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The world is increasingly
cluttered with brands – some researchers suggest people
may be able to recognise as many as 10,000 of them. Yet, despite
the claims of books such as 'No Logo', evidence indicates
that most brands enjoy rather low levels of consumer commitment.
Our ACNielsen | Winning Brand’s normative database reveals
that the mean Brand Equity across Asia Pacific is 1.87 (on
a 0–10 scale, where 0 is effectively a ‘generic’
product or service, with no brand value). As the following
chart shows, only a very few brands are ‘stand-out’,
ie able to command great loyalty and price at a huge premium.
It’s clear,
therefore, that building strong brand commitment is hard work.
The question is then, what distinguishes these standout brands
from the rest? Traditionally, the answer to that question
has concentrated on positioning and imagery. However, Winning
Brands modelling of Asia Pacific brands reveals that, while
perceived product and image benefits are important, they are
only part of the story (indeed, we estimate that they account
for only around half the total variation in our models). What
emerges is a picture in which not only the ‘content’
of what the consumer knows about the brand, but also simple
‘strength of awareness’, and habitual usage seem
to play a large part in deciding a brand is ‘good’.
Our research also shows that when image and benefits do play
a role, it isn’t really a situation of people rationally
considering all the differences between brands:
- People distinguish between brands on few, rather general,
criteria – not a mass of specific attributes
- Typically two factors account for 66% of variance accounted
for by brand associations. These big factors are often holistic
assessments of ‘product quality’, or general
affirmations of brand reliability (trust, reputation, etc)
- More specific imagery attributes account for less variation
in brand equity.
These findings
fit with research in cognitive psychology, which suggests
that people base much of their decision-making on a few ‘simple’
mental rules, and that, of all the simple rules: ‘familiarity’
is one of the big ones. In some cases, just looking at a brand
on the supermarket shelf can vastly increase consideration:
a recent academic study showed that simply having looked at
a brand on a shelf increased consideration of that brand by
30–120%! This shows the importance of visual impact
and getting packaging right.
If habit, familiarity and ‘simplistic decision-rules’
are key elements of the process for consumers identifying
‘good’ brands, then what does this imply for marketing?
Well if people are often buying on the basis of past habits
and general familiarity, it tends to emphasise the importance
of brand recognition, visual impact and doing enough to make
people ‘sit up and take notice’ and break their
usual habitual practices.
This in turn means that issues of pricing, promotion and packaging
are important not only in terms of making quick sales, but
also for longer-term brand building.
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