ACHIEVING BRAND FAMILIARITY IS NOT EASY

Brand familiarity means how well customers recognize and accept a company’s brand

Five levels of brand familiarity

Five levels of brand familiarity are useful for strategy planning: (1) rejection, (2) nonrecognition, (3)
recognition, (4) preference, and (5) insistence.

Brand rejection = The rejection of a brand by a consumer who has negative experience

with it

. Brand rejection means that potential customers won’t buy a brand unless its image is changed

Brand nonrecognition means final consumers don’t recognize a brand at all—even though

intermediaries may use the brand name for identification and inventory control

Brand recognition means that customers remember the brand. This may not seem like much, but it can

be a big advantage if there are many “nothing” brands on the market.

brand preference—which means that target customers usually choose the brand over other brands,

perhaps because of habit or favorable past experience. Brand insistence means customers insist on a

firm’s branded product and are willing to search for it.