BUS631: Brand Management

As the most valuable invisible asset, the brand represents the essence of the company. Brands function as strong differentiators and as decision-making tools for customers.

In today's global economy, branding efforts are not limited to traditional "consumers"; companies in various service industries have tried to take advantage of branding strategies to build stronger brands. In this regard, colleges and universities have recognized the value of branding and the need to build strong and sustainable brands. Branding has become a strategic issue for universities and colleges to be able to develop different brands to communicate their strengths.

Jevons stated that in today's complex and highly competitive market, universities and colleges have turned to branding as a solution in facing global challenges. Mazzarol focuses on marketing and branding to identify factors that are important when marketing and promoting a university and/or in determining its position.

Universities can serve the needs of different segments and with different offerings, they must understand how these differences are perceived by different segments. However, to develop a strong university brand, the brand manager and/or administrator at the university must undertake an in-depth study of the university's branding efforts and strategies.

Brand audit

A brand audit is "a comprehensive examination of a brand to find brand equity". The purpose of a brand audit is to study what consumers want from a product as well as what they currently know about the brand in order to profile potential customers and act strategically and informed to determine the position of the product or service to be provided. Brand audits are consumer focused and are used as an assessment tool "to determine the health of a brand, reveal the source of its brand equity, and suggest ways to increase its equity". Audits often define the strategic direction for a particular brand and are an important aspect of creating new strategic changes. Moreover, it is important to ask the following question, as posed by Keller: "Are current sources of brand equity satisfactory? Do certain brand associations need to be strengthened? Is the brand less unique? What opportunities exist and what potential opportunities exist for brand equity?"

Based on the concept of the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Pyramid, there are 4 steps to build brand equity. The goal of each step is to continue to grow and achieve the goals set out in the previous step. According to Keller, the steps are: "1. to identify brands with customers and brand associations in the minds of customers with the product class or customer needs, 2. to firmly establish the totality of brand meaning in the minds of customers by strategically linking things that are visible and things that are not in a brand, 3. to get the right customer response to the brand identification and brand meaning, and 4. to change the response to a brand to create an intense loyal relationship between the customer and the brand.

The CBBE pyramid consists of 6 brand building blocks. CBBE's first building block is a trademark of the brand. Brand characteristics talk about how often and easily the brand appears in various situations or circumstances. This can be measured from its breadth and depth. The area is measured from the various purchases and uses of the brand in certain situations. It is about how the brand is remembered from the consumer's knowledge of the brand.

In it, it is measured by how likely it is and how easy it is to remember the brand. CBBE's second building block is performance. According to Keller, there are five important attributes and benefits that often underlie brand performance as follows: (1) the main ingredients and additional features; (2) product reliability, durability, and ease of service; (3) effectiveness, efficiency, and service empathy; (4) style and design; and (5) price.

CBBE's third building block is the brand image. According to Keller, brand image depends on the extrinsic nature of the product or service, including the way in which the brand seeks to meet the psychological or social needs of customers. Keller stated that there are many things that are invisible and can be connected to a brand, but there are four main aspects as follows: (1) user profile; (2) purchase and use situations; (3) personality and values; as well as (4) history, heritage, and experience. CBBE's fourth building block is appraisal. A brand assessment is a customer's personal opinion about a brand along with an evaluation of the brand. According to Keller, there are many types of assessments with regard to brands but the quality, credibility, consideration, and excellence are the most important. CBBE's fifth building block is the brand feeling. The feeling of a brand is a customer's emotional response and reaction to the brand. It talks about how the customer feels when the customer uses the brand. The sixth building block of CBBE is resonance. Brand resonance describes the nature and extent to which customers feel that they are "out of sync" with the brand. According to Keller, brand resonance can be measured in terms of behavioral loyalty or repeat purchases and how much they buy. Apart from behavioral loyalty, there must also be a strong personal attachment to the brand.

