Month: November 2021

The markets in which companies operate are highly dynamic in nature. There is constant evolution in products, introduction of new technology, government rules, regulatory framework, consumer taste and preference. Between all these companies have to devise marketing communication and branding programs, which look forward to maintaining consumer-based brand equity. For example, consumer promotion activity like providing 20% extra for the said product will not create the same response but may raise expectations of 20% during the normal purchase also. Companies have to balance brand management that they are able to understand the future preference of consumer. This calls for companies to be pro-active and thinking standing on their feet.

The rate of change in all three operating contexts of the brand-consumer, societal and market is increasing faster and we will need all our past learning to manage the future. If the rate of obsolescence of technology and change in our consumption processes is anything to go by, the comfort to sit back and manage change at a slow pace are past and an ever-evolving consumer is posing new challenges. Looking back over the past 50 years makes us realize that brands that have been consistent and held relevant meaning for their consumers have been few and in increasingly changing times the likelihood of many big brands does not seem too strong. The brand failures on the other hand are numerous and from that experience we will start to gain an understanding of how to manage brands over time.

One way of brand management over time is to strengthen brand equity by developing marketing programs, which express brand knowledge consistently as not to confuse the consumer. For example, Apple, their programs are developed to reinforce their commitment to offer world class full entertainment and communication devices, so introduction Iphone had ready acceptance from consumers. Market leader like coca-cola has constantly run marketing program even after been market leaders. However, this does not imply that same campaign is running repeatedly, rather coming up innovative strategies to reinforce brand knowledge.

Brand knowledge comes from brand attributes and brand association; if companies try to fiddle with these sources of brand equity consequences can be disastrous. In early 90s Intel microprocessor had a technical flaw but the company was not swift enough to rectify the problem, thereby damaging brand equity source of power and safety. Intel realized the importance source of brand equity and was quick in solving the problem by offering replacement. Another dilemma for companies is of choosing the right way to use the developed brand equity, normal course is to generate maximum price premium, but that should not be at cost of brand equity.

Innovation is one of the keys in managing brand and ensuring that brand remains ahead of the competition curve. If companies operating in entertainment category or matter of fact insurance do not innovate then value of their brand is lost as these categories are product driven. For example, Apple, without its innovation in the form of ipod mp3 player, apple would have found it difficult facing completion from Sony. If the company’s category is not a product driven marketing campaigns associated with brand image play an important role in sustaining the brand. For example, Pepsi, it is operating in highly competitive carbonated drinks’ category, over the years their marketing campaign is focused on their highlighting their brand position as a drink for young generation.

Every brand faces challenges as it moves in the product life cycle and at some point faces saturation. At this point, it is important to focus on expanding brand awareness that is looking for ways to generate more consumption by highlighting instance of consumption. For example, toothpaste revitalized consumption by highlighting advantages of twice daily usage. Another way to increase consumption is by highlighting diverse ways and occasion where brand can be consumed. This is more prevalent in food and beverages industry.

Along with brand awareness brand image also plays a pivotal role in revitalizing brand performance. This can be done by highlighting pointing of difference, which may have been lost in all other marketing campaigns. Another way to enhance the brand image is by adopting new brand elements like brand symbol, logos, etc., For example, Federal Express modify to FedEx as a move generating more interest in face of competition from UPS.

For companies to sustain a brand over long period of time, it is absolute essential that marketing program look at strategies around effective brand management. Effective brand management strategies constantly assess the consumer perceptions towards the brand and strive to attract her attention. Strategies have to be flexible as to maintain the pace with the dynamic environment. Only then it is possible have a successful brand.

Be Proactive

Customer’s expectations also change with time. What’s more, they change because of your actions. Let’s say you make a marketing move to add 20% more product during a specific promotional period. Do you expect a rise in affirmative customer action after the promotional period is over? Well, you might be disappointed. Your customers might change their expectations and come to expect 20% more product at any given moment instead. That’s why your marketing efforts have to be proactive.

Brands are one of the most important assets for any organization. Brands tend to stay with the organization, longer than products and steer the company to evolve with changing time keeping the promise intact.

