Product Code Database
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of the two key components of brand knowledge, as defined by the associative network memory model. It plays a vital role in consumer behavior, advertising management, and brand management. The consumer's ability to recognize or recall a brand is central to the purchasing process because buying decisions cannot begin unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name, but they must be able to recall enough distinguishing features for a purchase to happen. Creating brand awareness is the main step in advertising a new product or revitalising an old one.
Brand awareness consists of two components: brand recall and brand recognition. Several studies have shown that these two components operate in fundamentally different ways as brand recall is associated with memory retrieval, and brand recognition involves object recognition. Both brand recall and brand recognition play an important role in consumers' purchase decision process and in marketing communications. Brand awareness is closely related to concepts such as the evoked set and consideration set which include the specific brands a consumer considers in purchasing decision. Consumers are believed to hold between three and seven brands in their consideration set across a broad range of product categories. Consumers typically purchase one of the top three brands in their consideration set as consumers have shown to buy only familiar, well-established brands.
As brands are competing in a highly globalized market, brand awareness is a key indicator of a brand's competitive market performance. Given the importance of brand awareness in consumer purchasing decisions, marketers have developed a number of metrics designed to measure brand awareness and other measures of brand health. These metrics are collectively known as Awareness, Attitudes and Usage (AAU) metrics.
To ensure a product or brand's market success, awareness levels must be managed across the entire product life cycle – from product launch to market decline. Many marketers regularly monitor brand awareness levels, and if they fall below a predetermined threshold, the advertising and promotional effort is intensified until awareness returns to the desired level.
Brand awareness is a key indicator of a brand's market performance. Brands competing in a highly globalized market invest in global advertising and distribution to compete for consumers' attention and awareness. As the capitalism and global transport contribute to consumer behavior, many marketers regularly monitor brand awareness levels. If these levels fall below a predetermined threshold, the advertising and promotional effort is intensified until awareness returns to the desired level. In marketing planning and brand management, it is important to set objectives to promote brand awareness to motivate consumers to purchase a given brand's products.
People are attracted to brands that reflect their emotions, preferences, attitudes and beliefs. That's why the process of creating a brand leverages both heart and science. It requires organizations to dig deep into its reason for existence; explore and define the features and benefits of its products and services, identify its values and mission, and create a persona that makes the brand appealing and relatable to its target audience.
Brand awareness is one of the major brand assets that adds value to the product, service or company. Investing in building brand awareness can lead to sustainable competitive advantages, thus, leading to long-term value.
Research suggests that the number of brands that consumers can recall is affected by both individual and product factors including; brand loyalty, brand knowledge, situational and usage factors, and education level. For instance, consumers who are highly experienced with a given product category or brand may be able to recall a slightly larger set of brand names than those who are less experienced with a given product category or brand.
By definition, top-of-mind awareness is "the first brand that comes to mind when a customer is asked an unprompted question about a category."Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, When discussing top-of-mind awareness among larger groups of consumers (as opposed to a single consumer), it is more often defined as the "most remembered" or "most recalled" brand name(s).See, for instance, Koniewski, M., "Brand Awareness and Brand Loyalty", PMR Research Paper, Feb, 2012, www.research-pmr.com
A brand that enjoys top-of-mind awareness will generally be considered as a genuine purchase option, provided that the consumer is favorably disposed to the brand name.Manternach, L. (2011). Does your brand have top of mind awareness?. Corridor Business Journal, 7(52), 26. Top-of-mind awareness is relevant when consumers make a quick choice between competing brands in low-involvement categories or for impulse type purchases.Driesener, C., Paech, S., Romaniuk, J., & Sharp, B., "Brand and Advertising Awareness: A Replication and extension of a known empirical generalization," Australasian Marketing Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, 2004, pp 70–80
Consumers do not learn about products and brands from advertising alone. When making purchase decisions, consumers acquire information from a wide variety of sources in order to inform their decisions. After searching for information about a category, consumers may become aware of a larger number of brands which collectively are known as the awareness set.Chon, K.Y., Pizam, A. and Mansfeld, Y., Consumer Behavior in Travel and Tourism, 2nd ed, 2000, New York, Haworth, pp 86–87 Thus, the awareness set is likely to change as consumers acquire new information about brands or products. A review of empirical studies in this area suggests that the consideration set is likely to be at least three times larger than the evoked set.Roberts, J., "A Grounded Model of Consideration Set Size and Composition", in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 16, Thomas K. Srull, (ed.) Provo, UT, Association for Consumer Research, 1989, pp 749–757, Online: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/5967/volumes/v16/NA-16 Awareness alone is not sufficient to trigger a purchase, consumers also need to be favorably disposed to a brand before it will be considered as a realistic purchase option.
