A mechanism for aggregating association network data: An application to brand concept maps

The brand concept maps (BCM) approach is a valuable tool for measuring brand images, that is, an important part of customer-based brand equity. The approach is used to identify brand association networks, which contain information on how the brand and its associations are interconnected in consumers' minds. An essential contribution of the approach is that it provides a set of rules for how to aggregate individual brand association network data into a consensus map. Although BCM's aggregation rules are relatively straightforward and easy to use, the aggregation mechanism still has methodological and practical drawbacks. In this paper, we develop a new aggregation mechanism for individual brand association network data based on a critical assessment of the original aggregation rules. The results of three empirical studies show that the new aggregation mechanism improves the functionality and the aggregation capability, the split-half reliability, and the stability of the aggregation results.