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Branding Research for Construction
In construction, brand decisions happen before a tender lands. Architects narrow the choices with their specifications . Contractors default to brands they trust. Wholesalers push brands that move fastest. Understanding where your brand sits in that chain - and why - is what branding research delivers. We measure awareness, consideration, preference, and NPS across architects, contractors, specifiers, roofers, facade specialists, building owners and various other b2b professionals in the construction market. Whether you are tracking a single market or managing a pan-European brand portfolio, we give you the numbers and the narrative behind them. All B2B audiences are reached via CATI phone interviews.
30+
Years of focused research on construction and building materials
15+
Construction subsectors covered in branding studies
20+
Countries covered in a single brand tracking wave
50,000+
High quality phone interviews with B2B Professionals annually.
What We Measure
We measure awareness, consideration, preference, and NPS across architects, contractors, specifiers, roofers, facade specialists, building owners and various other b2b professionals in the construction market. Whether you are tracking a single market or managing a pan-European brand portfolio, we give you the numbers and the narrative behind them.
Examples
Brand Funnel Metrics
Unaided awareness: top-of-mind brand recall in a given product category, without prompting - mental availability, as described by Byron Sharp. The probability that a brand comes to mind in buying situations. Aided awareness: recognition from a prompted list of brands - benchmarks your visibility vs. competitors across audiences. Consideration: inclusion in the active evaluation set at the point of a purchase or specification decision. Trial / first use: first purchase or specification event - isolates conversion from familiarity to behavior. Regular use / preferred supplier: share of category purchases attributed to your brand over the past 12 months. Advocacy / NPS: likelihood to recommend to a colleague, plus verbatim reasoning.
Brand Image and Associations
Core attribute battery: quality perception, innovation, reliability, sustainability credentials, technical support, price-value ratio - rated on agreement scales for your brand and competitors. Subsector-specific attributes: for insulation - thermal performance trust, energy certification awareness; for roofing - installation ease, weather durability, customisation range; for facade - aesthetic breadth, fire resistance reputation; for adhesives - product range, availability, applicator ease. Emotional associations: trusted partner vs. transactional supplier; modern vs. heritage; premium vs. accessible. Intended positioning vs. perceived positioning: structured gap analysis between what the brand claims and what target audiences actually believe.
Competitive Positioning
Brand funnel comparison vs. 3–6 named competitors on every metric. Perceived differentiation: what makes your brand distinctively different in the mind of an architect vs. a contractor vs. a merchant buyer. Share of preference in hypothetical specification or purchase scenarios. Conversion gap analysis: where in the funnel are you losing ground relative to competitors.
Brand Equity and Loyalty
Overall brand strength score benchmarked against comparable category studies. Loyalty indicators: exclusive use, share of wallet, switching intent, and switching triggers. Willingness to pay a premium vs. a comparable competitor product. NPS by segment and country, with statistical comparison to prior wave.
Brand Consistency
Perception gaps across audience types - architects see the brand differently from contractors; that gap has strategic implications for where you focus your positioning effort. Perception gaps across geographies - strong in Germany, weak in Poland is a different problem from weak everywhere. Perception gaps across channels - what installers believe vs. what architects believe.
Subsectors Covered
Subsector
Roofing
Architects, specifiers, and roofing contractors each influence brand selection at a different stage. A brand strong with installers but weak in specification has a structurally different problem than one with the reverse profile. Tracking all three audiences reveals where the real constraint sits.
Subsector
Facade
Specification-led. Architects and facade specialists drive brand selection. Brand studies here focus on image attributes around aesthetics range, fire classification reputation, and technical documentation quality.
Subsector
Insulation
Technical performance credentials and energy certification recognition dominate brand image. Sustainability associations are increasingly decision-relevant. Tracking brand strength separately among installers, specifiers, and distributors is standard.
Subsector
Adhesives and Sealants
Brand loyalty is high but switching is common at point of sale. Wholesaler push and installer habit are the critical dynamics. Brand studies must include a trade channel component alongside the professional audience.
Subsector
Doors and Windows
Architect specification and contractor preference often diverge sharply. Brand tracking covering both audiences identifies where the specification gap is and what is driving it.
Subsector
Building Materials (structural)
Brand awareness is typically lower in structural categories. Brand studies focus on supplier reputation, reliability associations, and technical support quality rather than traditional brand image metrics.
Subsector
Paint and Coatings (professional)
Professional painters are strongly brand-loyal. Unaided brand recall, NPS, and competitive switching data are particularly valuable in this subsector. Consumer-side brand tracking via CAWI runs in parallel for retail channel coverage.
Subsector
Tools
Brand preference among contractors is driven by durability experience and word-of-mouth in trade networks. Brand equity studies in tools require capturing both purchase behavior and end-use feedback.
