Brand Management – Lecture notes 07.09.

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Session 2 slides:

Nedungadi (1990):

 Shows the importance of awareness and accessibility

- When a brand choice is memory based, it is brand accessibility or salience on that
particular occasion that will determine the composition of the consideration set.
 Recall of a brand must be considered within the frame of reference – the competition
(thus, the category)
 Human memory organization:
- Contributes to the recall of the brand
- Decides the frame of reference (the comparison)
 Main question here: What are the consequences of trying to increase probability of
recall?
- For a brand to be selected in memory-based choice, the consumer must recall that
brand and fail to recall other brands.
 Retrieval:
- Internal and external cues activate LT memory  working memory
 Spreading activation: link to brand node
 Brand accessibility determinants
- Brand node activation
- Brand node link to other active nodes
- Availability of retrieval cues:
o Category
o Brand primes: signs, lists, labels, coupons …
o Attributes
  To be chosen, you need to be considered
 Two stage choice process: consideration, then evaluation
 Evaluation: using attributes etc. of the alternatives
- Heuristics, calculations …
 Changing accessibility  Change consideration set  Change choice – without
changing the evaluation of the target brand or the competitors

Key learnings:

 Awareness is necessary, but not sufficient

 Category  consideration set  choice
 Categories are (usually) context dependent
- Broad awareness = many contexts lead to the brand

Previously:

 Associations:
- Performance and imagery
- Strong – Favourable – Unique
- Spreading activation
 Determinants of accessibility (Wyer, 2008):
- The strength of the association between the information node to be accessed and
other related nodes that have been already activated
- The recency with which the memory node has been acquired and used
- The frequency with which the memory node has been activated
- The amount of cognitive processing of the memory node and linked nodes
Session 3 slides

Definitions:

 Brand associations:
- The memory nodes that directly or indirectly are connected to the brand in the long-
term memory
 Brand image:
- The set of associations linked to the brand
 Brand identity:
- A strategic tool that helps defining the brand image the brand owner wants in the
target group
- Sender has identity  Receiver creates an image

Judgements and Feelings:

 Moving from the seller’s communications to the consumer’s reactions

 Sender  Receiver
 External  Internal

Subdimensions of Brand Building Blocks:

Premises:

 Judgements and feelings are clearly responses

- What is the nature of these reactions?
- Some and more cognitive and “rational”
- Some are more affective, but no less “real”
 Brand managers need to set goals for what responses to stimulate, and then monitor
(measure) the effects
-  if it can’t be measured, it is not actionable
- How can we measure?

Judgment Dimensions – Relatively easy to measure:

 Brand quality:
- Value
- Satisfaction
 Brand credibility:
- Expertise
- Trustworthiness
- Likability
 Brand consideration:
- Relevance
 Brand superiority:
 - Differentiation
 More generally:
- Brand attitudes
- Brand reputation
- Customer satisfaction

Types of feelings:

 Affective feelings:
- Valence, subjective experiences that may or may not be directly related to an object
(moods, emotions)
 Cognitive feelings:
- Associated with thinking and memory processes
- Experiential states that reflect activated content information or accompany
cognitive processes (familiarity, ease-of-retrieval, fit, fluency)
 Bodily feelings:
- Reflections of physical processes such as hunger or pain as well as proprioceptive
feedback such as from arm flexion or extension or from facial expressions

What is Affect?

 Affect:
- Genuine, subjective emotions and moods (e.g., “I’m sad”)
- Rather than thoughts/judgments about specific objects or events (e.g., “Corona
times are a sad chapter in human history)

Moods vs. Emotions:

 Moods:
- A vague sense of feeling good or bad without necessarily knowing quite why
 Emotions:
- More targeted and differentiated (angry, sad, stressed, …)

Dimensions of brand feelings:

 Brand feelings can be divided into two broad categories:

- Experiential – Immediate, short-lived during purchase/consumption
- Enduring – lasting, possibly part of day-to-day life
  Brands should have one, or ideally both, types of feelings

Valence and Arousal:

Examples of Bodily Feelings:

Integral vs. Incidental Feelings

 Integral Feelings: Responses that are genuinely experienced and directly linked to the
object of judgment or decision.
- Experienced through direct exposure to the object itself
- Experienced in response to some representation of the object
o Externally provided (e.g., a TV commercial for a product)
o Internally generated (e.g., thinking about a product)
 Incidental Feelings: Experiences whose source is clearly unconnected to the object to
be evaluated
 Task-related Feelings: Responses that are elicited by the task or process of making
judgments and decisions (e.g., Regret from choosing between two equally pleasant
alternatives)

When do we use feelings?

 Many kinds of feelings

- When do they matter for consumer behaviour?
 We use our feelings more when
- We have experiential motives (Hedonic vs. Utilitarian)
- When the judgement is inherently affective (How happy am I?)
- When making the decision for ourselves (vs. others)
- When we are promotion focused (vs. prevention focused)
- When we trust our feelings from earlier experiences
Can you love a brand?

 Do consumers experience love with respect to brands?

 Similar to other kinds of love?
 Batra et al. (2012): Brand Love

Brand Love (Batra et al. 2012):

Abstract:

Using a grounded theory approach, the authors investigate the nature and consequences of
brand love. Arguing that research on brand love needs to be built on an understanding of how
consumers actually experience this phenomenon, they conduct two qualitative studies to
uncover the different elements (“features”) of the consumer prototype of brand love. Then,
they use structural equations modeling on survey data to explore how these elements can be
modeled as both first-order and higher-order structural models. A higher-order model yields
seven core elements: self–brand integration, passion-driven behaviors, positive emotional
connection, long-term relationship, positive overall attitude valence, attitude certainty and
confidence (strength), and anticipated separation distress. In addition to these seven core
elements of brand love itself, the prototype includes quality beliefs as an antecedent of brand
love and brand loyalty, word of mouth, and resistance to negative information as outcomes.
Both the first-order and higher-order brand love models predict loyalty, word of mouth, and
resistance better, and provide a greater understanding, than an overall summary measure of
brand love. The authors conclude by presenting theoretical and managerial implications.

Important contributions:

 Distinction between love as emotion and love as relationship

 The lesser importance of norms and commitment for loved brands vs. loved others
- ” … [we have a] moral obligation to maintain the relationship even in the face of a
much better alternative. Although respondents may have been resistant to negative
 information about their loved brands, if the poor performance of a loved brand
became undeniable, respondents reported that they would not maintain their love
for the brand.”
 The “prototype” approach

The applicability of interpersonal love theories to brand love. Our respondents often stated
that although they genuinely loved some brands, this was a different form of love than
interpersonal love. Respondents would sometimes compare brand love to interpersonal love in
a way that suggested that the brand love prototype was partially based on their understanding
of interpersonal love but also modified to fit a consumer context. Not surprisingly, the most
widely noted difference in our data was that brand love was often described as a less
important relationship than interpersonal love. However, two other important differences
emerged as well. First, while interpersonal love contained a strong element of altruistic
concern for the beloved, this was not found in brand love. Consumers were concerned with
what the brand could do for them, not what they could do for the brand. Second, in healthy
interpersonal relationships, when we love someone, they return our love through their helpful
behaviors toward us and by occasionally experiencing the love emotion toward us. In contrast,
respondents noted that brands do not experience emotions and therefore could not return a
person’s love in that way (though brands were viewed as returning the consumer’s love when
the brand benefited the consumer; see also Harding and Humphreys 2011).
So, we can love brand

 What about hate?

 Article: Emotions that drive consumers away from brands: Measuring negative
emotions toward brands and their behavioral effects