking consumers’ conscious associations with the brand. Using Sentient’s proprietary Automatic Brand Association methodology, companies can actually track unconscious emotional associations with brands longitudinally to see changes over time – and these unconscious associations are more revealing than conscious associations which rely on what people tell us.
As we know,  emotional associations with the brand are linked to measures such as favorability, confidence and purchase intent, and most importantly sales. And these emotional associations are not limited to just company brands. A politician, for example, may want to track his or her associations throughout a campaign, especially in the key areas of honesty, intelligence and optimism, and then link these associations to expected voter support.
As we see on a daily basis, consumers aren’t rational, and to assume they’re giving us answers that accurately portray their beliefs and can predict future behaviors is wrong. In order to get true and accurate understanding and be able to predict behavior, we’ve got to go beyond what consumers tell us using methods that go beyond the surface. It’s a brave new world of market research, and as Darwin put it, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”