The process of moving consumers from brand awareness and a positive brand attitude through to the actual sale is known as conversion.Hatten, R.S., Small Business Management: Entrepreneurship and Beyond, Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage, 2012, p.317 While advertising is an excellent tool for creating awareness and brand attitude, it usually requires support from other elements in the marketing program to convert attitudes into actual sales.Solomon, M., Hughes, A., Chitty, B., Marshall, G. and Stuart, E., Marketing: Real People, Real Choices,pp 363–364 Other promotional activities, such as telemarketing, are vastly superior to advertising in terms of generating sales. Accordingly, the advertising message might attempt to drive consumers to direct sales call centers as part of an integrated communications strategy.ACCC, The Comparator Website Industry in Australia, Commonwealth of Australia, 2014, p. 8 Many different techniques can be used to convert interest into sales including special price offers, special promotional offers, attractive trade-in terms or guarantees.
Percy and Rossiter (1992) argue that the two types of awareness, namely brand recall and brand recognition, operate in fundamentally different ways in the purchase decision. For routine purchases such as fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), few shoppers carry shopping lists. For them, the presentation of brands at the point-of-sale acts as a visual reminder and triggers category need. In this case, brand recognition is the dominant mode of awareness. For other purchases, where the brand is not present, the consumer first experiences category need then searches memory for brands within that category. Many services, such as home help, gardening services, pizza delivery fall into this category. In this case, the category need precedes brand awareness. Such purchases are recall dominant, and the consumer is more likely to select one of the brands elicited from memory.Percy, L. and Rossiter, J., "A Model of Brand Awareness and Brand Attitude Advertising Strategies", Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 7, no. 4, 1992, pp 263–274 When brand recall is dominant, it is not necessary for consumers to like the advertisement, but they must like the brand. In contrast, consumers should like the ad when brand recognition is the communications objective.Rossiter, J and Bellman, S., Marketing Communications: Theory and Applications, Pearson Australia, 2005, pp 157–160
The distinction between brand recall and brand recognition has important implications for advertising strategy. When the communications objectives depend on brand recognition, the creative execution must show the brand packaging or a recognizable brand name. However, when the communications objectives rely on brand recall, the creative execution should encourage strong associations between the category and the brand.Rossiter, J. R., Percy, L. and Donovan, R.J., “A Better Advertising Planning Grid,” Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 31 (October/November), 1991, pp 11–21. Advertisers also use jingles, mnemonics and other devices to encourage brand recall.
Brand dominance occurs when, during brand recall tests, most consumers can name only one brand from a given category.Aaker, D. (1996). Building Strong Brands. New York: Free Press Publications. Brand dominance is defined as an individual's selection of only certain brand names in a related category during a brand recall procedure. While brand dominance might appear to be a desirable goal, overall dominance can be a double-edged sword.
A brand name that is well known to the majority of people or households is called a household nameMerriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/household%20name and may be an indicator of brand success. Occasionally a brand can become so successful that the brand becomes synonymous with the category. For example, British people often talk about "Hoovering the house" when they actually mean "vacuuming the house". (Hoover is a brand name). When this happens, the brand name is said to have "gone generic".Business Dictionary, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/generic-brand.html Examples of brands becoming generic abound; Kleenex, Sellotape, Nescafé, Aspirin and Paracetamol. When a brand goes generic, it can present a marketing problem because when the consumer requests a named brand at the retail outlet, they may be supplied with a competing brand. For example, if a person enters a bar and requests "a rum and Coke", the bartender may interpret that to mean a "rum and cola-flavoured beverage", paving the way for the outlet to supply a cheaper alternative mixer. In such a scenario, The Coca-Cola Company is the ultimate loser because it does not get the sale.
