B RAND E QUITY

patterned by social activity, following a recognizable and classifiable scheme or habitus (Bourdieu, 1984). The entire act of consumption thus becomes a judgement process that demands obedience, not reflection, and involve excitement and doubt according to other tribe members’ recognition of a given visual symbol. Hence, consumption becomes a search for the eye’s recognition. This fosters a propensity of individuals not knowing exactly what they want or what they are searching for. In-stead, they have a sound understanding of what they do not want and of what is not accepted within the tribe. The primary method used to conduct consumption studies is fieldwork, in which the re-searcher investigates the interaction between different tribe members and their use of symbols.

3.2.1. CBBE-model

In the marketing and branding literature, the customer-based brand equity model (CBBE) aims to provide strategic insights into the strength of the consumer’s attachment to the brand and to deliver a meaningful description of the associations and beliefs that the consumer holds about a particular brand. The CBBE model serves as a useful diagnostics tool to holistically investigate the impact of marketing activities and provide insight into the major pillars of brand equity. However, the theoret-ical framework has been criticized for never having operationalized a scale for the measurement of brand equity, thus being significantly bound by subjectivity (Christodoulides & Chernatony, 2009).

Furthermore, the widely prevalent brand equity approaches of Aaker (1991) and Keller (1993), in-cluding the CBBE model, have been notably criticized for lacking an underlying theoretical frame-work to connect and describe the interrelatedness of the components of brand equity (Feldwick, 1996).

The CBBE model aims to provide marketers with a comprehensive understanding of consumer be-haviour in order to enhance strategic decisions about target market definition and product position-ing as well as better tactical decisions about specific marketposition-ing mix actions (Keller 1993). The awareness and knowledge that have been created about the brand in the minds of consumers from the company’s investment in previous marketing programs, i.e. the brand equity, is perceived as the most valuable intangible asset within the organization.

The CBBE model involves four steps being: (1) establishing a solid brand identity, (2) creating the appropriate brand meaning through strong, favourable, and unique brand associations, (3) eliciting positive, accessible brand responses, and (4) forging brand relationships with customers that are characterized by intense and proactive loyalty (Keller, 2001). In order to achieve these four steps, it is necessary to go through the six brand-building blocks namely brand salience, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgement, brand feelings, and brand resonance. In the following section the four steps are reviewed respectively.

Brand Identity (Saliency)

The initial brand building block is saliency, which aims to ensure identification of the brand and its product or service category. Therefore, the dimension draws attention to the need to facilitate brand awareness in the mind of the consumer, which Keller (2003, p. 76) describes as “the customers’

ability to recall and recognize the brand as reflected by their ability to identify the brand under different conditions and link the brand name, logo, symbol and so forth to certain associations in memory”. In a seminal paper by Aaker (1996), the strategic importance of establishing initial brand awareness and recognition among consumers for novel brands is extensively emphasized. Aaker (1996) suggests that for a novel brand to emerge and obtain larger scale, the building of brand sali-ency must precede creation of brand associations, since consumers as a minimum need to be able to rightfully recognize the brand before any meaningful associations can be developed in their minds.

Brand Meaning (Performance & Imagery)

The second stage of the CBBE model is brand meaning, which is constituted by two brand building blocks, specifically brand performance and brand imagery. To generate brand meaning, it is neces-sary to establish and provide a distinct brand image trough building of associations in the minds of consumers, i.e. brand associations. Within the CBBE framework, the concept of brand associations encapsulates (1) the extent to which a particular brand is capable of invoking mental associations from the minds of consumers, (2) the extent to which these associations influence brand differentia-tion, (3) the extent to which the associations affect the buying process of consumers, (4) the extent to which the associations stimulate certain feelings and attitudes towards the brand and its underly-ing product and finally (5) to the extent to which particular brand extensions contribute to the build-ing of associations (Keller, 2001).

To clarify the concept, Kotler & Keller (2006, p. 188) articulate that brand associations “consists of all brand-related thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes”, whilst Aaker (1991, p. 109) describe that brand associations ”is anything linked in memory to a brand”. In the CBBE literature, various types of brand-related associations has been identified, such as social image (Lassar et al. 1995), product associations (Pitta & Katsanis 1995; Lassar et al. 1995), differ-entiation (Leuthesser 1988), perceived value (Feldwick 1996; Martin & Brown 1991; Lassar et al.

