Reflections on Customer-Based Brand Equity: Progress and Priorities

THEORYCONCEPTUAL Reflections on customerbased brand equity perspectives progress and priorities Kevin Lane Keller1 Received 11 January 2016 Accepted 29 April 2016 Published online 20 May 2016 Academy of Marketing Science 2016 Abstract BConceptualizing Measuring and Managing CustomerBased Brand Equity published in the Journal of Marketing in 1993 was one of the early thought pieces and review papers on branding in the field Written to be a com prehensive bridge between the theory and practice of brand ing it has received a large number of citations and several awards through the years Here I look back at that article and provide some perspective as to how it was developed highlighting some of its main contributions I also outline some of my subsequent related branding research as well as that of others Finally I consider some future research priori ties in branding putting emphasis on the online and digital developments that have occurred since the publication of the article Keywords Brands Branding Brand equity Customerbased brand equity Brand management The publication of BConceptualizing Measuring and Managing CustomerBased Brand Equity in the Journal of Marketing in 1993 was an important crossroads in my re search career Keller 1993 Writing the CBBE article gave me a chance to both look back in terms of what I had learned and believed about branding as well look forward in terms of what I wanted to focus my research and writing on in the future The article captured a lot of my thinking at that time on a number of branding topics and provided a blueprint going forward that influenced my research agenda and writing for years to follow The paper captured the imagination of many marketing scholars too The article was wellreceived and earned several awards It has become a PhD seminar standard to read and discuss in the years since and is one of the most widely cited articles in the field with over 10000 citations according to Google Scholar With this paper almost 25 years later I would like to again look back and look forward The branding area continues to be deemed as vitally important by both ac ademics and practitioners and taking stock as to what we have learnedand not learnedcan offer valuable insight and inspiration Specifically I want to update the CBBE article by provid ing some background and context as to how the article came about and was developed what I feel were its important con tributions and what research progress has been made on some of its key topics since its publication both in terms of my own research program and those of others I also want to look to the future and suggest areas where I feel greater understanding and insights are needed with branding Specifically I outline two broad sets of topics which I feel have much potential for productive research programs and significant managerial im pact going forward putting special emphasis on digital developments How it happened It is interesting to look back at when where how and most importantlywhy the CBBE article was written The CBBE article was written in the midst of a 3summer pretenure sabbatical and leave during the 19911992 school year at the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia Prior Kevin Lane Keller kevinkellerdartmouthedu 1 Tuck School of Business Dartmouth College 100 Tuck Hall Hanover NH 03755 USA AMS Rev 2016 6116 DOI 101007s131620160078z to writing the paper I had a productive research partnership with Dave Aaker at UCBerkeley that started when I joined the faculty there in January 1986 At that time Dave had been concentrating more and more of his research on marketing strategy my PhD thesis research had focused on the effects of advertising memory retrieval cues on brand evaluations We both became interested in studying brand extensions and our first paper in the area Aaker and Keller 1990 also published in JM became one of the early foundational pieces and led to a number of followup studies that we conducted Over time Dave became more interested in writing directly to marketing practitioners and influencing how they thought about their brands which he has done with great success for decades now I had different goals at that time I was interested in getting tenure at the Stanford Business School where I had moved and making my own academic mark Although brand extensions were clearly a central issue to branding there were many other important branding issues which also deserved greater attention from academic researchers and marketing practitioners and I had begun to start thinking writing and lecturing about them The branding area was just emerging as more broadly im portant and there was increased interest in the topic by both academics and practitioners At the same time because there was also much uncertainty and confusion about many brand ing concepts and guidelines I knew there was a tremendous opportunity to contribute by offering some clarity to the area The time in Australia gave me the chance to pull together and solidify my thoughts on branding as I had already learned that nothing clarifies thinking like having to write something down and figure out exactly what you mean I also knew a good review paper could provide much structure and direction to the field As a PhD student I was greatly influenced by Jim Bettmans awardwinning JM review article on memory Bettman 1979 In fact the idea for my thesis research came from an anecdote about the LIFE cereal brand which Jim described and interpreted in his arti cle LIFE cereal had suffered from poor ad recall until they chose to put a scene from their popular BMikey TV com mercial on their actual product package I became fascinated by the notion that brand names and packages are often insuf ficient cues to advertising at the pointofpurchase and more explicit cues à la Mikey may be necessary Bettmans JM review paper provided some initial theoretical guidance for my research on the topic Additionally I had also become a big proponent of devel oping detailed conceptual frameworks that could offer insight and guidance to both academic researchers and marketing practitioners I had the opportunity to supervise four PhD students while I was at Stanford Jennifer Aaker Sheri Bridges Christie Brown and Meg Campbell In each case I encouraged them to include a detailed macrolevel concep tual model to provide broader perspectives to the phemenona they were studying before honing in on the more specific research problems they would actually be investigating In my own case