Brand Resonance &

Brand Value Chain

 Models to be Discussed
• Brand Resonance Model: Describes how to create intense, active loyalty relationships
with customers.
• The model considers how brand positioning affects what consumers think, feel, and do and the degree
to which they resonate or connect with a brand.
• The Brand value chain model is a means by which marketers can trace the value
creation process for their brands to better understand the financial impact of their
marketing expenditures and investments.
Building A Strong Brand: The Four Steps of Brand Building
• The brand resonance model looks at building a brand as a sequence of steps, each of which is
contingent on successfully achieving the objectives of the previous one. The steps are as follows:
• Step 1: Ensure identification of the brand with customers and an association of the brand in
customers’ minds with a specific product class, product benefit, or customer need.
• Who are you? (brand identity)
• Step 2: Firmly establish the totality of brand meaning in the minds of customers by
strategically linking a host of tangible and intangible brand associations.
• What are you? (brand meaning)
• Step 3: Elicit the proper customer responses to the brand.
• What about you? What do I think or feel about you? (brand responses)
• Step 4: Convert brand responses to create brand resonance and an intense, active loyalty
relationship between customers and the brand.
• What about you and me? What kind of association and how much of a connection would
I like to have with you? (brand relationships)
Figure 3-1: Brand Resonance Pyramid
Figure 3-2: Subdimensions of Brand Building Blocks
 Brand Salience
• Achieving the right brand identity means creating brand salience with
customers
• Brand salience measures various aspects of the awareness of the brand
(recall and recognize) and how easily and often the brand is evoked under
various situations or circumstances [E.g. think about online cab booking
services, e.g. Uber, Ola, etc.]
• The depth of brand awareness measures how likely it is for a brand
element to come to mind, and the ease with which it does so
• The breadth of brand awareness measures the range of purchase and
usage situations in which the brand element comes to mind
• Product Category Structure: How product categories are organized in
memory.
• Marketers assume that products are grouped at varying levels of
specificity and can be organized in a hierarchical fashion
An Example of Product Hierarchy:
Questions to be asked to measure Brand Salience
 Brand Performance
• Brand Performance describes how well the product or service meets
customers’ functional needs
• Measures brand on objective assessments of quality
• Checks if the brand satisfies utilitarian, aesthetic, and economic
customer needs and wants
• Five important types of attributes and benefits that often underlie brand
performance are [E.g. think about a laptop brand]:
• Primary ingredients and supplementary features
• Product reliability, durability, and serviceability
• Service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy
• Style and design
• Price
Questions to be asked to measure Brand Performance
 Brand Imagery
• Brand imagery depends on the extrinsic properties of a product or
service, including the ways in which the brand attempts to meet
customers’ psychological or social needs.
• Many kinds of intangibles can be linked to a brand; the four main
ones are:
• User profiles- Type of person or organization who uses the brand
• Purchase and usage situations- Under what conditions or
situations consumers can or should buy and use this brand
• Personality and values- Brands may take on personality traits or
human values
• History, heritage, and user experiences
Questions to be asked to measure Brand Imagery
 Brand Judgments
• Brand Judgments are customers’ personal opinions about and evaluations of a
brand, which consumers form by putting together all the different brand
performance and imagery associations
• Four types of particularly important brand judgments are about:
• Quality- Defined by specific attributes and benefits of a brand
• Credibility- Describes the extent to which customers see the brand as
credible in terms of:
• Perceived expertise, i.e. competent, innovative, and a market leader
• Trustworthiness, i.e. dependable, keeps customer interests in mind
• Likability, i.e. fun, interesting, worth spending time with
• Consideration- Depends on the extent to which strong and favorable brand
associations can be created
• Superiority- Measures extent to which customers view the brand as unique
and better than other brands
Questions to be asked to measure Brand Judgments
 Brand Feelings
• Brand Feelings are customers’ emotional responses and reactions to a brand
• Six important types of brand-building feelings:
1. Warmth
2. Fun
3. Excitement
4. Security
5. Social approval
6. Self-respect
• These six feelings can be divided into two broad categories:
• The first three types of feelings are experiential and immediate, increasing in
level of intensity
• The latter three types of feelings are private and enduring, increasing in level
of gravity.
Questions to be asked to measure Brand Feelings
 Brand Resonance
• Brand Resonance describes the nature of the relationship and the extent to which
customers feel in sync with the brand
• Resonance is characterized in terms of two dimensions:
• Intensity: The depth of the psychological bond that customers have with the
brand
• The level of activity: It is engendered by this loyalty (repeat purchase rates and the
extent to which customers seek out brand information, events, and other loyal
customers)
• These two dimensions of brand resonance into four categories:
• Behavioral loyalty: Repeat purchases and the amount or share of category volume
attributed to the brand
• Attitudinal attachment: Viewing the brand as something special
• Sense of community: Social phenomenon in which customers feel affiliation with
others associated with the brand
• Active engagement: Willing to invest time, energy, money, or other resources
beyond those expended during purchase or consumption
Brand Resonance (Cont….)
• Brand resonance and the relationships consumers have
with brands have two dimensions:
• Intensity: It measures the strength of the attitudinal
attachment and sense of community
• Activity: It tells us how frequently the consumer
buys and uses the brand, as well as engages in other
