Brand equity net promoter scores versus mean scores. Which presents a clearer picture for action? A non-elite branded university example

Reichheld (2003; 2006) argues that every organisation’s customers can be grouped as promoters, detractors or passives. This paper presents an exploratory comparison of a nonelite branded university’s brand equity (quality, value for cost and loyalty) mean and net promoter scores. This investigation identified that mean scores may misinform and that net promoter scores seem to provide better descriptions of customer satisfaction than mean scores as they incorporate variance information. Reichheld’s (2003; 2006) approach seems better at identifying both the level of urgency and creating cost effective interventions to enhance a university’s brand than the more conventional mean based score method .