The Brand Reinforcement majorly focuses on maintaining the Brand Equity by keeping the brand alive among both the existing and new customers. This can be done through consistently conveying the meaning of brand in terms of:

• What are the products under the brand? What are its core benefits and how it satisfies the demand?
• How is the brand different from other brands? How it enables a customer to make a strong, unique and favorable association in their minds?

Character:

• Product
• Services
• Associated Marketing

Apart from innovation and research the brand reinforcement can be done through various marketing programs such as:

Exhibition provides a vital platform to the brands where the product with any new feature can be demonstrated to the customer. Products seen in real gives an experience to the customer, and some image gets created in their minds.

Advertising is one of the most common and easy tool of brand reinforcement. By showing the ads frequently on TV, Internet, Bulletins, Billboard, Radio, etc. can make the brand deep-rooted in the minds of the customer.

Event and Sponsorship act as an aide to the brand reinforcement. The companies sponsor big events like sports, political rallies, education, award functions, etc. with the objective of reminding the customer about their product and creating the positive image in the minds of new prospects.

Promotion is the most frequently used tool of brand reinforcement. Several companies adopt this strategy wherein some special offers, freebies, discounts, gift packs, etc. are given along with the product. This is done with the intention to retain the existing customers and attract new customers simultaneously.

Showroom layout also plays a vital role in strengthening the brand image in the minds of the customer. The way the brands are placed in the retail outlets or stores reminds the customer about the product and also influences new users through its appeal.

Brand Reinforcement is done by:

Products That the Brand Represents

Expanding the categories across which the brand delivers the core benefit satisfying various needs.

E.g.

Fortune: Primarily, an oil brand in India, expanded to other food ingredients.

How Brands Make Product Superior and Strong

Brands bring unique associations with them. A strong brand has strong associations. And many times these associations are more abstract and category agnostic.

Brand Response is the marketing communications industry’s Genius of the And. It sounds too good to be true. It asks us to live with two apparently contradictory ideas at the same time. It can be defined simply as a strategic and executional campaign approach where brand building drives response and this response in turn builds the brand in a virtuous circle of effectiveness.

Brand or Response

Marketers make a choice between two discrete activities. Brand-building and other longer-term activities are separate from short-term sales or response-driving activities. They are generally delivered by different campaigns through different channels. Typically, TV is used for ‘brand’ and direct marketing used for ‘response’. The majority of the IPA cases from the 1980s reflect this thinking.

Brand and Response

The two elements are treated as distinct but complementary activities within a campaign helped by some executional links. The Grand Prixwinning Tesco case of 2000 used Every Little Helps, and a consistent tone of voice across different campaigns for brand and tactical work.

Brand Response

A seamless blend of both types of activity is delivered through a single campaign. The purpose of all activity is to drive response (both short and longer term) while building the brand.

Building brands and driving sales are no longer mutually exclusive activities: they are now symbiotic. Critically the two elements create a powerful virtuous circle where brand helps build response, and the response itself helps build the brand through experience.

Number of metrics with brand response marketing, including:

• Gross Rating Points. A measure of exposure, calculated by multiplying the percentage of the target market reached by the exposure frequency.
• Cost Per Thousand Impressions. The total cost of a thousand impressions of a single ad.
• Cost Per Point. This is the cost of buying one point, or one percent of the target market’s attention.
• Rating Points. The size of a live audience, expressed as a percentage of the entire potential audience at any given time.

Technique:

Call to action

This one seems like a no-brainer, but without a call to action, there won’t be a “response” in brand response. But the power of brand response is in the integration of its elements you can’t just tack an end card and a promo code to anything and hope it works. Defining the exact action you want the spot to generate is paramount, and must be the guiding thematic touchstone that guides everything in the spot, otherwise the story elements can feel arbitrary and actually hinder the elements that sell.

Story

Brand response also requires an actual story, over and beyond a problem/solution, a how-to, or a testimonial. These are great DR tools, but they’re functional and they feel like a pitch. You need to show, not tell. A testimonial spot doesn’t become brand response simply because the speaker is wearing a funny costume, a good brand response will actually illustrate the narrative with beats that cause actual emotion. A good guideline for story is to make sure the plot actually sounds interesting when read without detail, and then make sure there are moments in the story that are calibrated for maximum humour, pathos, or whatever else you’re going for.

