The EPI (ethical positioning index) is an index which measures how

ethically Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ...

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create ...

is positioned. Ethics have been a highly debated and controversial element in

ing exercises.

Marketer Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

s' opinions on this aspect of sales have varied from time to time. Using ethical practices to build brand equity and brand positioning has been employed by different marketing experts, based on their cultural and ethical

value systems In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live ( normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of di ...

. Sagar et al., Through their research in this area, marketers have come up with EPI. There are several steps involved in deriving and calculating an EPI. First, a set of blended

variable Variable may refer to: * Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed * Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathematical expression, as used in many ...

s of brand positioning and ethics is identified, consisting of 5 elements of brand positioning sub-divided into 15 and ten sub-elements of ethics. Then, consumer ratings are obtained for all elements on a 1–5 scale, which in total makes 25 values ranging from 1 to 5. The sub-element scores are then averaged over the whole sample to obtain an average score for each sub-element. Thus, a set of 25 average scores is obtained. Second, the sub-elements of brand positioning are taken and combined to obtain five sub-elements of brand positioning. The calculation of scores for the five brand positioning variables is done by evaluating the arithmetic mean of the various sub-elements that a brand positioning variable includes. Thus, a set of five average scores, labeled as SB1-SB5, is obtained, which reflects the consumer preference for the various attributes. Similarly, a score is obtained for the ten sub-elements of ethics, and are labeled as SE1-SE10. A high score reflects greater liking, while a low score indicates dislike and insignificance. Third, the weights are obtained for the various elements. To obtain the weight for each of the five brand positioning variables, the average score of the variable is divided by the sum of the average scores of all the five brand positioning variables. The weights so obtained are labeled WB1-WB5. Similarly, 15 weights, labeled WE1–WE10, are obtained for all ten ethic variables from the

analysis Analysis ( : analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (3 ...

of the conducted

survey Survey may refer to: Statistics and human research * Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population * Survey (human research), including opinion polls Spatial measurement * Surveying, the techniq ...

. Finally, the EPI score is calculated and arranged in descending order to obtain the EPI.

References

External links

* http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=24611 * http://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:jmr&volume=6&issue=2&article=002 * http://ethicalpositioning.blogspot.com/2008/05/idea-behind-ebp-ethical-brand.html * http://www.environmental-expert.com/articles/global-brand-s-strategies-for-ethical-brand-positioning-in-cross-cultural-environment-an-indian-context-80474/view-comments {{Social accountability Index numbers Branding terminology