Subsector
Walls and Ceilings
Plasterboard and dry lining brands compete primarily on technical support quality, product range depth, and trade loyalty programs. B2B professional audience tracked by CATI.
Note: This is a portion of the subsectors and product categories we cover within construction research.
What we Measure
How Branding Research works for Construction - Example Project
A roofing manufacturer active across six European markets suspects their brand is strong with installers but weak in specification. Architects rarely include them in project briefs. The client wants to understand why – and what it would take to change it.
We recruit 80 architects per country across France, Germany, the UK, and Poland via CATI phone interviews. We also interview 60 roofing contractors per country. The questionnaire maps unaided and aided awareness, measures the full brand funnel, applies a 20-attribute image battery scored on a 7-point agreement scale, and collects NPS with open-ended driver probing. Competitive set includes five named brands.
Analysis reveals the brand scores high on installer familiarity (aided awareness: 74%) but low on specification awareness among architects (aided awareness: 31%; consideration: 12%). The image data explains the gap: architects associate the brand with retrofit and repair work, not new build, and rate it low on “innovation” and “range of technical solutions.” Contractors rate the same brand high on “reliable product” and “easy to install.”
The wave is repeated 12 months later, after a repositioning campaign targeting architectural practices, to measure funnel movement. The second wave shows a 9-point increase in architect consideration – a measurable campaign result tied directly to the tracking data.
This is an illustrative example. Actual scope, sample sizes, and countries depend on your brief.
Target Audiences
This is a portion of the audiences we cover.
Architects (senior and junior)
Specify materials and products by brand in project briefs. Critical audience for understanding specification pull - how often your brand is written into a specification before a contractor has any say. Reached by CATI
Structural and M&E engineers
Influence specification of technical products - insulation, fixings, structural systems. Often an underresearched audience in brand studies. Reached by CATI
Purchase or approve product selection. Brand trust affects both specification compliance and substitution decisions at site level. Reached by CATI
Specialist contractors (roofers, facade specialists, floor layers, plasterers)
High brand familiarity, strong loyalty patterns. Significant influence over brand substitution at installation stage - particularly in categories where architect specification is less prescriptive. Reached by CATI
Specifiers and building surveyors
Write specifications that lock in brands for entire projects. Brand presence with this audience directly determines how often your product is the required item, not the acceptable substitute. Reached by CATI
Wholesalers and merchant staff
Influence substitution at point of sale. Their perception of your brand affects active recommendation behavior. Reached by CATI
Building owners and developers
Commercial audiences reached by CATI. Residential building owners - homeowners making renovation decisions - reached by CAWI
DIY consumers
Relevant for categories sold through retail (paint, flooring, adhesives). Tracked by online survey (CAWI) against consumer panels, in parallel with trade professional tracking.
Our Advantage
Why Branding Research for Construction?
Construction is not a homogeneous market, and construction brand research is not a commodity. A facade manufacturer trying to get architects to specify their product by name in a market dominated by two incumbents has a structurally different brand challenge from a tool manufacturer defending trade loyalty while a new entrant prices aggressively at wholesale. We understand these dynamics because we have operated exclusively in this sector for over 30 years. We do not apply a generic brand tracking template to construction - we design for the specific audience, channel, and competitive structure of your category.
We do not use construction panels. Every professional respondent - whether an architect in Paris or a roofing contractor in Warsaw - is recruited directly by phone. This produces response quality that online panels cannot match for B2B construction audiences. It also means respondents are genuine practitioners giving considered answers about brands they actually buy or specify, not panel members completing questionnaires for rewards.
Our brand tracking studies are designed for longitudinal use from day one. We set up the methodology, question architecture, and competitive set so that a second or third wave produces data that can be compared cleanly to the first. Brand movement in construction is slow - a study that is not built for wave comparison from the outset has limited strategic value. We maintain tracking programs across multiple years and across markets, so your brand data has continuity as well as depth.
Project Examples
A quantitative brand study ran among contractors and building owners across France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden for a manufacturer with a multi-brand portfolio under review for consolidation. The study measured the full brand funnel, preference drivers, and image attributes for each brand independently, then modelled which brand equity elements were transferable and which would be lost under consolidation. The client used findings to support a portfolio decision about which local brands to retire under a single master brand.
FR, DE, NL, SE
A brand tracking study among architects active in ventilated facade projects ran across Belgium, France, and Germany. The study measured brand awareness, specification frequency, and image attributes including aesthetics range, technical documentation quality, and fire classification reputation. Results identified a gap in specification pull among mid-sized architecture practices - a distinct pattern from large practices - and gave the client a specific audience to prioritize in their next campaign cycle.
BE, FR, DE
A recurring architect brand tracking program ran across Poland, France, Germany, and the UK for a roof window manufacturer. The study measured brand penetration, specification preference, and NPS. The second wave, run 12 months after a new product launch and associated marketing campaign, showed measurable movement in architect consideration - validating the campaign's effect among the specification audience.