Transition

The moment of transition from the story elements to the harder working sales information needs to be carefully considered. A classic strategy is to spend 15 seconds showing an amusing scene, scenario, or vignette, then underlining the exact problem it’s describing, and cutting to 15 seconds of more classic DR, once you’ve earned the audience’s trust and attention. However you transition from storytelling to sales, you want the transition point to feel organic, surprising, and rewarding. Ideally the actual announcement of what product the scenario is advertising gets the biggest and most rewarding laugh.

Aspiration

It’s well known that benefits to the customer are more persuasive than product features, but on a deeper level, benefits are connected to customer aspirations. Brands know this, and tie their values and messaging to the deeply felt aspirations of their key demographics. In addition to the stated CTA, brand response should be an illustration of that: a more organized life. A more successful life. A happier life. In the end, all aesthetic choices pale in comparison to how a spot makes the audience feel, and clearcut aspiration is the key to making people feel motivated to heed the call to action.

Brand Recall is the likelihood of instant recollection of the name of a brand by a consumer when prompted with a product or service or any other association with it.

In simple terms, brand recall is a qualitative measure of the consumer’s ability to remember the name of a brand. It is a component of brand awareness which measures the spontaneous recall of the brand from memory when the customer is prompted by the product category.

Importance Of Brand Recall

Being at the top of the mind whenever the consumer thinks of a product category is the ultimate aim of every brand as it not only leads to increased sales, but it also helps the brand carry out its word-of-mouth marketing strategies, referral marketing strategies, etc.

Builds Brand Equity

Brand recall builds brand equity for a brand’s products by ensuring that its superior quality and reliability is etched in the memory of consumers.

Creates A Competitive Edge

Brand recall is one of the factors that lie at the top of the marketing funnel and reflects the first stage of a buyer’s journey. Brand recall signifies comfort and familiarity with a certain brand. It provides an edge over the competitor’s brand while making an actual purchase decision.

Boosts Sales and Market Share

The brand recall for a company is directly proportional to the likelihood of actual purchase of a product or service offered by the brand. It plays a significant role in facilitating repeat purchases.

A positive brand recall ensures behavioural, cognitive and emotional loyalty of consumers towards its existing and potential products and services.

Measurement:

Brand managers can ascertain the effectiveness of the branding strategies deployed for a company by measuring brand recall with this formula:

Percentage Brand recall (%) = (Survey Respondents who correctly identified or recalled your brand/ Total number of respondents) X 100

Types:

Aided Brand Recall

In terms of aided brand recall, the respondents are given an external hint which acts as an aid for them to recall the brand in the discussion.

Unaided Brand Recall

Unaided Brand recall implies when a consumer or respondent recalls the name of the brand without any aid or hint.

A brand’s value is directly connected to its presence in the memory of consumers. Quite simply, if a customer remembers a brand, he is likely to buy that brand. If he doesn’t remember it, he will buy the one he remembers. Thus, for a brand, it is important to set itself in customers memory.

Strategies:

Brand Partnerships

Brand Partnership is a mutual agreement between two or more brands to help one another in increasing brand recall, exposure, breaking into new markets and providing value-added services to the consumers.

Communicate Well with The Target Audience

Consistent communication with the target audience enhances Brand recall. Social media can be leveraged through modes like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The Brand’s followers constantly lookout for updates from them on these platforms.

Develop An Unforgettable Brand Tagline

One of the most effective ways to draw attention and enhance brand recall is developing an unforgettable tagline. A tagline should be such which points towards the benefits of a product while parallelly conveying the Brand Purpose.

Humanize The Brand

It is a commonly known fact that people respond to people as opposed to a faceless organisation. Humanizing a brand involves connecting the ideas of the company with the people involved with the brand.

The employees, the customers and strategic partners should be used as brand ambassadors of the company and their story of growth with the company must reach out to the audience. This realistic connect will ensure a greater Brand recall for customers.

