GLOSSARY

Behavioral Science Glossary

Explore the language of behavioral science, brand tracking, and ad testing to make better marketing decisions.

AI-Assisted Research

Research based on real human responses, where AI speeds up data collection and analysis, reducing cost and turnaround time without losing human judgment.

AI-Predicted Research

Research employing synthetic respondents panel, where data and models are used to forecast likely reactions based on predicted metrics.

Aided Brand Recognition

Recognizing a brand after being shown specific cues, such as logos, slogans, or other brand assets.

Attention Economy

An economic model that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, with digital platforms competing to capture and monetize it through content and algorithms.

Brand Associations

The traits, attributes, or situations people link to your brand (e.g., “fun,” “refreshing,” “eco-friendly”).

Brand Audit

An in-depth review of your brand’s current market position that looks past surface metrics to reveal what truly drives brand performance and business results.

Brand Awareness

Refers to the percentage of respondents who recognize the brand when prompted.

Brand Equity

The commercial value your brand adds to products through trust, reputation, and preference.

Brand Identity

Everything that makes a brand recognizable (from its visual style and symbols to its tone of voice and language) used to express the brand and differentiate it from competitors.

Brand Lift

The increase in brand salience driven by a campaign. It is measured by comparing brand awareness between people who have seen the ad and those who have not. A positive brand lift shows the campaign improved how well people remember or recognize the brand.

Brand Redesign

A way to modernize a brand so it stays relevant by updating visuals and messaging to match how the brand and its audience evolve.

Brand Refresh

A small but meaningful update that gives a brand a lift without starting from scratch.

Brand Salience

Refers to the percentage of respondents who recall a brand spontaneously when thinking about a specific category or a buying situation.

Brand Sentiment

Captures the emotional responses consumers have toward a brand.

Creative Testing

The process of evaluating different ad variations to determine which messages, visuals, and formats lead to the best results.

Low Cognitive Load

When information is easy to process and a task can be understood with little mental effort.

Market Penetration

Reflects on how many people in a market buy or use a product or service.

  • around 2% → small brands
  • 2–30% → mid-sized brands
  • 30%+ → big brands

Me Codes

The visual, audio, and symbolic elements that immediately identify a brand. For example, McDonald’s golden arches.

Mindshare

The level of a brand’s popularity in customers’ minds relative to competitors. Reflects how strongly a brand is linked to a product or category through salience (being the first brand that comes to mind).

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

Measures customer loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend a brand to someone else.

Need Codes

A distinctive element that a brand uses repeatedly to link itself with a specific need, desire, or occasion aka ‘Category Entry Point’.  For example, Happy Meal → McDonald’s → kids.

Occasion-Based Brand Recall

A measure of brand salience that assesses how often a brand comes to mind in specific situations or needs. It’s evaluated by prompting people with concrete occasions (e.g. quick lunches, gift-giving), with salience driven by the breadth and frequency of occasions your brand is associated with.

Performance Plateau

A stage where performance-driven marketing stops delivering growth because it repeatedly targets the same in-market audience and runs out of new demand to convert.

Purchase Intent

The likelihood that a consumer will choose your brand the next time they buy within your category.

Rebrand

A complete reset of a brand’s proposition, including its visual identity. It should be done only for objective reasons such as mergers or acquisitions, legal or regulatory changes, or a change in ownership.

Representative Respondent Samples

A population sample that mirrors the full category audience, not just existing customers or fans. This ensures insights reflecting the full spectrum of light and heavy buyers.

Share of Market

Answers the question: “How big is the brand’s slice of the market?“ In other words, it shows how much of the market’s total revenue a brand captures.

SOM = (Brand Revenue / Total Market Revenue)×100.

Share of Search

Shows how often people organically search for a brand online compared to other brands in the same category.

Share of Voice

Shows how visible a brand is compared to others in the market. It is calculated by dividing brand mentions or impressions with the total mentions or impressions in the category. As a rule of thumb, when SOV > SOM → the brand has a stronger potential to grow.

The 95/5 Rule

A marketing principle explaining that most future customers aren’t ready to buy right now. Only about 5% are in-market, while the remaining 95% are unlikely to engage with your content today. That’s why building your brand matters, so people remember you and choose you later, when the need arises.

Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA)

Indicates which brand people recall first when thinking about a category or product.

Unaided Brand Recall

The ability to recall a brand spontaneously, without any prompts or cues.

Unaided Brand Recall

A measure of brand salience that captures whether a brand comes to mind at all. It’s assessed by asking people to name brands they associate with a category without any prompts, and is best represented by the total number of unaided mentions rather than just the first brand named.

Unaided Brand Recognition

Recalling a brand spontaneously, without any cues or prompts. For example: “Think of a soda brand. ⇒ Coca-Cola“

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The distinctive benefit or promise that clearly differentiates a brand, product, or service from its competitors.