1995), country of origin (Thakor & Kohli 1996), trustworthiness (Martin & Brown 1991; Lassar et.

al 1995) and organizational associations (Chen 2001).

Brand Responses (Judgements & Feelings)

The third stage of the CBBE model is brand response, which likewise consists of two brand build-ing blocks, namely brand judgements and brand feelbuild-ings respectively. This stage of the model

con-siders how consumers cognitively think about and emotionally respond to the brand, its associated marketing activities and other brand-related information. Observably, consumers may hold whatev-er subjective type of judgement, but to establish strong brand equity, four types of brand judgement are particularly important (Keller, 2001). These are brand quality, brand credibility, brand consider-ation, and brand superiority. Brand feelings are consumers’ emotional responses and reactions to the brand, which as well include social currency evoked by the brand (Ibid).

Brand Relationship (Resonance)

The final step of the model is the brand relationship, which captures the extent to which people are loyal to the brand in terms of an ultimate relationship, where the consumer is able to identify one-self with the brand through a profound, psychological bond and a high level of identification (Kel-ler, 2001). This kind of relationship, where consumers hold a strong feeling of being “in-synch”

with the brand (Ibid), is also known as brand resonance, which “is categorized as the intensity or the depth of the psychological bond that consumers have with the brand as well as the level of ac-tivity engendered by this loyalty” (Raut & Brito 2014, p. 7). Such resonance typically concerns re-purchase, information seeking, attending events, and positive word of mouth. Keller (2001) summa-rizes brand resonance through four main categories; behavioural loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community, and active engagement.

Theoretical Assumptions of CBBE

A fundamental assumption of the consumer-based brand equity approach is that consumers are ra-tional and rely profoundly on deliberate reasoning and systematic combination of different infor-mation whilst evaluating choice alternatives and making decisions (Heding et al. 2008; Arnould et al. 2005; Hansen, 2005). Thus, the CBBE approach is rooted in the cognitive branding perspective as outlined by Østergaard & Jantzen (2001), where the consumer is considered as a computer. Fur-thermore, the CBBE approach acknowledges the essential importance of brand-induced effects on the minds of consumers and their subsequent behaviour. Prominent marketing scholars such as Aaker (1991) and Keller (1993) suggest that brands trigger perceptions and associations that modu-late product preference and choice. Therefore, the power of brands is in the minds of consumers.

Both scholars emphasize that feelings towards a brand are crucial to comprehend, and predominant-ly Aaker (1991, 2008) contends that the affective dimensions of brands, such as the perceived quali-ty and emotional and self-expressive benefits, are considerable determinants of this underlying

pro-cess. To investigate the affective dimensions of brands on consumers, the CBBE approach have conventionally relied on traditional marketing research measurements such as interviews and focus groups. Here, there is an aspiration on inferring comprehensive conclusions about emotional re-sponses and processes by inquiring the participants directly about their feelings towards a particular brand or product or indirectly through free association tasks (Aaker, 1991).

As accentuated in section about concepts definition, emotions and feelings are two distinguishable mental phenomena, however, the CBBE approach does not make this distinction and use the termi-nological terms interchangeably. From a consumer neuroscience perspective, the CBBE approach reveals significant insights about the conscious dimension of consumption and may assist research-ers in acquiring essential knowledge about the feelings of consumresearch-ers towards brands and products through traditional marketing research methods. Conversely, the CBBE approach does not accurate-ly capture the essence of the unconscious aspects of consumption, nameaccurate-ly the underaccurate-lying emotional processes driving consumer preference. Whilst the CBBE framework is incapable of capturing and accurately describing these unconscious qualities, Aaker (1991) and Keller (2008) both emphasize the importance of the unconscious processes in brand-induced effects. In this context, Aaker (1991) proposes that brands may generate a familiarity effect on an unconscious level. However, the CBBE approach presents no thorough explanation of the unconscious processes and provides thus no accu-rate insight into these.