New Research on How Brand Associations Drive Customer Spending

Why It Matters

The findings give marketers a quantifiable way to prioritize brand perceptions that directly drive revenue, turning vague sentiment into actionable growth levers.

Key Takeaways

• Customer surplus value predicts double spending for high‑value CVS shoppers
• Each positive brand association adds about 18% to future spend
• Negative associations reduce spend roughly 12% per additional mention
• "Friendly/helpful service" generates the highest monetary value among associations
• CVS embeds brand density and surplus metrics into its ongoing brand tracking

Pulse Analysis

Authentic brand associations are the spontaneous ideas consumers voice when asked what comes to mind about a brand. Unlike rating‑scale surveys, they capture the language customers naturally used, revealing both positive and negative cues that form a mental network. Recent academic work showed that the richness and connectedness of these cues correlate with market share, suggesting that the depth of a brand’s mental footprint can drive choice. This perspective shifts measurement from static attitudes to a dynamic map of consumer memory.

The new CVS Health study applied this framework to more than 9,000 pharmacy shoppers, pairing open‑ended association data with a customer‑surplus‑value trade‑off and actual purchase histories. The analysis revealed three core insights: customers unwilling to give up CVS for $1‑$400 spent roughly twice as much in subsequent months; each additional positive association boosted future spend by about 18%, while each negative cue trimmed spend by roughly 12%; and certain cues—most notably “friendly/helpful service”—were five times more valuable than others. These results prove that perception directly translates into measurable revenue.

For marketers, the combined metric of brand density and customer surplus value offers a practical roadmap to prioritize investments. By continuously mining authentic associations through social listening or AI‑enhanced surveys, firms can flag high‑impact cues and address pain points before they erode spend. CVS’s integration of these measures into its ongoing brand tracking illustrates how the approach scales across categories, enabling real‑time adjustments to messaging, staffing, and store layout. As generative AI lowers the cost of language analysis, more brands are likely to adopt this economics‑driven perception model to drive growth.