Keller's Brand Equity Model

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By the
Mind Tools By the Mind Tools Content Team
Content Team

Keller's Brand Equity Model


Building a Powerful Brand

Do you know what makes a brand strong? And if you had to


make yours stronger, would you know how to do it?

Many factors influence the strength of a particular product or brand. If you understand these
factors, you can think about how to launch a new product effectively, or work out how to turn
a struggling brand into a successful one.

In this article, we'll look at Keller's Brand Equity model. This tool highlights four steps that
you can follow to build and manage a brand that customers will support.

Overview

Keller's Brand Equity Model is also known as the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE)
Model. Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth College, developed the model and published it in his widely used textbook,
"Strategic Brand Management."

The concept behind the Brand Equity Model is simple: in order to build a strong brand, you
must shape how customers think and feel about your product. You have to build the right
type of experiences around your brand, so that customers have specific, positive thoughts,
feelings, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions about it.

When you have strong brand equity, your customers will buy more from you, they'll
recommend you to other people, they're more loyal, and you're less likely to lose them to
competitors.

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The model, seen in Figure 1, illustrates the four steps that you need to follow to build strong
brand equity.

Figure 1 – Keller's Brand Equity Model

From "Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing


Brand Equity" by Kevin Lane Keller. © Pearson Education Limited 2013.

The four steps of the pyramid represent four fundamental questions that your customers will
ask – often subconsciously – about your brand.

The four steps contain six building blocks that must be in place for you to reach the top of
the pyramid, and to develop a successful brand.

Applying the Model

Let's look at each step and building block in detail, and discuss how you can apply the
framework and strengthen your brand.

Step 1: Brand Identity – Who Are You?

In this first step, your goal is to create "brand salience," or awareness – in other words, you
need to make sure that your brand stands out, and that customers recognize it and are
aware of it.

You're not just creating brand identity and awareness here; you're also trying to ensure that
brand perceptions are "correct" at key stages of the buying process.

Application

To begin, you first need to know who your customers are. Research your market to gain a
thorough understanding of how your customers see your brand, and explore whether there
are different market segments  with different needs and different relationships with your
brand.
Next, identify how your customers narrow down their choices and decide between your
brand and your competitors' brands. What decision-making processes do your customers go
through when they choose your product? How are they classifying your product or brand?
And, when you follow their decision making process, how well does your brand stand out at
key stages of this process?

You are able to sell your product because it satisfies a particular set of your customers'
needs; this is your unique selling proposition , or USP. You should already be familiar with
these needs, but it's important to communicate to your customers how your brand fulfills
these. Do your clients understand these USPs when they're making their buying decisions?

By the end of this step, you should understand whether your clients perceive your brand as
you want them to, or whether there are specific perceptual problems that you need to
address – either by adjusting your product or service, or by adjusting the way that you
communicate your message. Identify the actions that you need to take as a result.

Step 2: Brand Meaning – What Are You?

Your goal in step two is to identify and communicate what your brand means, and what it
stands for. The two building blocks in this step are: "performance" and "imagery."

"Performance" defines how well your product meets your customers' needs. According to
the model, performance consists of five categories: primary characteristics and features;
product reliability, durability, and serviceability; service effectiveness, efficiency, and
empathy; style and design; and price.

"Imagery" refers to how well your brand meets your customers' needs on a social and
psychological level. Your brand can meet these needs directly, from a customer's own
experiences with a product; or indirectly, with targeted marketing, or with word of mouth.

A good example of brand meaning is Patagonia®. Patagonia makes high quality outdoor
clothing and equipment, much of which is made from recycled materials.

Patagonia’s brand performance demonstrates its reliability and durability; people know that
their products are well designed and stylish, and that they won't let them down. Patagonia’s
brand imagery is enhanced by its commitment to several environmental programs and social
causes; and its strong “reduce, reuse, recycle” values make customers feel good about
purchasing products from an organization with an environmental conscience.

Application

The experiences that your customers have with your brand come as a direct result of your
product's performance. Your product must meet, and, ideally, exceed their expectations if
you want to build loyalty. Use the Critical to Quality Tree  and Kano Model Analysis 
models to identify your customers' needs, and then explore how you can translate these
needs into a high quality product.
Next, think carefully about the type of experience that you want your customers to have with
your product. Take both performance and imagery into account, and create a "brand
personality." Again, identify any gaps  between where you are now and where you want to
be, and look at how you can bridge these.

Step 3: Brand Response – What Do I Think, or Feel, About You?

Your customers' responses to your brand fall into two categories: "judgments" and "feelings."
These are the two building blocks in this step.

Your customers constantly make judgments about your brand and these fall into four key
categories:

Quality: Customers judge a product or brand based on its actual and perceived quality.

