Scale library · Marketing & branding

Consumer-based brand equity: Yoo & Donthu (2001)

Yoo and Donthu (2001) developed a consumer-based brand equity scale following Aaker and Keller and validated it across samples and product categories. The multidimensional scale (MBE) has 10 items in three dimensions: brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand awareness/associations. Overall brand equity (OBE) has 4 items measuring whether customers still choose the brand when other brands are equivalent. It is often used in theses on the brand equity of phones, cosmetics, beverages, banks and tourist destinations, and on how advertising and social media affect brands.

Cite the original, not the blog.

Model or scale: MBE/OBE
Constructs: 4
Items: 14 (1 reverse-coded)

Original English items

Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.

Brand Loyalty (BL, 3 items)

Code	Item wording	Reverse-coded
BL1	I consider myself to be loyal to [brand].	No
BL2	[brand] would be my first choice.	No
BL3	I will not buy other brands if [brand] is available at the store.	No

Perceived Quality (PQ, 2 items)

Code	Item wording	Reverse-coded
PQ1	The likely quality of [brand] is extremely high.	No
PQ2	The likelihood that [brand] would be functional is very high.	No

Brand Awareness/Associations (BAA, 5 items)

Code	Item wording	Reverse-coded
BAA1	I can recognize [brand] among other competing brands.	No
BAA2	I am aware of [brand].	No
BAA3	Some characteristics of [brand] come to my mind quickly.	No
BAA4	I can quickly recall the symbol or logo of [brand].	No
BAA5 (R)	I have difficulty in imagining [brand] in my mind.	Yes

Overall Brand Equity (OBE, 4 items)

Code	Item wording	Reverse-coded
OBE1	It makes sense to buy [brand] instead of any other brand, even if they are the same.	No
OBE2	Even if another brand has same features as [brand], I would prefer to buy [brand].	No
OBE3	If there is another brand as good as [brand], I prefer to buy [brand].	No
OBE4	If another brand is not different from [brand] in any way, it seems smarter to purchase [brand].	No

Response scale

7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree … 7 = Strongly agree), following the sample questionnaire on the author's website.

Recoding reverse-coded items: 1–7 scale: new score = 1 + 7 − score = 8 − score; 1–5 scale: new score = 1 + 5 − score = 6 − score.

Licence and permission

The items are published in an academic article; Boonghee Yoo posts a sample questionnaire and scoring instructions on his personal page at Hofstra University. Cite the original article.

Sources (APA 7)

Yoo, B., & Donthu, N. (2001). Developing and validating a multidimensional consumer-based brand equity scale. Journal of Business Research, 52(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-2963(99)00098-3
Yoo, B., Donthu, N., & Lee, S. (2000). An examination of selected marketing mix elements and brand equity. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28(2), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070300282002

Vietnamese translation

A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.

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