PL, FR, DE, UK
A brand health study among installers, handymen, and pool builders in the Netherlands and France measured the full brand funnel for an adhesives and sealants brand. Driver analysis identified a conversion gap at the consideration-to-trial stage, driven primarily by perceptions of limited product range and insufficient visibility at trade counter level.
NL, FR
Deliverables
What You Receive
Actionable Insights, Not Just Data
Deliverables are always tailored to the needs of our customer. Together we choose the form in which the insights can make the most impact. This can be:
- Brand funnel report: awareness-to-advocacy metrics for your brand and named competitors, broken out by country and audience segment, with statistical significance testing on key differences
- Image positioning map: perceptual map placing your brand vs. competitors on key attribute dimensions, generated from factor and cluster analysis of the image battery data
- NPS scorecard: overall and segmented NPS by country, audience type, and channel, with benchmark context from comparable construction category studies where available
- Driver analysis output: ranked list of image and functional attributes that most strongly predict consideration and NPS, with regression coefficients - translated into plain-language strategic implications
- Gap analysis: structured comparison of brand perception across audience types and geographies - identifies where your messaging and your market reality diverge
- Wave comparison deck (tracking clients): slide-ready comparison of current vs. prior wave with trend lines, change significance flags, and narrative explanation of movements
- Country profiles: one-page summary per market showing brand funnel metrics, key image attributes, and brand position relative to local competitors
- Recommendations chapter: specific, prioritized actions tied to the data - which audience to prioritize, which attribute gaps to address, where competitive vulnerability is highest
Multi-Country Capability
Brand strength in construction varies significantly by country. A brand that leads in Germany may be largely unknown in Poland. Specification habits in France - where architects drive most commercial project specifications - differ structurally from the UK, where contractor influence is stronger. Premium positioning that holds in Western Europe often needs to be rebuilt from scratch in Eastern European markets. Our multi-country brand tracking studies run with fully harmonized methodology and native-language questionnaires, so country comparisons are genuinely valid. We have executed brand tracking waves in 20+ countries simultaneously for construction clients, covering markets from Scandinavia to the Middle East and from North America to Asia-Pacific. Local market knowledge - which competitors to include in the competitive set, which channels matter most in each market, how brand loyalty is expressed differently in different national contexts - is built into the study design, not retrofitted after fieldwork.
Key European Markets
Americas
Asia-Pacific & Middle East
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How do you recruit architects and contractors - do you use panels?
No. We recruit construction professionals directly by phone (CATI). Professional panels in this sector are low quality – respondents are often not the practitioners they claim to be. Phone recruitment produces better respondent quality and more reliable verbatim responses. Every architect, contractor, and specifier in our studies is a genuinely active practitioner.
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How large a sample do we need for brand tracking across multiple European markets?
A typical quantitative brand tracking study runs 75-150 interviews per audience segment per country. For a study covering architects and contractors across five countries, that is typically 750-1,500 interviews in total. We recommend the minimum sample that makes each cut statistically reliable for the decisions you need to make.
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Can you run brand tracking as a recurring study, and how do you ensure wave-on-wave comparability?
Yes, and we design for it from the start. We maintain consistent methodology, question architecture, question order, scale formats, and competitive set between waves. Sample design parameters are documented and replicated. We flag statistically significant changes between waves and explain them in narrative context.
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Can you run brand tracking across markets outside Europe?
Yes. We have executed brand tracking for construction clients in the Middle East, North America, and Asia-Pacific. Methodology adapts to local conditions – in some markets face-to-face interviewing supplements or replaces phone, and competitive sets differ by region.
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How do you handle multi-brand or portfolio brand studies?
We measure each brand in the portfolio independently through the full funnel and image battery. For consolidation decisions, we then model the implications: which brand equity elements are transferable to a master brand, which would be lost, and what the net effect on consideration and NPS would be. This produces a structured basis for the decision rather than a subjective judgment.
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What does brand tracking actually tell us beyond awareness scores?
Awareness is the starting point, not the answer. The value is in understanding conversion gaps – why a brand with 70% aided awareness converts to only 22% consideration, or why consideration does not convert to trial. Driver analysis identifies which specific image attributes, channel experiences, or product perceptions are blocking or accelerating movement through the funnel.
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How long does a brand study in construction take from briefing to final report?
A quantitative brand health study across 3-4 markets with CATI fieldwork typically takes 6-10 weeks from briefing to final report. Studies covering 5+ markets add 2-4 weeks. Repeat tracking waves run faster once the methodology, questionnaire, and sample parameters are established from a prior wave.
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PHONE
+31 10 2066900ADDRESS
Max Euwelaan 51
3062 MA Rotterdam