Focus On the Upkeep of Brand Reputation

It is important to identify and eliminate all the potential reputation risks that may undermine the hard-earned reputation of a brand. While a brand recall is a boon, it may act as a bane if negative recollection takes place in the minds of consumers.

Define The Brand Purpose

Brand Purpose is the reason for the existence of a brand beyond generating revenues. It answers the question “How does a company improve the lives of its consumers” or “What is the idea that drives a particular brand”?

Develop Catchy Brand Logo Design

A brand logo lays the foundation of Brand Identity. It grabs attention, differentiates the company from its competitors and makes a strong first impression in the minds of consumers.

An aesthetically pleasing logo triggers a positive recall about a company’s brand. It serves as a great hedge, in case the name of the brand is forgotten, by crystallizing the brand’s profile.

Create A Brand Story

Creating a brand story involves making an emotional connect with the audience which becomes a part of their memory. The narrative of the story could highlight conflict and resolution.

Build A Brand Personality

Building a brand personality implies providing human characteristics to a certain brand like competence, toughness, sincerity, sophistication etc. For example, the brand Nike has built its personality as Athletic. Therefore, it appeals to all athletes no matter which sport they play.

Define The Brand Proposition

Brand Proposition is simply the problem which a company’s product is solving for the consumers. It is the promise that the brand delivers to its consumers through its product or service.

Develop A Brand Profile

A brand profile is a brand’s identity which encompasses all the decisions made by the company’s marketing agency in terms of communication, web presence, brand values and preferences, packaging, graphic design, etiquettes of the office staff, brand’s take on relevant socio-economic issues etc.

Brand recognition refers to the ability of consumers to recognize and identify a specific brand. Brand recognition is typically considered successful when consumers are able to recognize a brand without explicitly being exposed to its name, but merely to visual or auditory cues such as logos, packaging, or jingles. Similarly, brand recall is the ability to recall a brand without any specific cues at all.

Brand recognition is one of two components of brand awareness. The other component is brand recall. Brand recognition is exactly what it sounds like: the ability of a consumer to recognize one brand over other brands. In other words, it’s the ability of consumers to identify your product by its attributes and design elements. Design elements include such things as shape, colour, illustrations, and graphics.

Companies routinely conduct market research to determine the degree to which their brand gets recognized by consumers and develop strategies and campaigns aimed at increasing brand recognition. Together with brand recall, brand recognition is one of the many components of brand awareness.

Brand recognition requires the consumer to recall prior knowledge. To build brand recognition, an organization must repeatedly provide consumers with a consistent visual or auditory learning experience. Consider the case of television advertising. A brand who spends millions of dollars on a single television commercial during the Super Bowl may be forgotten weeks after the game. However, a brand which uses a Super Bowl commercial to reinforce a years-long advertising campaign will have higher brand recognition.

Brand recognition is developed by reach, frequency and consistency. A useful tactic in advertising is for a brand to develop a campaign around a concept or a character.

Examples include the “Can you hear me now?” campaign from Verizon. The Verizon commercials featured the same “Test Man,” who would test wireless coverage by asking callers on the other end if they could hear him. Other examples include “Flo,” a fictional salesperson who represents Progressive Insurance and the GEICO Gecko, a fictional reptile who helps sell car insurance.

Effectiveness of Brand Recognition

If brand recognition is done correctly, your product should be recognized even without using its name. The goal is to get potential customers to recognize the product instantly without requiring much effort. For example, can you think of the name of a restaurant that is symbolized by golden arches or a computer company identified by a particular fruit? In fact, companies will often engage in market research in order to test brand recognition.

Brand Recognition and the Problem of Counterfeit Goods

Even after you have developed strong brand recognition, the battle is not over. You still have to worry about counterfeit goods, often called knockoffs or fakes. The classic example is a street vendor peddling knockoff expensive watches to unsuspecting tourists. You can combat counterfeit goods through the use of patents and trademarks and then vigorously pursue those that infringe upon your brand through court action.

