Customer Based Brand equity

Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) is a way of assessing the value of a brand in customers' minds. Branding can increase profitability in large and small-scale businesses by filling in gaps in customers' knowledge and by offering assurances. The CBBE model centers that value in the minds of customers. It compels businesses to define their brands according to a defined hierarchy of qualitative, or commonsense, customer impressions. These impressions are often laid out in pyramid-shaped levels; they consist of salience, performance, imagery, meaning, judgments, feelings, and resonance.

CBBE Pyramid

Brand Salience: It's means broad awareness of the brand. The first step in building a brand equity is the brand awareness that contains two parts; brand recognitioin (how easily customer identify a brand after exposing some cue or a physical product) and brand recall (how easily customer recall the brand without showing a cue while making purchase decision or thinking the product category). We must consider both the breadth and depth of the brand awareness; the depth is that how likely it is for a brand element to come to mind and a breadth is the range of purchase and the situations in which the brand comes to mind of the consumers. A brand we easily

recall has a deeper level of brand awareness and breadth is related to the product knowledge in the memory of the consumer. So companies must consider or develop the product category structure for the brand or product hierarchy because customers always make a hiararchical decisio while purchasing some product or service, the first thing comes his/her mind is the product category then he/she goes further. So it is very important that consumers consider our brand in their desired product category while making purchased decision. Brand performance: It is describes how well the product or service meets customers' more functional needs. Brand performance directly related with the features of the product that differentiate it from others. Often, the strongest brand positioning relies on performance advantages of the brand. Five important types of attributes and benefits often underlie brand performance, as follows. Primary ingredients and supplementary features

Product reliability, durability, and serviceability Service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy Style and design Price Customers view performance or measure performance in three ways: Reliability; mesures consistency of performance over time and from perchase to purchase, Durability; means the expected economic life of the product, and Serviceability; the ease of reparing the product if needed. Brand Imagery: It is the second part of brand meaning and also called the emotions part of brand meaning (Brand performance is the logic part). It mainly depends on the intrinsic properties of the product or service, including the way how well the brand attempts to meet the customers' psychological or social needs. Imagery refers to more intangible aspects of the brand, and customers can form imagery associations directly from their own experiences or through advertising or some other sopurce of information indirectly. Intangible aspects of the brand are as: User profiles Purchase and usage situation Personality and values History, heritage and experiences Dempgraphics factors (gender, age, race, income, family) affect the first two types of aspects while pyschographics affect on the personality and values.

Brand judjements: It is the third stage of the CBBE model which as also two parts or routes; brand judjement and brand feelings. Brand judjements are customers' personal opinions about and evaluations of the brand, which customers form by putting together all the different brand performance and imagery associations. Customers usually make four types of judgements as:

Brand Quality; brand attitudes generally depend on specific attributes and benefits of the brand. Brand Credibility; judgements about the company or organization behind the brand. Customers may seen that wether the brand is competitive, innovative and market leader. The company always consider customers' priorities in mind and create interest and fun so that customers enjoying while consuming the brand. Brand Consideration; customers think or consider the brand while making purchase decisions. Brand Superiority; customers view the brand as unique and better that other. Brand Feelings: These are customers' emotional responses and reactions to the brand. The emotions evoked by a brand can become so strongly associated that they are accessible during product consumption or use. The following are six important types of brand-building feelings. Warmth; the makes consumers feel a sense of calm or peacefulness. Fun; makes cosumers feel amused, lighthearted, joyous, playful, cheerful, and so on. Excitement; makes consumers feel energised and they feel something special. Security; the brand produces a feeling of safety, comfort, and self-assurance. Social approval; consumers feel that others look favorably on their experience, behavior and so on. brand

Self-respect; consumers feel a sense of pride, accomplishment, or of the brand. Consumers while making purchasing decisions or choosing the brand, always use between two approaches or listen the brain (make the decision) in two ways: Cognitive-based approach (logics)

Affective-based approach (feelings)

