A consumer-based theory of strong brands and its implications for brand equity and brand management

Abstract

The power of brands like Coke, Levi's and Nike defies conventional understanding. How do such strong brands get created? What are the sources of their phenomenal strength? The traditional thinking reflected in the brand literature traces the sources of brand strength to the consumer's cognitive knowledge of brand's functional and image attributes, and other associations linked to the brand. I draw upon past research in marketing and social psychology to propose a user-centered view of brand strength. I suggest that loyal consumers actively create 'brandspaces' based on personal, social and cultural factors. These brand knowledge structures may be more insular since they are self generated and anchored in the personal and social self of the user. In Essay 1 of this dissertation, I take the user-centered approach to propose a method for mapping and measuring consumer-based brand equity. I developed a structural model for the sneakers product category with five consumer-based sources of brand equity ('functional attributes','brand image','appeal', 'self-brand relationship', and 'perceived popularity') as independent variables, and study their impact on a four indicator measure of brand equity. In Essay 2, I investigate the role of self-brand relationship schema in promoting insularity of strong brands. I hypothesize that strong brand users, who have high self-brand relationship, suppress or discount negative brand information, as compared to strong users who have low self-brand relationship. Experimental results confirm this central hypothesis. This study clearly shows the centrality of self-brand relationship in promoting brand insularity and brand strength.