Two types of recall test are used to measure brand awareness:Hsia, H.J., ''Mass Communications Research Methods: A Step-by-Step Approach," Routledge"
To measure brand salience, for example, researchers place products on a shelf in a supermarket, giving each brand equal shelf space. Consumers are shown photographs of the shelf display and asked to name the brands they noticed. The speed at which consumers nominate a given brand is an indicator of brand's visual salience. This type of research can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of packaging design and brand logos.Sutherland, M. and Sylvester, A.K., Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, Great Britain, Kogan Page, 2000 pp 198–199
Metrics used to measure brand effects are collectively termed AAU metrics (Awareness, Attitudes and Usage).Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. . The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) endorses the definitions, purposes, and constructs of classes of measures that appear in Marketing Metrics as part of its ongoing
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Common Language in Marketing Project.
A number of hierarchical models can be found in the literature including DAGMAR and AIDA.Diehl, D. and Terlutter, R., "The Role of Lifestyle and Personality in Explaining Attitude to the Ad," in Branding and Advertising, Flemming Hansen, Lars Bech Christensen (eds), p. 307 In a survey of more than 250 papers, Vakratsas and Ambler (1999) found little empirical support for any of the hierarchies of effects.Demetrios Vakratsas and Tim Ambler, "How Advertising Works: What Do We Really Know?" Journal of Marketing,
The hierarchy of effects developed by Lavidge in the 1960s is one of the original hierarchical models. It proposes that customers progress through a sequence of six stages from brand awareness through to the purchase of a product:Lavidge, R.J. and Steiner, G.A., "A Model for Predictive Measures of Advertising Effectiveness," Journal of Marketing, October, 1961, pp 59–62
Hierarchical models have been widely adapted and many variations can be found, however, all follow the basic sequence which includes Cognition (C)- Affect (A) – Behavior (B) and for this reason, they are sometimes known as C-A-B models.Barry, T.E., "The Development of the Hierarchy of Effects: An Historical Perspective," Current Issues & Research in Advertising vol. 10, no. 2, 1987, pp. 251–295 Some of the more recent adaptations are designed to accommodate the consumer's digital media habits and opportunities for social influence.
Selected alternative hierarchical models follow:
As consumers move through the hierarchy of effects (awareness→ knowledge→ liking→ preference→ conviction→ purchase), they rely on different sources of information to learn about brands. While main media advertising is useful for creating awareness, its capacity to convey long or complex messages is limited. In order to acquire more detailed knowledge about a brand, consumers rely on different sources such as product reviews, expert opinion, word-of-mouth referrals and brand/ corporate websites. As consumers move closer to the actual purchase, they begin to rely on more personal sources of information such as recommendations from friends and relatives or the advice of sales representatives.Srinivasan, N., "Pre-purchase External Search Information," in Valarie A. Zeithaml (ed), Review of Marketing 1990, Marketing Classics Press (AMA), 2011, pp 153–189 For example, the opinion of an influential blogger might be enough to shore up preference/conviction while a salesperson might be necessary to close the actual purchase.
All hierarchical models indicate that brand awareness is a necessary precondition to brand attitude or brand liking, which serves to underscore the importance of creating high levels of awareness as early as possible in a product or brand life-cycle. Hierarchical models provide marketers and advertisers with basic insights about the nature of the target audience, the optimal message and media strategy indicated at different junctures throughout a product's life cycle. For new products, the main advertising objective should be to create awareness with a broad cross-section of the potential market. When the desired levels of awareness have been attained, the advertising effort should shift to stimulating interest, desire or conviction. The number of potential purchasers decreases as the product moves through the natural sales cycle in an effect likened to a Purchase funnel.Court, D. Elzinga, D., Mulder, S. and Vetvik, O.J., "The Consumer Decision Journey", McKinsey Quarterly, June 2009, Online: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-consumer-decision-journey Later in the cycle, and as the number of prospects becomes smaller, the marketer can employ more tightly targeted promotions such as personal selling, direct mail and email directed at those individuals or sub-segments likely to exhibit a genuine interest in the product or brand.
To increase the probability of a product's acceptance by the market, it is important to create high levels of brand awareness as early as practical in a product or brand's life-cycle. To achieve top-of-mind awareness, marketers have traditionally, relied on intensive advertising campaigns, especially at the time of a product launch.Belch, G, Belch, M.A, Kerr, G. and Powell, I., Advertising and Promotion Management: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, Australia, 2009, p.126 To be successful, an intensive campaign utilizes both broad reach (expose more people to the message) and high frequency (expose people multiple times to the message). Advertising, especially main media advertising, was seen as the most cost efficient means of reaching large audiences with the relatively high frequency needed to create high awareness levels. Nevertheless, intensive advertising campaigns can become very expensive and can rarely be sustained for long periods.