If we look the above fig. CBBE pyramid, we have seen that there are two paths or ways from brand salience to brand resonance and consumer always choose one from them. Cognitive-based approach Brand salience Brand performance Brand judgements Brand resonance Consumers mainly focus on the performance of the brand and give importance to the features and benefits of the brand (tangible parts) while making decisions. So marketers msut consider the needs of customers who uses this approach while developing brands. Examples: Haleeb (Sab se garha doodh), (chai bnaye khub) company focuses on the features and benefits of the brand. Mobile brands, focus on attributes and features mainly Hightech products that must demonstrate features by the company Affective-based approach Brand salience Brand imagery Brand feelings Brand resonance Consumers more focus or interested in intangible aspects of the brand and attach the brand and develop feelings from their experiences. Marketers must focus on intangible aspects of the brand if they plan to touch/play with the emotions of consumers. Examples: Coca-Cola uses the emotional approach while attracting consumers and so successful that it has capture the first position in the top brands' ranking of the world and has brand equity about 67 billion dollars. Serf Exel (daag nahi tu seekhna nahi), (daag tu achay hotay hain) touchs the emotions of the customers by developing compaigns that contain fun, exicetment and ability to do something new Supreme tea ( yahi tu hai wo apna pun) communicates thefamily bonding Dew (dew na kia tu phr kia jia) creates excitement (kar guzarne ki pyaas) fulfillment. Brand Resonance: The final step of the model focuses on the ultimate relationship and level of the identification that the customer has with the brand. Brand resonance describes the nature of the relationship.

Behavior loyalty; in terms of repeat purchase and the amout or share of category volume attributed to the brand. Attitudinal attachment; customers should go beyond having a positive attitude to viewing the brand as something special in a broader context Sense of community; customers feel kinship or affiliation with other people associated with the brand. Active engagement; brand loyalty occurs when customers are engaged, or willing to invest time, energy, money or other resources in the brand beyond those expended during purchase or consumption

Choosing Brand Elements to Build Brand Equity

Brand equity is the result of a process which leads to a creation of a unique and distinct brand identity. These brand identifiers are referred to as brand identifiers. Brand identification can be done through various ways; for example, Unique Selling Proposition (USP), Logo, Style, Brand Ambassador, Etc. Brand elements facilitate the process of consumer brain mapping and play a key role in building brand equity. Consumers over period of time are able to identify the brand through brand elements. The idea is to develop brand elements, which can properly communicate about brand and its point of difference from competing brands. There are various factors, which add to a good brand element. Brand element should be such that they can have a great recall power; for example, half eaten apple, it steadily identifies with brand Apple. These sort of logo stays in memory for long time. So the brand element should be such that it can be easily recalled. Another factor is significance and application, is brand element conveying either of this two for consumer? Significance here means that brand element should be suitable for that given product category. Consumer should not be left guessing about brand by looking at the element. Another factor for a good brand element is design and appearance, of course it depends on product category company is operating (industrial product v/s consumer products). For example, Apple products I-pod and Mac, design and appearance are such; anyone would be attracted towards them.

Another factor is the application of brand element. For example, Virgin, this brand is applicable to airlines as much as to financial services, on other hand, Toys r us, this brand can only be valid to sell toys, games, etc. In this globalize world it is very important to respect diversity and culture. A word or symbol can have various meanings, for example, Swastika symbol is associated with Nazi's movement but in India symbol means luck. So the choice of word or symbol should not be without research. Another factor is flexibility; an openness to change. This flexibility could be in the form of demographic, society, etc., for example, TV ads during the super bowl show Asian, African American, Hispanic drinking beer together, even though football is all American game. The reason been American society has a good mix of people from different race and culture but has a strong passion for the game. Ads15 years never showed this kind of mix of different race and culture. The last important factor is intellectual property rights, brand element should have a legal cover from piracy and copiers in which countries they operate.

The most elementary part of brand element to achieve brand equity is the brand name. For example, in meeting a stranger, a formal introduction starts with name, so that next time you see person again you greet her by name. Similarly brand name can convey much about brand itself, example, Pepsi-cola or common name Pepsi. Brand name is easy to remember and recall making pronunciation easy for nonEnglish speaker. Brand name could also be suggestive into what brand is offering, for example, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The brand name itself is sufficient in conveying that for fried chicken KFC is the brand. Another elementary part is the brand slogan because it can again convey the whole existence of brand. For example, Wal-Marts slogan is Save Money Live Better; it conveys lot about offering at brand stores. But again as time change slogan also have to evolve. Earlier Wal-Marts slogan was Always Low Price, but in tough economic times the new slogan is more relevant. Packaging also plays important part as brand element in building brand equity. For example Kelloggs cereals; its packaging as evolved responding to modern needs (healthy diet) to new technologies. It can be easily concluded from above the importance of brand element in creation of brand equity. Various elements like brand name, packaging, slogan symbol individually and collectively play important in creating long lasting impression and relation with consumer.