activities not related to purchase and consumption.
Questions to be asked
to measure Brand
Resonance
 Brand-Building Implications
• The brand resonance model reinforces a number of important branding tenets, six of
which are particularly noteworthy.
• Customers own the brand
• Don’t take shortcuts with brands
• Brands should have a duality – Appeal to both head and heart
• Brands should have richness – To score on various dimensions of the brand
resonance model
• Brand resonance provides important focus
• Customer networks strengthen brand resonance
 The Brand Value Chain
• Enables us to better understand the ROI of marketing investments
• The brand value chain is a structured approach to assess the sources and outcomes of
brand equity and the manner by which marketing activities create brand value.
 Value Stages in The Brand Value Chain
• Value Stage 1 – Marketing Program Investment: The brand value creation process
begins when the firm invests in a marketing program targeting actual or potential
customers.
• Value Stage 2 – Customer Mind-Set: The associated marketing activity then affects the
customer mind-set- what customers know and feel about the brand—as reflected by the
brand resonance model.
• Value Stage 3 – Market Performance: This mind-set, across a broad group of
customers, produces the brand’s performance in the marketplace—how much and when
customers purchase, the price that they pay, and so forth.
• Value Stage 4 – Shareholder Value: Finally, the investment community considers this
market performance—and other factors such as purchase price in acquisitions—to arrive
at an assessment of shareholder value in general and a value of the brand in particular.
 Multipliers in The Brand Value Chain
• The model also assumes that a number of linking factors intervene between these stages.
• These linking factors determine the extent to which value created at one stage transfers or
“multiplies” to the next stage.
• Three sets of multipliers moderate the transfer between the marketing program and the
three value stages:
1. The Program Quality Multiplier
2. The Marketplace Conditions multiplier
3. The investor sentiment multiplier
 Understanding Value Stages & Multipliers
in The Brand Value Chain
• Brand value creation begins with marketing activity by the firm, which includes any marketing program
investment that can contribute to brand value development
• Thus, Value Stage 1 – Marketing Program Investment, includes: Product research, Development,
and design, Intermediary support, Marketing communications and Employee training. (Chs.-4-8)
• The ability of the marketing program to affect the customer mind-set will depend on its quality
• Hence, Program Quality Multiplier, plays a role here. It should have the following qualities:
• Distinctiveness – Uniqueness, differentiating
• Relevance – Meaningful to the customers
• Integrated – Combination & continuity of all aspects
• Value – Profitability
• Excellence – Fulfil highest standards
• The above points could be remembered by acronym DRIVE
 Understanding Value Stages & Multipliers
in The Brand Value Chain (Cont….)
• Value Stage 2 – Customer Mind-Set: Includes everything that exists in the minds of customers
with respect to a brand: thoughts, feelings, experiences, images, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.
• A shorter “5 As” list can highlight important measures of the customer mind-set as suggested
by the resonance model:
1. Brand awareness – Extent & ease of recall & recognition (Salience)
2. Brand associations – Strength, favorability & uniqueness of attributes and benefits of
brand (Performance & Imagery)
3. Brand attitudes (Judgement & Feelings)
4. Brand attachment (Resonance)
5. Brand activity (Resonance)
 Understanding Value Stages & Multipliers
in The Brand Value Chain (Cont….)
• Marketplace Conditions Multiplier: The extent to which value created in the minds of
customers affects market performance depends on factors beyond the individual customer.
Three such factors are:
• 1. Competitive superiority: How effective are the marketing investments of competing
brands?
• 2. Channel and other intermediary support: How much brand reinforcement and selling
effort is being put forth by various marketing partners?
• 3. Customer size and profile: How many and what types of customers are attracted to
the brand? Are they profitable?
 Understanding Value Stages & Multipliers
in The Brand Value Chain (Cont….)
• Value Stage 3 – Market Performance: The customer mind-set affects how customers react in the
marketplace in six main ways.
1. Price Premium- How much extra are customers willing to pay for a comparable product because
of its brand?
2. Price elasticities- How much does their demand increase or decrease when the price rises or falls?
3. Market share- Measures the success of the marketing program in driving brand sales.
4. Brand expansion- The success of the brand in supporting line and category extensions and new-
product launches into related categories.
5. Cost structure- Reduced marketing program expenditures thanks to the prevailing customer
mind-set.
6. Taken together, these five outcomes lead to brand profitability, the sixth outcome.
 Understanding Value Stages & Multipliers
in The Brand Value Chain (Cont….)
• Investor Sentiment Multiplier: Includes factors considered by Financial Analysts and
Investors to arrive at brand valuations and investment decisions. Among them are the
following:
• Market dynamics: What are the dynamics of the financial markets as a whole (interest
rates, investor sentiment, supply of capital)?
• Growth potential: What is the growth potential or prospects for the brand and the
industry in which it operates?
• Risk profile: What is the risk profile for the brand? How vulnerable is the brand to the
facilitating and inhibiting factors?
• Brand contribution: How important is the brand to the firm’s brand portfolio?
 Understanding Value Stages &
Multipliers in The Brand Value
Chain (Cont….)

• Value Stage 4 – Shareholder Value: Based on all available current and forecasted information
about a brand, as well as many other considerations, the financial marketplace formulates opinions
and assessments that have very direct financial implications for the brand value from the point of
view of the shareholder.
• Three particularly important indicators are:
1. The stock price
2. The price/earnings multiple
3. Overall market capitalization for the firm.