Alhaddad (2015) indicates that advertising awareness plays as a good source of meaning and identity for a brand by enhance brand awareness and brand image in social mediaAlhaddad, A. A.(2015). The Effect of Advertising Awareness on Brand Equity in Social Media. IJEEEE, 5(2), pp.73–84.
As new products enter the market growth stage, the number of competitors tends to increase with implications for market share. Marketers may need to maintain awareness at some predetermined level to ensure steady sales and stable market share. Marketers often rely on rough and ready 'rules-of-thumb' to estimate the amount of advertising expenditure required to achieve a given level of awareness. For instance, it was often held that to increase brand awareness by just one per cent, it was necessary to double the dollars spent on advertising.See for instance, Jones, J.P, The Ultimate Secrets of Advertising, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2002
When a brand becomes established and attains the desired awareness levels (typically outlined in the marketing plan), the brand advertiser will shift from an intensive advertising campaign to a reminder campaign . The objective of a reminder campaign is simply to keep target audiences aware of the brand's existence and to introduce new life into the brand offer.Business Dictionary (online), http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/reminder-advertising.html A reminder campaign typically maintains broad reach, but with reduced frequency and as a consequence is a less expensive advertising option. Reminder advertising is used by established brands, often when they are entering the maturity stage of the product lifecycle . In the decline stage, marketers often shift to a caretaker or maintenance program where advertising expenditure is cut back.
While advertising remains important for creating awareness, a number of changes in the media landscape and to consumer media habits have reduced the reliance on main media advertising. Instead, marketers are seeking to place their brand messages across a much wider variety of platforms. An increasing amount of consumer time and attention is devoted to digital communications devices—from computers and tablets through to cellphones. It is now possible to engage with consumers in a more cost efficient manner using platforms such as social media networks that command massive audiences. For example, Facebook has become an extremely important communications channel. Moreover, social media channels allow interactive communications with greater opportunities for brands to connect with audience members.
The rise of social media networks has increased the opportunities for opinion leaders to play a role in brand awareness.Malaska, M., Saraniemi, S., & Tahtinen, J. (2010, September). Co-creation of Branding by Network Actors. Paper presented at 10th Annual EBRF Conference: Co-Creation as a Way Forward, (pp. 15–17), Nokia, Finland. In theory, anyone can be an opinion leader e.g. celebrities, journalists or public figures, but the rise of the digital environment has changed our understanding of who is a potentially useful influencer. Indeed, the digital environment has created more opportunities for bloggers to become important influencers because they are seen as accessible, authentic and tend to have loyal followings.Paul McIntyre, “Independent bloggers overtake celebrities as key social media influencers”, Australian Financial Review, 22 June 2015 Online:http://www.afr.com/business/independent-bloggers-overtake-celebrities-as-key-social-media-influencers-20150528-ghbovu Bloggers have become key influencers in important consumer goods and services including fashion, consumer electronics, food and beverage, cooking, restaurant dining and bars. For example, a survey by Collective Bias showed that when it comes to product endorsements digital influencers are more popular than celebrities. Findings showed that only 3% of participants said they would consider buying a celebrity-endorsed item, in comparison to 60% who said they had been influenced by a blog review or social media post when shopping.Singh, N., "Celebrity Vs Shopper" Harper's Bazaar (Australia), 2 April 2016 Online: http://www.harpersbazaar.com.au/news/fashion-buzz/2016/4/bloggers-are-more-popular-than-celebrities/ For marketers, the digital landscape has made it somewhat easier to identify social influencers.
The concept was to introduce personalized Coke bottles or cans. Popular names were written in a 'look-alike Spencerian script' which is part of the Coke brand's distinctive brand identity. The campaign organisers seeded social media by targeting "opinion leaders and influencers to get them to … lead the conversation and encourage others to seek out 'Share a Coke' for themselves". Within days celebrities and others with no connection to Coke were spreading the concept across social networks. The campaign extended the audience reach as more people were exposed to the messages. According to Coke's creative team, "That Australian summer, Coke sold more than 250 million named bottles and cans in a nation of just under 23 million people". This campaign helped Coke extend its awareness across a broader age profile as they interacted with each customer on a personal level.
