Brand Management : Consumer based brand equity : Chapter 2

Consumer-based brand equity, a concept which is undermined by many researchers and academicians. Normally companies focus is to create brand equity to get maximum profits and gain sustainable future revenues. Kavin lane Keller, put emphasis that equity is derived from the customer and it is for the customers. He defined Consumer-based brand equity as a differential effect, it can be a USP for the customers or a unique way to showcased your brand, that a brand knowledge has on consumer response.

The consumer should be treated like your wife. You have to take care of them whether you like it or not. Brand knowledge is a concept where a consumer thinks or feels about a particular brand. They are the brand nodes which are linked to your brain. It has two components, firstly, brand awareness and brand image. Lastly, consumer response is how often a consumer can recall your brand when it is needed in a particular situation.

The concept of brand equity as a bridge basically shows that your past investment in a brand was not your expenses. Because revenues won’t come overnight and you need to have the stamina to bear losses for sometimes. So when you invest in something wait a while so that it can bring some profits in future.

He further put emphasis on how to create a strong brand. Firstly, you need to create a good positioning out of your brand so that consumer can easily recall good points. Secondly, A good brand meaning mean how much are you creating a value for the customers. Furthermore, through your positioning and brand meaning, drive a good consumer response and lastly convert that response into a set of good loyalty and strengthen your relationship with them.

Moving towards the most important part of this chapter which consumer-based brand equity model. The anatomy of this model is in a pyramid shape which shows that if the first level is not cleared, you can’t jump up to next stage.
The first part is a salience which tells the basic things about the brand. The two components of salience are depth (ease of recall and recognition) and breath (how and when you purchase) of a brand. In short, salience tells us about the category identification of brand. Moving up the ladder we see imagery and performance.
Imagery talks about the heritage of a brand, the experiences which are associated with a brand. And what is the purchase and usage situation of a brand.
Adjacent to it is the performance which includes features and primary characteristics of a brand. It talks about how durable and authentic a brand is.
Climbing up we can further see two adjacently marked domains. First is Feeling, which is right above the imagery part, shows that what kind of feeling a customer had when they buy your brand. Adjacent to it is Judgment part, which elaborates the quality and superiority of brand. And at the top of this, we can see the brand resonance part or the loyalty part.
This model is dissected from the middle in a way that imagery and feeling are on the right side and performance and judgment are on the left side. So that right side is the emotional part and the left side is the rational part of this model. When we combine both emotional and rational part of our body, we get loyalty.

Lastly, we will be focusing on brand building implications where will discuss what should brand do to have an optimal positioning. Firstly, consumers buy brands, not products. So they practically own the brand. Don’t ever take shortcuts with your brand, because your ultimate goal should be on the creation of loyalty and it won’t come overnight. Brand should provide value and should have a part of augmentation in it as well. It should have duality means, a brand should trigger your mind as well as your heart