Credibility: Customers judge credibility using three dimensions – expertise (which


includes innovation), trustworthiness, and likability.

Consideration: Customers judge how relevant your product is to their unique needs.

Superiority: Customers assess how superior your brand is, compared with your
competitors' brands.

Customers also respond to your brand according to how it makes them feel. Your brand can
evoke feelings directly, but they also respond emotionally to how a brand makes them feel
about themselves. According to the model, there are six positive brand feelings: warmth, fun,
excitement, security, social approval, and self-respect.

Application

First, examine the four categories of judgments listed above. Consider the following
questions carefully in relation to these:

What can you do to improve the actual and perceived quality of your product or brand?

How can you enhance your brand's credibility?

How well does your marketing strategy communicate your brand's relevancy to people's
needs?

How does your product or brand compare with those of your competitors?

Next, think carefully about the six brand feelings listed above. Which, if any, of these feelings
does your current marketing strategy focus on? What can you do to enhance these feelings
for your customers?

Identify actions that you need to take as a result of asking these questions.

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Step 4: Brand Resonance – How Much of a Connection Would I
Like to Have With You?

Brand "resonance" sits at the top of the brand equity pyramid because it's the most difficult –
and the most desirable – level to reach. You have achieved brand resonance when your
customers feel a deep, psychological bond with your brand.

Keller breaks resonance down into four categories:

Behavioral loyalty: This includes regular, repeat purchases.

Attitudinal attachment: Your customers love your brand or your product, and they see it
as a special purchase.

Sense of community: Your customers feel a sense of community with people associated
with the brand, including other consumers and company representatives.

Active engagement: This is the strongest example of brand loyalty. Customers are
actively engaged with your brand, even when they are not purchasing it or consuming it.
This could include joining a club related to the brand; participating in online chats,
marketing rallies, or events; following your brand on social media; or taking part in other,
outside activities.

Application

Your goal in the last stage of the pyramid is to strengthen each resonance category.

For example, what can you do to encourage behavioral loyalty? Consider gifts with
purchase, or customer loyalty programs.

Ask yourself what you can do to reward customers who are champions of your brand. What
events could you plan and host to increase customer involvement with your brand or
product? List the actions that you could take.

Example

Julie has recently been put in charge of a project to turn around an under-performing
product. The product is a high quality, fair trade, organic tea, but it's never achieved the
sales and customer loyalty that the organization expected. Julie decides to use the brand
equity pyramid to think about the turnaround effort.

Step 1: Brand Identity


Julie's target customers are mid to high income, socially conscious women.

After careful analysis, she knows that she is marketing in the correct category, but she
realizes that her marketing efforts aren't fully addressing customer needs. She decides to
change the message from "healthy, delicious tea," to "delicious tea, with a conscience,"
which is more relevant and meaningful to her target market.

Step 2: Brand Meaning

Next, Julie examines the product's meaning, and looks at how the company communicates
that meaning to its customers.

The performance of the tea is already moderately high; it's a single-source, fair trade tea of a
higher quality than the competition's product. After assessing the organization's service
effectiveness, Julie is disappointed to find that many of her representatives lack empathy
with customers who complain. So, she puts everyone through a comprehensive customer
service class to improve responses to customer complaints and feedback.

Last, Julie decides to post to the company's website personal stories from the fair trade
farmers who grow and pick the tea. By doing this, she aims to educate customers on how
beneficial this practice is for people around the world.

Step 3: Brand Response

After going over the four brand response judgments, Julie realizes that perceived quality
might be an issue. The tea itself is high quality, but the pack size is smaller than the ones her
competitors use. Julie doesn't want to lower the price, as this might affect how customers
assess quality, so she decides to offer more tea in each box in order to surpass customer
expectations.

She also decides to enhance the tea's credibility by becoming fair trade certified through an
independent third-party organization.

Step 4: Brand Resonance

Julie knows that her target customers care deeply about fair trade. She decides to promote
the organization's efforts by participating in a number of fair trade events around the
country.

She also sets up a social networking framework to involve customers in the organization's
fair trade efforts, and she creates a forum on the company website where customers can
discuss issues surrounding fair trade. She also commits to championing the efforts of other
fair trade organizations.
Key Points

Keller's Brand Equity model is also known as the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE)
Model. Kevin Lane Keller developed the model and published it in his widely used textbook,
"Strategic Brand Management."

Within a pyramid, the model highlights four key levels that you can work through to create a
successful brand. These four levels are:

1. Brand identity.

2. Brand meaning.

3. Brand responses.

4. Brand relationships.

Within these four levels are six building blocks that further help with brand development.
These six building blocks are salience, performance, imagery, judgments, feelings, and
resonance.

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