The use of anthropomorphic characters has a long history. For example, the Michelin man, employed as a memorable character to sell Michelin car tires, was introduced as early as 1894. These characters benefit the brand by creating memorable images in the consumer's mind while conveying meanings that are consistent with the brand's values.
McDonald's created a similar anthropomorphic brand character known as Ronald McDonald as part of its brand identity. For younger consumers, Ronald McDonald injects a sense of fun and mystery into the McDonald's brand. For parents, the character clearly signals that McDonald's is a family friendly venue. Characters help to carry the brand's identity and can be seen as non-human "spokes-character", contributing to a strong brand differentiation. The likeability of the brands character can "positively influence attitudes towards the brand and increase consumers' purchase intention"Hosany, S., Prayag, G., Martin, D., & Lee, W., "Theory and Strategies of Anthropomorphic Brand Characters from Peter Rabbit, Mickey Mouse, and Ronald McDonald, to Hello Kitty. Journal of Marketing Management, vol. 29, no 1/2, 2013, pp. 48–68.
/ref> In spite of that, some authors have argued that hierarchical models continue to dominate theory, especially in the area of marketing communications and advertising.O’Shaughnessy, J., Explaining Buyer Behavior, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992
Marketing Implications of hierarchical models
It should be evident that brand awareness constitutes just one of six stages that outline the typical consumer's progress towards a purchase decision. While awareness is a necessary precondition for a purchase, awareness alone cannot guarantee the ultimate purchase. Consumers may be aware of a brand, but for different reasons, may not like it or may fail to develop a preference for that brand. Hence, brand awareness is an indicator of sales performance, but does not account for all sales performance.Rossiter, J and Bellman, S., Marketing Communications: Theory and Applications, Pearson Australia, 2005, p. 107-109 For these reasons, marketers use a variety of metrics, including cognitive, affective and behavioral variables, to monitor a brand's market performance.
Creating and maintaining brand awareness
Brand advertising can increase the probability that a consumer will include a given brand in his or her consideration set. Brand-related advertising expenditure has a positive effect on brand awareness levels. Virtually anything that exposes consumers to a brand increases brand awareness. "Repeat brand exposure in stores improves consumers' ability to recognize and recall the brand." Increased exposure to brand advertising can increase consumer awareness and facilitate consumer processing of the included information, and by doing this it can heighten consumers brand recall and attitude towards the brand.
Popular examples of brand advertising and promotion
The following examples illustrate how brand awareness and brand advertising are used in practice.
Coca-Cola "Share a Coke" campaign
Coca-Cola is a well-established brand with a long history and one that has achieved market dominance. For any brand, such as Coke, that controls some 70 percent of market share, there are relatively few opportunities to enlist new customers. Yet Coca-Cola is always on the lookout for novel communications that not only maintain its brand awareness, but that bring the brand to the attention of new audiences. The company launched a campaign which became known as "Share a Coke", with the campaign objectives; "to strengthen the brand's bond with Australia's young adults – and inspire shared moments of happiness in the real and virtual worlds." The campaign, originally launched in Australia, became so successful that it was subsequently rolled out to other countries.
Ronald McDonald and other anthropomorphic brand characters
Consumers experience few difficulties assigning a personality to a brand and marketing communications often encourage consumers to think about brands as possessing human characteristics.Puzakova, M., Kwak, H. and Rocereto, J., "Pushing the Envelope of Brand and Personality: Antecedents and Moderators of Anthropomorphized Brands", in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 36, Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth (eds), MN: Association for Consumer Research, 2007, pp. 413–420 ( online). When brands are infused with human-like characteristics, it can assist in communicating a brand's values and creating distinctive brand identities that serve to differentiate an offering from competing brands.Smith, A. C., Graetz, B. R. and Westerbeek, H. M., "Brand personality in a membership-based organisation", International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, Vol. 11 No. 3, 2006, pp. 251–266. "In an increasingly competitive marketplace, some companies rely on brand characters to create awareness, convey key product/service attributes or benefits, and attract consumers" (Keller, 2003).
See also
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