Strategies:

• Customers tend to remember brands that reach them on a personal or emotional level, so a company may use a unique, touching, or heartfelt story that lets customers know why it’s in business.
• Another way to build and maintain brand recognition is to provide exemplary customer service. Customers are more likely to recommend and buy products from a company they believe values their patronage.
• Businesses should also aim to exceed their customers’ expectations and educate them at the same time. Being known as an expert in a certain field or being able to relate to customers and how they use the products and services they buy goes a long way in ensuring brand loyalty. One way to accomplish this is through app development, email newsletters, or blogs that ensure new and existing customers keep your company in mind first.
• Small businesses and large companies can use social media to make sure their names, products, and services are in constant circulation. Of course, a company’s logo or visual theme should be used in all communications.

Comparative Methods uses experiments to examine consumer attitudes and behavior toward a brand to assess benefits arising from having high awareness and strong, favorable, and unique brand associations.

Brand based Comparative Approaches

Brand-based comparative methods measure the response that consumers have to the similar marketing efforts of different companies. So these methods basically compare your marketing efforts to the marketing efforts of your direct competitors, industry leaders, or non-existing brands.

The most famous example of this comparative method is Larry Percy’s experiment. Percy concluded that knowing the brand of the product deeply influences your opinion on the quality and the overall product itself. By disclosing (or not disclosing) the brand names of products, Percy found that brand loyalty is higher when people are aware of the brand.

The downfalls of these methods are that it measures only the isolated value of the brand name. These methods are useful if you’re looking to change your marketing programme and want to predict how that might affect the future outcome.

Marketing Based Comparative Approaches

Marketing-based comparative methods measure the difference in the outcome of different marketing strategies implemented by the same brand, for the same products. These methods focus on the levels of influence different marketing programmes have on the overall brand performance.

Comparing prices with competitors and analysing how their pricing strategy influenced the brand equity is really important. It will help you find the consumer’s breaking point and their level of tolerance the point when they abandon brand loyalty due to high prices and switch to a different brand.

These methods can also help you understand how customer responses vary in different locations. What’s more, these methods can be applied always, no matter what your marketing strategy is. However, marketing-based comparative methods can’t determine the consumer’s preference. In other words, they can’t pinpoint whether the consumer has a preference toward a certain brand or toward a specific product category.

Conjoint Analysis Comparative Approaches

Conjoined comparative marketing methods combine both comparative methods. They analyse both the brand and the marketing efforts. Because they are so extensive, these methods allow you to analyse different brand attributes and brand associations, as well as their interdependent relationships. Conjoined comparative methods have a big disadvantage they are known to increase customer’s expectations.

Method of collecting qualitative marketing research data in which respondents are asked to supply the word or idea which first comes to mind in response to a word or phrase given to them by a researcher; the technique is used to further understand shopping, advertising, branding, etc.

Free association involves asking consumers what comes to mind when they think about the brand. Projective techniques are tools used to uncover the true opinions and feelings of consumers when they are unwilling or otherwise unable to express themselves. For example, a common projective strategy involves asking a consumer to compare a brand to a person, animal, car, or country. For example, a consumer may be asked, If Microsoft was a car, what kind of car would it be? While qualitative techniques provide in-depth consumer insights, they typically involve very small samples of consumers that may not be generalizable to the perception of the larger population

Free association is a technique used in psychoanalytic therapy to help patients learn more about what they are thinking and feeling. It is most commonly associated with Sigmund Freud, who was the founder of psychoanalytic therapy. Freud used free association to help his patients discover unconscious thoughts and feelings that had been repressed or ignored. When his patients became aware of these unconscious thoughts or feelings, they were better able to manage them or change problematic behaviors.

The goal of free association is not primarily to uncover hidden memories but to identify genuine thoughts and feelings about life situations that might be problematic, yet not be self-evident. For example, a woman might tell herself and others that she ‘loves the people she works with’ but ends up avoiding her colleagues most of the time. Free association would be a helpful technique to explore the conflict or tension between these two competing attitudes.

In traditional free association, a person in therapy is encouraged to verbalize or write all thoughts that come to mind. Free association is not a linear thought pattern. Rather, a person might produce an incoherent stream of words, such as dog, red, mother, and scoot. They may also jump randomly from one memory or emotion to another. The idea is that free association reveals associations and connections that might otherwise go uncovered. People in therapy may then reveal repressed memories and emotions.