Brand salience

Brand salience relates to the awareness aspects of the customer towards a brand. How easily and frequently does a brand rise up in a variety of situations or circumstances? How high up is the brand in the main customer's mind and easy to remember and recognize? How strong is brand awareness? Salience forms the building blocks of brand equity development and serves three main functions. First, salience influences the formation and strength of brand associations that create brand image and brand meaning. Second, the establishment of a high level of brand salience in the category of identification and fulfillment of needs is very important when there are opportunities for purchase and consumption. Brand salience is also important when consumption requires maximizing potential usage. Third, when customers are at a low point in a product category, they may only base their choices on brand salience.

Lans stated that brand salience represents a brand visualization of its competitors, and it is an important point of purchase by consumers based on the perception of product features and has an important influence in the search for the performance of a product brand. The identity of a company is communicated to the outside world through a brand strategy. A special brand name is usually the main function of the manifestation of the corporate identity. The principle of the main mission of corporate identity is full recognition. Furthermore, Zimmermann stated that brand identity must be able to trigger a willingness to buy from consumers. So, it makes perfect sense for companies to invest in brand identity if consumers are also interested in buying that brand.

Brand salience is the level at which a brand is thought of and considered when a customer is in a buying situation. A strong brand will have a high salience brand. On the other hand, a weak brand will only have a small salience brand or even none at all. This explains to some extent why large brands have a greater brand salience than small brands. If no one is thinking about a brand at the time the purchase is made, the brand will be neglected and go unnoticed.

According to Romaniuk, brand salience is a function of the quantity and quality of the consumer's memory structure. (1) Memory quantity is in a buying situation, where consumers are often directed by mental cues that trigger their thinking about a brand. For example, a consumer will think about buying a product brand that fits one's budget, but also suits one's consumption needs. The larger the memory structure of the brand is related to each other, the greater the salience of the brand will be, and the brand will be thought about the most as long as consumers are in a buying situation. So, the quantity of the consumer's memory structure will make a difference. (2) Memory quality is the brand salience quality, which is a function of the strength of the association and the relevant structure. By building the quantity and quality of the memory structure, it will maximize the number of consumers who think about a brand and the amount of time consumers think about a brand in various buying situations.

Achieving a good brand identity means creating brand salience with customers. Brand salience measures the awareness of a brand. Brand awareness plays a role in creating a sale, especially for products that are not well understood. Since consumers have little time and effort in purchasing decisions for poorly understood products, familiarity with a brand name is sufficient to determine a purchase. The most important aspect of brand awareness is the formation of information in memory the first time around. Without a brand point in memory, it is impossible to build an image about the brand. According to Aaker, brand awareness can influence customers' perceptions and attitudes, and brand awareness reflects the salience of a brand in the minds of consumers. There are several stages in brand awareness: (1) introduction (Have you ever heard of a Rinnai gas stove?); (2) restart (What brand of gas stove can you name?); (3) top of mind (Brand name first mentioned); (4) brand dominance (Only the only brand named); (5) brand knowledge (I know a lot about this brand); and (6) brand opinion (I have an opinion about this brand).

According to Tuominen, brand awareness that reflects the salience of a brand is related to the strength of the brand node in memory which is reflected in the ability of consumers to identify a brand in different conditions. Brand awareness consists of: (1) brand recognition that reflects the consumer's ability to confirm a brand, and (2) brand repetition that reflects the consumer's capacity to mention a brand again when there is a product category, who can mention the product category or type of product. The depth of brand awareness is indicated by being recognized, remembered, and mentioned, while the breadth of brand awareness relates to a variety of purchasing and consumption situations in which a brand exists in the minds of consumers.

Brand salience related to the aspect of brand awareness is one of the fundamentals of the dimension of brand equity. He said that this is often considered as the main factor influencing purchasing decisions by consumers, because it represents the main factor including a brand in a series of considerations. In reflecting on the salience of a brand in the minds of consumers, awareness is the first and main dimension of the overall brand knowledge system in the minds of consumers, reflecting the ability of consumers to identify a brand in various conditions, just as brand names come directly to consumers' minds and make it easier to make a buying decision.

