Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

applications of the Repertory Test by one of the authors found that half of all data was elicited from the first two
participants and that the addition of any new information ceased after 8-10 interviews. A call for volunteers was made
to students in the final year of an undergraduate advertising major. These students were in their final semester, and
actively considering their career options and agency preferences. A total of 11 interviews were held during August
2008, at which point data redundancy had been reached. The sample consisted of seven females and four males, all aged
in their early 20s. Interviews lasted an average of 20 minutes.
Kelly‘s definition of a construct was ―a way in which things are construed as being alike and yet different from others‖
(Kelly, 1955, p. 105). The triad card method has been a common approach used to elicit constructs. Elements are
presented to subjects in a series of three, usually using verbal labels, printed on individual cards. An element is the
object of interest in the study, which in this case was advertising agency brand names. Since elements should be
broadly representative of the domain of interest, being meaningful to students and representing a realistic choice set, a
three step process was used to develop the list of elements. First, a list of Brisbane-based and national agency award
winners was complied from the 9 th AFA Effectiveness Awards, the 2007 Effie Asia Pacific Awards, the 2008 Cannes
Lions International Advertising Festival and the 2008 Brisbane Advertising and Design Awards. This resulted in 15
national agencies and 11 Brisbane-based agencies. Second, students in a final year advertising unit were asked to list,
unaided, those agencies they would prefer to work for. This resulted in 15 national and Brisbane agencies. These lists
were merged and nine agencies selected as being represented on both the student and award winners lists. On
presentation of each triad, subjects were asked one question: ―When thinking of advertising agencies as a career choice,
in what important way are two of these agencies alike, and different to the third?‖ Participants were advised that the
technique was not a test of their abilities, and that there were no wrong answers. They were also advised that no
repeated statements were permitted. At the point when a participant could not identify any new similarity/difference,
one further triad was attempted. When no more similarity/difference statements were elicited, participants there were
asked if there any other important agency attributes not already mentioned. This rarely resulted in any new attributes.
The few that were mentioned were included with the Repertory Grid data.
Also during August 2008, expert opinion was sought to obtain the supply side perspective. A panel of five advertising
agency managers and five advertising academics around Australia were asked to offer their views on what attributes of
agencies they considered would important to graduates seeking employment in an advertising agency.
Findings
The 11 students used an average of 6 triads to generate an average of 11 statements. A total of 120 statements were
elicited. The statements elicited from the first four participants represented 87% of all statements, demonstrating how
quickly data redundancy manifests in applications of the technique. The 120 statements were then grouped into
common themes of similar wording. Of interest was the commonality of label categories, rather than the extremes of
idiosyncratic individual constructs. This process resulted in the development of 15 themes, which are shown in rank
order of popularity in Table 1. A co-researcher was asked to verify the findings, using the categorisation criteria
recommended by Guba (1978), which proposed that categories should feature internal homogeneity and external
heterogeneity. The expert opinion resulted in a pool of 58 statements. These were grouped into eight themes of similar
wording, and are also shown in Table 1.
Discussion
There are two implications evident from the data in Table 1 in relation to the development of a scale to be used in
measurement of an employer brand image and position. Firstly, the differences in the findings with the scale developed
by Berthon, Ewing and Hah (2005). This illustrates the potential danger in borrowing a scale from the literature that has
in not context-specific. Secondly, there are a number of differences in the perspectives of the students in comparison to
those in the expert panel. This also illustrates the value of seeking input from the target segment at the questionnaire
design stage. Perhaps the most ironic finding in this regard is that students were shopping for a brand of advertising
agency, an attribute that did not emerge in the opinions of the expert panel, nor in the employer brand scale developed
by Berthon, Ewing and Hah (2005). Economic concerns such as good salary, opportunities for advancement and job
security were last on the students‘ list, yet. Also many of the factors which the expert panel rated highly, such as ―right
kind of clients‖, ―good reputation for their work‖ and ―opportunities for advancement‖ were less important to students
than to the expert panel. The strongest of these are the more emotive for the students (social, development and interest),
while rational factors such as development and economic are more prevalent in the responses of the expert panel. While
the research was undertaken in an Australian context, it is suggested researchers in other parts of the world could screen
the suitability of the attribute list for through focus groups.
References
1. Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing Brand Equity. New York: Free Press.
2. Anholt, S. (2002). Foreword. Journal of Brand Management. 9(4-5): 229-239.
3. Anonymous (2007). Mouth Off. AdNews, May 18, 2007, p. 16.
4. Ambler, T. & S. Barrow (1996). The employer brand. Journal of Brand Management. 4 (3): 185-206.
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