Sigmund Freud was in the process of developing free association from 1892 to 1898. He planned on using it as a new method for exploring the unconscious. It would replace hypnosis in this respect. Freud claimed free association gave people in therapy complete freedom to examine their thoughts. This freedom would come, in part, from a lack of prompting or intervention by a therapist. Freud proposed the technique helped prevent three common issues in therapy:

• The process of projecting one’s own qualities onto someone else.
• The process of transferring feelings one has for one person to a different person.
• The practice of blocking out certain feelings or memories.

Contemporary Free Association

Freudian free association is fairly uncommon in therapy these days. Even among neo-Freudians, the technique is not often used. But contemporary mental health practitioners might us a modified version of free association. They may ask someone in therapy to recall all the memories associated with a particular event. A person in therapy could be asked to share the first word that comes to mind after seeing a picture or write down all the thoughts they have at a certain time.

Criticism of free association

The main criticism of free association has been that people may overproduce associations. This can be caused by pressure from a therapist. Someone in therapy may struggle to say as many random words and thoughts as possible. Difficulty can occur even if the person is not actually thinking about these topics. Associations may also be random and unrelated to a person’s psyche. For example, someone may start by recalling a memory of their mother. They may remember song lyrics associated with the memory and then begin naming musical artists. This could create the appearance of associations and memories that do not actually exist.

Historical Perspectives

Traditional brand management performance measures usually are short-term oriented and give no incentives to invest in brands but rather lead to short-term activities which harm long-term brand value. This is alarming, especially for companies where brands are the main assets. Brand value, if correctly measured, could represent a useful goal for the management of brands. In mergers and acquisitions, brand value could help in determining a corporation’s price and support the decision process. Another area where a valid brand valuation method would be helpful is the licensing of brands. Finally, brand valuation is needed for balance sheet purposes.

Interbrand’s Brand Valuation Methodology

The valuation method of the consulting company Interbrand includes a financial analysis where, business earnings are identified, a market analysis where the proportion of earnings attributable to the brand is determined, a brand analysis where brand power is analyzed, and a legal analysis.

Brand power is seen as the primary determinant of the risk profile of the brand. Low brand power will increase the risk that projected earnings will not be realized. Therefore, two brands can have different values even if they have identical earnings forecasts just because their brand power and consequently their risk profile is different. The risk profile concluded from brand power has an effect on the discount rate that is used to discount future earnings. 89 To determine brand power, seven criteria groups with 80 to 100 sub-criteria that influence brand power are evaluated. The seven criteria groups involve:

• Stability: Long-established brands are considered to be more valuable than for example recently launched brands.
• Trend: Evaluation of the growth potential of the brand.
• Marketing support: Evaluation of marketing activities, e. g. amount spent in supporting the brand, quality and consistency of that support.
• Market: Since brands in markets such as fast-moving consumer goods are generally stronger than brands in markets that are more vulnerable to fashion changes, the dimension “market” has to be considered.
• Leadership: Dominant brands that are able to influence the market are obviously more valuable than brands with an unimportant market-share.
• Internationality: Evaluation of the ability of the brand to be successful abroad.
• Legal protection.

Brand Balance Sheet and Nielsen Brand Performance

Similar to the Interbrand method, Nielsen developed a brand valuation method, the Brand Balance Sheet, that evaluates brand power with a scoring model. Six criteria groups with nineteen sub-criteria groups are evaluated and weighted according to their importance for brand power.

The maximum score that could be achieved amounts to 500 points. A brand with less than 200 points is considered a weak brand. The criteria groups include the following:

• Market potential (e. g. size of the market, development, value added of the market)
• Market share of the brand (e. g. relative market share, profit market share)
• Brand evaluation of the retailers (e. g. brand distribution)
• Effort of the firm (e. g. product quality, prices of the brand, share of voice)
• Brand evaluation of the customers (e. g. brand loyalty, confidence in the brand, share of mind)
• Expansion of the brand (e. g. international expansion of the brand, international legal protection)

These methods see brand equity as a whole entity and measure its entire outcome. These methods focus on everything that can affect the overall brand equity. They analyze the loyalty of a brand’s customer base, marketing communication, distribution channels, and points of similarity and differentiation that set the brand apart from its competitors.