Brand salience is defined as the tendency for a brand to be thought of by the buyer (i.e., "stand out" from memory) in a buying situation, with the aim of being remembered for reasons that are intended not just to achieve general awareness. This assumes that product category hints are the only mechanism for buyers to think about brands in media buying and consumption situations. However, research into how information in memory is accessed suggests that this implicit assumption is invalid. Brand recall from memory does not only depend on one guide, namely the product category, but also on a brand's attention. Therefore, it seems appropriate to reexamine brand salience in terms of marketing and the implications for measurement.

The measurement of brand salience consists of a good name and reputation, quick to mind, immediate to mind, very famous, and advertising or promoting and how often the brand of a product appears in the minds of customers. From the results of data testing, only three are important, namely quick to mind, very famous, and advertising or promoting. However, other researchers suggest using measures of brand recognition and reduction, brand dominance, and brand opinion. In the building blocks of a brand, brand salience occurs when all the other building blocks of the brand are established and the customer of the product expresses a high level of brand loyalty. This criterion can be seen when customers actively interact with brands and share their experiences with others when true brand salience is present. Measuring brand salience can use an instrument like: What product brand or service category can you think of? Have you heard of this brand? Which brand might you use in the following situations? How often do you think about this brand?

Related to the measurement of brand salience, there are several ways to measure it. One of the ways is the one proposed by Romaniuk and Sharp, which contains various representative attributes/cues used to think about the brand, position itself against competitors' brands, and focus on whether the brand has value or not.

Cohen et al. revealed that the approach does not measure the extent to which each attribute or feature represents a region, brand, or product. Therefore, the relative importance of various feature cues needs to be measured by another approach. They use the best worst scaling (BWS) method where the respondents are asked to select the best (most representative) versus the worst (least representative) feature of an area to determine the most valued and most prominent cues. BWS was developed by Louviere et al. BWS models cognitive processes, in which the respondents compare three or more items and then choose one that represents most of the characteristics and one that represents the least of the characteristics. In doing so, the objective is to measure the relative utility of the problem, item, or attribute that belongs to that set of problems, items, or attributes. The statistical information gathered from each selection set is much richer because the BWS measures all problems on the same scale with one problem to start. This model assumes that the respondents behave as if they are examining every possible pair in each subset and then they select the most different pairs as the best, worst, and maximum difference pairs. Therefore, the BWS model requires the respondents to make trade-offs among the benefits, which makes BWS a more discriminatory way of measuring attribute importance than either the rating scale or the pairwise comparison method.

There is also an assessment of brand salience using the analytical hierarchy process in measuring a brand. There are also those who use functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) in combination with a semantic differential in measuring a brand. That means there are still different views on this matter, so that it is a research gap in measuring and assessing the brand salience of the Universitas Terbuka Statistics Study Program.

The results of research conducted by Lu et al. show that there is a link between attitude and brand awareness. Sponsor recommendation blog posts, a form of online consumer review, are blog articles written by bloggers who benefit from sponsoring marketers to review and promote products on personal blogs. Because national regulations require marketing sponsors to be disclosed in blog posts, sponsored recommendation posts can no longer conceal their marketing intent. Thus, consumer attitudes towards sponsored recommendation postings are an important issue in assessing ad effectiveness. This study used 2 sponsor type, 2 product type, and 2 brand awareness experimental designs and a total of 613 valid samples to test consumer attitudes towards sponsored recommendation posts and purchase intentions. The results show that when the product recommended in a blog post is a search item or has high brand awareness, consumers have a very positive attitude towards sponsored recommendation posts, which increases purchase intention. The direct-monetary/indirect-monetary benefits received by the blogger do not have a significant effect on the reader's attitude.

Using this feature in blog posts appears to increase the trustworthiness of online readers and the credibility of sponsored recommendation posts, and can thus become an important online marketing tool for marketers.