Week 1 Branding readings
Reflections on customer-based brand equity: perspectives, progress,
and priorities by Keller
Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity,^ published in the Journal
of Marketing in 1993, was one of the early thought pieces and review papers on branding in the field.
Written to be a comprehensive bridge between the theory and practice of branding, it has received a
large number of citations and several awards through the years. Here, I look back at that article and
provide some perspective as to how it was developed, highlighting some of its main contributions. I
also outline some of my subsequent related branding research, as well as that of others. Finally, I
consider some future research priorities in branding, putting emphasis on the online and digital
developments that have occurred since the publication of the article.
How it happened
The branding area was just emerging as more broadly important, and there was increased interest in
the topic by both academics and practitioners. I became fascinated by the notion that brand names
and packages are often insufficient cues to advertising at the point-of-purchase and more explicit
cues à la Mikey may be necessary. That model provided much inspiration and direction to my
subsequent
advertising research efforts and led to 2-3 related research streams where I explored additional
effects of ad retrieval cues (Keller 1991a; Forehand and Keller 1996; Keller et al. 1998), as well as the
effects of coordinated media campaigns (e.g., print reinforcement and radio replay of TV ads) (Edell
and Keller 1989, 1999), competitive ad interference (Keller 1991b), and other advertising topics.
Most important contributions
This focus reflected my basic philosophy about branding. I have always felt that consumers and
customers are at the heart of marketing, as reflected by the simple definition of marketing as
satisfying consumer needs and wants better than competitors.^ I chose to use the term customer-
based brand equity^ because I wanted to distinguish my own more micro, consumer-focused view of
brand equity from other more macro, financial-oriented views of brand equity.
As I outlined in the article, the definition of customer-based brand equity that I proposed – the
differential effect that brand knowledge has on customer response to brand marketing activity^—
was characterized by three dimensions that I felt were critical to the theoretical development of the
concept: 1) differential effects created by a brand; 2) brand knowledge— defined very broadly as any
type of mental brand association— as the source of the differential effects and 3) response to a wide
variety of different marketing and other variables for the brand as the basis or outcomes of those
differential effects.
Building customer-based brand equity was defined in terms of three activities: Choosing brand
identities or elements; designing and implementing marketing activities themselves; and leveraging
secondary associations by linking the brand to some other entity—a person, place or thing.
Two approaches to measuring customer-based brand equity were suggested: an indirect approach
which focused on potential sources of brand equity by measuring brand knowledge, and a direct
approach that attempted to actually measure the differential effect created by that brand knowledge
on consumer response to different aspects of the brand’s marketing program.
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,Six guidelines for managing customer-based brand equity were identified: emphasizing the
importance of
taking a broad and long-term view of marketing a brand; specifying the desired consumer knowledge
structures and core benefits for a brand; considering a wide range of traditional and nontraditional
advertising, promotion, and other marketing options; coordinating the marketing options that were
chosen; conducting tracking studies and controlled experiments; and evaluating potential extension
candidates.
Brand knowledge
At the very core of customer-based brand equity is the concept of brand knowledge. The CBBE article
offered a very simple taxonomy of brand knowledge that broke the concept down into two key
components: 1) Brand awareness, consisting of brand recall and recognition, and 2) brand image,
characterized by the strength, favorability and uniqueness of different kinds of attribute and benefit
associations for the brand.
Articulating brand knowledge
A JCR article (Keller 2003) outlined in more detail the specific dimensions of brand knowledge in
terms of: Awareness, attributes, benefits, images, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and experiences. The
central thesis to that paper was that it was critical to develop broader perspectives towards brand
knowledge given that: 1) marketing activity creates or affects multiple dimensions of brand
knowledge and 2) multiple dimensions of brand knowledge, in turn, influence consumer response to
marketing activity.
Brand resonance model
Another important follow-up was the development of the brand resonance model which focused on
key dimensions of brand knowledge and how they affected resulting consumerbrand relationships.
The resonance model outlines a series of branding stages and building blocks to profile how
consumers form relationships with brands.
The concept of brand salience, defined in terms of breadth and depth of brand awareness, is
introduced as the base level of the model. Brand salience depends on the extent to which the brand
is thought of easily and often—at all the right times, in all the right places, and in all the right ways.