Holistic methods are ideal for determining the financial value and the utility value of the brand. The focus is on brand preference rather than the customer’s response.

A particular holistic method, the residual method, only focuses on brand equity after it removes physical attributes of the brand from the equation. Furthermore, the evaluation holistic approach only focuses on the financial aspect of the marketing programmes merger/acquisition programmes, sponsorships, fundraisers, etc.

Valuation approaches this will place the final value on the brand equity for accounting purposes, mergers, and acquisitions.

Both methods are effective, although they focus on different features. The comparative methods focus on measuring brand equity through customer response, while the holistic methods take on a different approach and measure customer preference. However, both types of methods can be used as good indicators of future ROI.

There are two types of method employed to measure brand equity at source. These two methods are qualitative research methods and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research methods are ideal for measuring brand association where in consumer perceptions towards brand are captured. Quantitative research methods are perfect to understand brand awareness within consumer.

Both above mention methods are only able to capture and measure one dimension of brand equity at a time. But brand equity is multi-dimensional and therefore it is important to measure each as it will help in taking tactical as well as strategically important decision.

Comparative methods and holistic methods are designed to directly analyze brand equity. Comparative methods tend to analyze effects of consumer perception towards brand in respect to marketing programs, in terms of change in brand awareness. Holistic methods are designed to analyze the total effect of brand equity. These methods will provide necessary tools to measure outcome of brand equity. Consumer bases brand equity will lead to loyal customer base, point of differentiation against competitors get better margins, more acceptances of marketing communication, strong standing in distribution channel and also support any form of brand extension.

Comparative methods are research methods which measure brand equity associated with brand association and high level of brand awareness. Comparative methods are again of different types depending on usage of marketing. Brand based comparative methods looks to measure consumer response against same marketing program for different brands. Marketing based comparative method looks to measure consumer response for same brand under different marketing program. Conjoint comparative method looks to combine both brand based comparative method and marketing based comparative method. Each method has its application and drawbacks.

Brand based comparative method, as mentioned, tries to examine consumer’s response to identical marketing response to different brand in the same product category. This could be competitor’s brand, any non-existing brand or preferred brand in that category. A classic example of such comparative method is experiment conducted by Larry Percy; in which consumer were ask to map beer taste and preference. In one first instance brand name were disclosed whereas on second instance brand name was not disclosed. Consumer showed more loyalty when brand name was disclosed. Brand based method really isolated true value of brand name and this concept especially holds true when there is a change in marketing program from past efforts.

Marketing based method tries to understand consumer response under different marketing promotions. Here focus is to understand how much influence marketing program has on brand performance. One such experiment would be to understand consumer response at different price levels; this will reveal level of tolerance before consumer switch to another brand. Marketing based method would also be effective in understanding consumer response to similar marketing program across various geographical locations. The main advantage of marketing based method is that it can be applicable to any marketing program. However drawback of this method is that it is difficult to separate whether consumer preference is towards the brand or product category in general, meaning the price premium discovered may applicable to other brand in similar product category also.

Conjoint method allows simultaneously study of brand as well as marketing program. This method also employs statistical calculation making it possible to study many attributes or association at one time. Disadvantage of this method is that too much experimentation will may increase consumer expectation with respect to the brand.

Holistic method is used to determine financial value or definite utility value of the brand. Holistic method looks to measure consumer brand preference over consumer brand response. Residual holistic approach measures brand equity after subtracting physical attributes of the brand. Valuation holistic approach looks to measure brand equity in financial term which is important during valuation of whole firm in activities of merger/acquisition, fund raising etc.

Comparative method and Holistic method are employed to measure benefit of consumer based brand equity. Comparative method measures consumer response where as holistic method measure consumer brand consumer preference. These methods are relevant to calculate return of investment for marketing activities.