Brand Heritage (Simple)

The brand was developed in 1960 by the Albion Group, with more than 50 years of heritage
in caring for even the most sensitive skin, Simple knows that using only the kindest
ingredients pays dividends when it comes to looking and feeling good. The 50 years of
heritage allows Simple to strengthen an emotional connection to its customers that have
been with the brand for a long time. The connection to the past will create a nostalgia which
will lead to more sales as customers will reminisce the brand from the past. Having good
brand heritage will allow Simple to charge a premium price as it is validated by the heritage
but does not necessarily mean they have to. Ultimately brand heritage is a story telling
device.

Notes 67-80

Customer based equity

The CBBE concept approaches brand equity from the perspective of the consumer— whether
the consumer is an individual or an organization, or an existing or prospective customer.
Understanding the needs and wants of consumers and organizations and devising products and
programs to satisfy them are at the heart of successful marketing.

We formally define customer-based brand equity as the differential effect that brand knowledge
has on customer response to the marketing of that brand. A brand has positive customer-based
brand equity when customers react more favourably to a product and the way it is marketed
when the brand is identified than when it is not (say, when the product is attributed to a fictitious
name or is unnamed). Thus, customers might be more accepting of a new brand extension for a
brand with positive customer-based brand equity,

Brand equity as a bridge

Thus, according to the customer-based brand equity concept, consumer knowledge drives the
differences that manifest themselves in terms of brand equity. This realization has important
managerial implications. For one thing, brand equity provides marketers with a vital strategic
bridge from their past to their future.

Brands as a Reflection of the Past. Marketers should consider all the dollars spent on
manufacturing and marketing products each year not so much as expenses but as investments
in what consumers saw, heard, learned, felt, and experienced about the brand. If not properly
designed and implemented, these expenditures may not be good investments, in that they may
not have created the right knowledge structures in consumers’ minds, but we should consider
them investments nonetheless.

Brands as a Direction for the Future. The brand knowledge that marketers create over time
dictates appropriate and inappropriate future directions for the brand. Consumers will decide,
based on their brand knowledge, where they think the brand should go and grant permission (or
not) to any marketing action or program. Thus, the true value and future prospects of a brand
rest with consumers and their knowledge about the brand.

Making a brand strong

From the perspective of the CBBE concept, brand knowledge is the key to creating brand equity,
because it creates the differential effect that drives brand equity. What marketers need, then, is
an insightful way to represent how brand knowledge exists in consumer memory. An influential
model of memory developed by psychologists is helpful for this purpose. The associative
network memory model views memory as a network of nodes and connecting links, in which
nodes represent stored information or concepts, and links represent the strength of association
between the nodes

Using the associative network memory model, let’s think of brand knowledge as consisting of a
brand node in memory with a variety of associations linked to it. Brand knowledge has two
components: brand awareness and brand image. Brand awareness is related to the strength of
the brand node or trace in memory, which we can measure as the consumer’s ability to identify
the brand under different conditions.

Sources of brand equity

What causes brand equity to exist? How do marketers create it? Customer-based brand equity
occurs when the consumer has a high level of awareness and familiarity with the brand and
holds some strong, favourable, and unique brand associations in memory. In some cases, brand
awareness alone is enough to create favourable consumer response, for example, in low-
involvement decisions when consumers are willing to base their choices on mere familiarity.

Brand awareness

Brand recognition is consumers’ ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the
brand as a cue. In other words, when they go to the store, will they be able to recognize the
brand as one to which they have already been exposed?

Brand recall is consumers’ ability to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product
category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or a purchase or usage situation as a cue. In other
words, consumers’ recall of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes will depend on their ability to retrieve the
brand when they think of the cereal category or of what they should eat for breakfast or a snack,
whether at the store when making a purchase or at home when deciding what to eat.

Research reveals that many consumer decisions are made at the point of sale, where the brand
name, logo, packaging, and so on, will be physically present and visible; hence, brand
recognition is very important.

Advantages of brand awareness

Learning Advantages. Brand awareness influences the formation and strength of the
associations that make up the brand image. To create a brand image, marketers must first
establish a brand node in memory, the nature of which affects how easily the consumer learns
and stores additional brand associations. The first step in building brand equity is to register the
brand in the minds of consumers. If the right brand elements are chosen, the task becomes
easier.

Consideration Advantages. Consumers must consider the brand whenever they are making
purchase decisions to fulfil or satisfy a need. Raising brand awareness increases the likelihood
that the brand will be a member of the consideration set, the handful of brands that receive
serious consideration for purchase. Much research has shown that consumers are rarely loyal to
only one brand but instead have a set of brands they would consider buying and another—
possibly smaller— set of brands they actually buy on a regular basis. Because consumers
typically consider only a few brands for purchase, making sure that the brand is in the
consideration set also makes other brands less likely to be considered or recalled.
Choice Advantages. The third advantage of creating a high level of brand awareness is that it
can affect choices among brands in the consideration set, even if there are essentially no other
associations to those brands. For example, consumers have been shown to adopt a decision rule
in some cases to buy only more familiar, well-established brands. Thus, in low-involvement
decision settings, a minimum level of brand awareness may be sufficient for product choice, even
in the absence of a well-formed attitude.

Brand Image

Creating brand awareness by increasing the familiarity of the brand through repeated exposure
(for brand recognition) and forging strong associations with the appropriate product category or
other relevant purchase or consumption cues (for brand recall) is an important first step in
building brand equity. Once a sufficient level of brand awareness is created, marketers can put
more emphasis on crafting a brand image.

Creating a positive brand image takes marketing programs that link strong, favourable, and
unique associations to the brand in memory. Brand associations may be either brand attributes
or benefits. Brand attributes are those descriptive features that characterize a product or service.
Brand benefits are the personal value and meaning that consumers attach to the product or
service attributes. Consumers form beliefs about brand attributes and benefits in different ways.
The definition of customer-based brand equity, however, does not distinguish between the
source of brand associations and the manner in which they are formed; all that matters is their
strength, favourability, and uniqueness.

Target Market

Identifying the consumer target is important because different consumers may have different
brand knowledge structures and different perceptions and preferences for the brand. Without this
understanding, it may be difficult for marketers to say which brand associations should be
strongly held, favourable, and unique. Let’s look at defining and segmenting a market and
choosing target market segments.

A market is the set of all actual and potential buyers who have sufficient interest in, income for,
and access to a product. Market segmentation divides the market into distinct groups of
homogeneous consumers who have similar needs and consumer behaviour, and who thus
require similar marketing programs and tactics. Market segmentation requires making trade-offs
between costs and benefits. The more finely segmented the market, the more likely that the firm
will be able to implement marketing programs that meet the needs of consumers in any one
segment. That advantage, however, can be offset by the greater costs of reduced
standardization.

The Sensory segment: Seeking flavour and product appearance

The Sociable: Seeking brightness of teeth

The Worriers: Seeking decay prevention

The Independent segment: Seeking low prices.