Aaker's Model Of Brand Equity

Keller (2002) argues that, from the company’s point of view, branding is the ability creates the differences and equipping products with the power of brand equity. Farquhar (1989) explains brand equity as the added value to the firm, the trade, or the consumer with which a given brand gives a product. Aaker (1991) mention that there are liabilities and assets linked to the brand and that these brand assets can provide value to both the company and customers in form of brand equity. He describes the different ways as:

• Helps the customers interpret process and store large amounts of information about products and brands.

• Affect customers´ confidence in purchasing decisions, because of previous experience with the brand.

• Attract new customers

How much brand equity you equip your product depends on how well you do your branding. To understand how to equip your product with brand equity it is therefore important to look at elements and factors that produce brand equity to the brand and the products. Aaker (1991) points to brand awareness, brand associations and brand loyalty as three important concepts that generate brand equity. These three concepts will now be discussed further to gain more insight in brand equity used when developing the model. This will enable us to later in the theoretical framework go deeper into branding with theories about brand identity, challenges with branding and how this should be used in a

What marketers try to achieve is that their brand is “top of mind” (first that customer’s recall) or dominant (only brand recalled) (Aaker, 1996). Keller (1997) mention that a brand that can be easily recalled has deeper brand awareness than a brand that only can be recognized (Keller, 1997).

Advantages

There are many advantages of creating high level of brand awareness, according to Keller (1997). He continues by stating it is important that the customer is considering a product when making a purchase where the need can be fulfilled by the brand. The customers usually have a few brands in mind when making a purchase. The customers have a consideration set of brands; therefore a higher level of awareness will affect choices of these brands even though there are no associations to the brands.

Connecting a brand to a positive association is a way to enhance the brand awareness; if this is done effectively it could generate brand equity. The next section will discuss about the concept of brand associations and how this could bring value to the firm.

2.2.2 Brand