We often hear, “Company X sucks! I don’t know why people like shopping there,” or “I know people really hate X, but I like it.” Curious about this perception/reality divide, we began thinking about how to sort what people think about a brand from what they assume about it.

That’s how we came up with the prototype for the Consumerist Brand Impression Index (which we’ve branded as BIX, even though that doesn’t really follow from the words in the title, because well… “BII” just sounds silly).

BIX first asks readers to look at a list of brands in a given industry and rank them from first to worst by dragging and dropping. So if you really think Airline ABC stinks, put it at the bottom, while 123 Airlines gets a top spot because you really like the in-flight entertainment. Whatever your reasons, this is your list to put in order as you see fit.

You then take an identical list of brands and sort them in the order you think the general public would rank them. So even though you really despise Airline ABC, you might feel like you are alone in your hatred and give it a higher ranking on this list. Again, this second ranking isn’t about whether a company is any good or not; it’s about whether you think its public image is positive or negative. This ranking might end up being identical to the first one, but it need not be.

This first series of rankings covers the wireless industry, large retail, air travel, beer, consumer electronics, and social media. Once we have enough rankings tallied and can sort through the data, we’ll share the results.

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