Even by just acknowledging the importance of brand awareness at both purchase and consumption,
this was a much richer view of brand awareness than the straight-forward brand recognition and top-
of-mind awareness measures often employed in industry, or even some academic research, such as
with the original CBBE article. Building again on the original CBBE theorizing, the resonance model
also draws two key distinctions in its next two levels up, in terms of brand image and brand
responses. The first important distinction is in the duality of brands, both in terms of tangible and
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,intangible associations, related to performance and imagery respectively at the brand image level,
and in terms of the rational and emotional responses that either type of information might evoke as
brand responses at the next level up. With this structure in mind, the model highlights that going up^
the left-hand side of the model of the pyramid can be viewed as a more rational route^ to brand-
building and going up the right-hand side can be seen as more of an emotional route.^ The model
acknowledges that strong brands go up both sides of the pyramid, while also recognizing the
importance of cross-over effects,^ such that performance associations affect feelings and imagery
associations affect judgments. A second important distinction that is made in the resonance model is
in the notion of points-of-difference (PODs) and points-of-parity (POPs) as a basis of positioning. The
realization that brands need to both have advantages (PODs) in some areas and break even in other
areas (POPs) with respect to a well-defined set of competitors has been enlightening to many
practitioners in particular.
Brand resonance is defined in terms of the extent to which a consumer feels he or she is Bin synch^
with a brand. It is reflected by the level of intensity and activity in the relationship the brand
engenders with consumers and is conceptualized in terms of four components: behavioral loyalty,
attitudinal attachment, sense of community and active engagement.
The model describes how marketers need to go beyond mere repeat buying (behavioral loyalty) so
that consumers create strong bonds with the brand (attitudinal attachment), as well as to each other
and the company as a whole (sense of community). An especially useful concept, active engagement
is defined to be when customers are willing to invest time, energy, money, or any other personal
resources in the brand beyond those expended during purchase or consumption of the brand.
Brand value chain model
The brand value chain model was designed to help marketers trace the value creation process to
better understand the financial impact of marketing expenditures and investments to create loyal
customers and strong brands. First, brand value creation begins when the firm targets actual or
potential customers by investing in a marketing program to develop the brand, including product
research, development, and design; trade or intermediary support; marketing communications; and
so on. This marketing activity changes customers’ mindsets—what customers think and feel and
everything that becomes linked to the brand, as reflected by the various components of the brand
resonance model. Next, these customers’ mindsets affect buying behavior and how they respond to
all subsequent marketing activity – pricing, channels, communications and the product itself— and
the resulting market share and profitability of the brand. Finally, the investment community
considers this market performance of the brand to assess shareholder value in general and the value
of a brand in particular.
Three multipliers or filters moderate the transfer between these four value stages:
1) program multiplier is a function of the quality of the program investment and determines the
marketing program’s ability to actually affect the customer mindset; 2) The customer multiplier
depends on factors such as competitive superiority, channel and other intermediary support, while
customer size and profile determine the extent to which value created in the minds and hearts of
customers affects market performance; and 3) The market multiplier depends, in part, on the actions
of financial analysts and investors and determines the extent to which the value shown by the
market performance of a brand is manifested in shareholder value.
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, Brand extensions
Highlighted three factor model of extension evaluations:
1. How salient parent brand associations are in the minds of consumers in the extension context,
i.e., what associations come to mind about the parent brand when consumers think of the proposed
extension and the strength of those associations.
2. How favorable any inferred associations are in the extension context, i.e., whether these
associations suggest the type of product or service that the brand extension would be, and whether
consumers view these associations as good or bad in the extension context.
3. How unique any inferred associations are in the extension category, i.e., how these associations
compare with those about competitors. Building on these notions, later research described a four
factor model of the feedback effects of an extension on parent brand knowledge and evaluations.
Brand extensions
For example, by making brand extensions seem more concrete, Meyvis et al. (2012) showed how the
presence of visual information and availability of comparison brands could create a more concrete
mindset towards a brand extension and shift consumers’ preferences from extensions of betterfitting
brands to extensions from higher quality brands. For example, Spiggle et al. (2012) developed a
brand extension authenticity (BEA) scale that focuses on consumer perceptions of the Blegitimacy
and cultural contiguity^ of brand extensions. Specifically, they propose four dimensions of brand
extension authenticity: 1) maintaining brand standards and style, 2) honoring brand heritage, 3)
preserving brand essence, and 4) avoiding brand exploitation. Brand dilution research, in particular,
considers how the introduction of a new product in some form by a company can adversely affect
the fortunes of existing brands for the company, especially if the new product is branded as an
extension. For example, Lei et al. (2008) showed that the magnitude of spillover between brands in a
portfolio is a function of both the strength and directionality of brand associations, as determined by
the number and salience of associations linked to each brand. They underscore the possibility of
association asymmetry between brands such that a crisis with sub-brand A may not negatively
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