Quantitative research

Brand Health Tracking in India

Track awareness, consideration, preference and equity over time.

Quick answer

Use this method when the question calls for a continuous, comparable time series. Market Research India runs 300–1,000 per wave over 2 weeks per wave, in 50 Indian cities and fourteen languages.

Proposal in 24 hours
Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.
50 cities, 14 languages
Our own supervised field teams.
Senior-led, NDA-first
A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

Cities with field teams

Industries covered

Indian languages

Questions this method is built to answer

Commission this when one of the questions below is holding up a decision. If your question is not on the list, say so in the brief — we would rather recommend a different method than sell you this one.

Is unaided awareness rising, and against which competitor?
Did the campaign move consideration, or only recall?
Where in the funnel is the brand losing people this quarter?
Is our price perception drifting away from our actual price?
Which equity dimension is carrying the brand, and which is eroding?

How we run it

5 stages, with one research director accountable across all of them. The person who scopes the study is the person who presents the findings.

1
Fix the metric set before wave one
Funnel, equity and imagery measures are locked at the start, because a tracker's value is comparability and every change costs you history.
2
Set the sample rules
City mix, quotas, interviewer pool and field window are specified so each wave is drawn the same way as the last.
3
Field on a calendar
Waves run in a fixed window each period, independent of campaign timing, so media activity never coincides with a changed field period.
4
Test wave on wave
Every movement is significance-tested against the prior wave and the same wave last year before it is called a change.
5
Read the trend with context
Results are debriefed alongside your media spend and distribution data, so a movement can be attributed rather than merely observed.

At a glance

Brand Health Tracking — typical study parameters

Typical scale: 300 to 1,000 interviews per wave, run monthly, quarterly or continuously
Fieldwork window: Each wave fields inside two weeks on a fixed calendar
Lead time: Wave one launches three weeks after design sign-off; later waves run to the calendar
Coverage: Consistent city and sample composition across waves, which is what makes the trend readable
Languages: Identical translated instrument in every wave, changed only with a documented bridge
Core methods: Continuous tracking · Brand funnel · Equity models · Ad recall
Reporting: Wave reports, a trend dashboard and equity scores with significance against the prior wave
Best suited to: Knowing whether the brand is actually moving

What you receive

3 named deliverables, each written to be used rather than filed. Everything ships with the underlying data, so your team can keep working after the debrief.

Wave reports
A wave report that leads with what changed and why it is or is not significant, not with the full metric inventory.
Trend dashboards
A trend dashboard with every metric by wave, filterable by city and segment, and annotated with campaign and pricing events.
Equity scores
Equity scores built on a consistent model, so the index means the same thing in wave eight as in wave one.

What keeps the data honest

Fieldwork in India fails quietly when nobody checks it. These controls are run on every brand health tracking study, by a quality team that reports separately from the field team.

GPS and duration stamps on every interview
Each tablet record carries a location and a length. Interviews that are too short, or clustered at one convenient address, are pulled before they reach the dataset.
Twenty per cent audio back-checks
A fifth of all interviews are re-contacted or audio-reviewed by a quality team that does not report to the field supervisor who ran them.
One supervisor to six interviewers
Supervisors accompany each interviewer at least twice a week and sit through the full interview, not the doorstep introduction.
Translation and independent back-translation
Every instrument is translated into the field language, back-translated into English by a second linguist, then piloted before launch.
Wave-on-wave comparability audit
Before each wave ships, sample composition, interviewer pool and field window are compared against the previous wave, and any drift is reported with the results.

Method choice

Brand Health Tracking, or one of these instead?

Most briefs can be answered more than one way, and the wrong instrument is the most expensive mistake in research. Here is how brand health tracking compares with the two methods buyers most often weigh against it.

	Brand Health Tracking	Advertising & Media Research	Customer Satisfaction & NPS
Best used for	Knowing whether the brand is actually moving	Deciding whether to spend behind this creative	Finding the specific thing that loses customers
Typical scale	300–1,000 per wave	150–300 per cell	400–2,000 per cycle
Fieldwork window	2 weeks per wave	1–2 weeks	Continuous or 2–3 weeks
Evidence produced	A continuous, comparable time series	Scored response against category norms	A score tied to the drivers behind it
Projects to a population
Relative cost	Annual commitment, lower per wave	Low to mid per test	Low per response, priced as a programme

Where this method stops

A tracker is a thermometer, not a diagnosis. When it shows a fall, you still need qualitative work to learn why.

City coverage

Where this work is strongest

We field in all 50 cities, but these are the markets where this method has the most to offer — because of the infrastructure, the respondent base or the sectors concentrated there.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

How long does a brand health tracking project take?

Each wave fields inside two weeks on a fixed calendar. Wave one launches three weeks after design sign-off; later waves run to the calendar. Analysis and reporting add a further one to two weeks, so most studies close inside six to ten weeks from brief to debrief.

What sample size do you recommend?

300 to 1,000 interviews per wave, run monthly, quarterly or continuously. The right number is set by the smallest subgroup you need to report separately, not by a round figure, and we will say when a smaller sample would answer the question just as well.

What drives the cost of brand health tracking in India?

Incidence and audience difficulty first, then scale, the number of cities and languages, and the depth of reporting. Relative to other methods on this site, the cost profile is: annual commitment, lower per wave. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

When is brand health tracking the wrong choice?

A tracker is a thermometer, not a diagnosis. When it shows a fall, you still need qualitative work to learn why.

How do you control quality in the field?

Each tablet record carries a location and a length. Interviews that are too short, or clustered at one convenient address, are pulled before they reach the dataset. Beyond that, wave-on-wave comparability audit: before each wave ships, sample composition, interviewer pool and field window are compared against the previous wave, and any drift is reported with the results.

Can international teams commission this from outside India?

Yes. We report in English, run calls across US, European and Asian time zones, and handle local-language fieldwork and translation end to end.

Study at a glance

Discipline: Quantitative
Typical scale: 300–1,000 per wave
Field window: 2 weeks per wave
Projectable: Yes
Relative cost: Annual commitment, lower per wave
Cities covered: 50

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Keep exploring

Everything built on this method

8 metros, 42 Tier 2 markets, 30 sectors and 15 guides, each applying brand health tracking to one specific context.

Tier 1 metros

Full-scale fieldwork, viewing facilities and senior decision-maker access.

Tier 2 markets

Each city covered from a local field base that also reaches the surrounding districts.

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By industry

The same method applied to one sector’s audiences, vocabulary and buying process.

Show 22 more

Guides and pricing

Cost drivers, briefing checklists and buyer guides written for this method.

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Other quantitative methods

Closest alternatives, where a different instrument may answer the question better.

Every other service

The full method set, from qualitative immersion to strategic modelling.

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Next step

Ready to scope a brand health tracking study?