for example although my thesis research dealt with advertising retrieval cues Keller 1987 the second chapter in my dissertation laid out a broad comprehensive model of memory effects in advertising that addressed encoding storage and retrieval factors in some detail That model provided much inspiration and direction to my subse quent advertising research efforts and led to 23 related re search streams where I explored additional effects of ad re trieval cues Keller 1991a Forehand and Keller 1996 Keller et al 1998 as well as the effects of coordinated media cam paigns eg print reinforcement and radio replay of TV ads Edell and Keller 1989 1999 competitive ad interference Keller 1991b and other advertising topics All of this re search benefited from the theorizing that had been developed in my PhD thesis and in particular the mediating and mod erating factors that I had identified to explain how advertising worked from a memory perspective For all of these reasons I felt it made sense to write a review paper on branding I was hoping to make several contributions with the paper One I wanted to provide some conceptual structure and clarity to branding but also offer some helpful managerial guidelines Two I wanted to organize and interpret the rapidly expanding body of research on the topic but also highlight areas in the greatest need of future research and pro vide some guidance as to how that research could be shaped Although lengthy the article itself was written fairly easily I already had many ideas and much material to work with I received some helpful suggestions on early drafts from some colleagues and benefited from a constructive review process led by Tom Kinnear from the University of Michigan the JM editor at the time The paper was published as the lead article in the January 1993 issue of JM Most important contributions With the CBBE article there were several specific goals I was trying to achieve Most importantly I wanted to provide a con ceptual overview of brand equity which would be helpful in thinking about how to build measure and manage brand equity I also wanted to put forth a specific definition of the brand equity concept At that time all kinds of definitions of brand equity were being proposed especially in the trade press I wanted to provide a definition of brand equity and a perspective on brand ing that would be helpful for marketing practitioners but I wanted to have it strongly rooted in consumer behavior theory This focus reflected my basic philosophy about branding I have always felt that consumers and customers are at the heart of marketing as reflected by the simple definition of marketing as Bsatisfying consumer needs and wants better than competitors I chose to use the term Bcustomerbased brand equity because I 2 AMS Rev 2016 6116 wanted to distinguish my own more micro consumerfocused view of brand equity from other more macro financialoriented views of brand equity Brand valuation methods and Interbrands method in particular were becoming more popular and there was much interest in industry at the time on putting dollar figures on the value of brands My interest on the other hand was in providing strategic insight and guidelines centered in consumer behavior theory which would create the value which these financial models would then assess As I outlined in the article the definition of customerbased brand equity that I proposed Bthe differential effect that brand knowledge has on customer response to brand market ing activitywas characterized by three dimensions that I felt were critical to the theoretical development of the concept 1 differential effects created by a brand 2 brand knowl edgedefined very broadly as any type of mental brand as sociationas the source of the differential effects and 3 re sponse to a wide variety of different marketing and other var iables for the brand as the basis or outcomes of those differ ential effects As outlined below those three key components led to much subsequent research With that definition and conceptualization as a foundation the paper also attempted to provide some useful structure into how to think about building measuring and managing customerbased brand equity including the following highlights Building customerbased brand equity was defined in terms of three activities Choosing brand identities or elements designing and implementing marketing activities them selves and leveraging secondary associations by linking the brand to some other entitya person place or thing Two approaches to measuring customerbased brand equity were suggested an indirect approach which fo cused on potential sources of brand equity by measuring brand knowledge and a direct approach that attempted to actually measure the differential effect created by that brand knowledge on consumer response to different as pects of the brands marketing program Six guidelines for managing customerbased brand equity were identified emphasizing the importance of taking a broad and longterm view of marketing a brand specifying the desired consumer knowledge structures and core benefits for a brand considering a wide range of traditional and nontraditional advertising promotion and other marketing options coordinating the marketing options that were chosen conducting tracking studies and controlled experiments and evalu ating potential extension candidates The final contribution of the paper was to outline a number of branding topics in need of more research As will be de scribed below although much progress has been made on those topics and others much work remains My subsequent CBBErelated research One of the advantages of writing a conceptual paper is the research agenda it naturally spawns In my case perhaps the most important followup to the CBBE article was my text book Strategic Brand Management SBM which used much of the structure and concepts from the article as a blueprint to develop a comprehensive 600 page examination of building measuring and managing brand equity The SBM text now in its 4th edition Keller 2013 has been translated and adapted in many languages and countries and is viewed by many as one of the leading textbooks in the area Although there were many specific research projects that I was involved with that also followed fairly directly from the thinking expressed in the CBBE article I will only highlight two of my main research streams here on brand knowledge and brand extensions Brand knowledge At the very core of customerbased brand equity is the concept of brand knowledge The original CBBE article viewed brand knowledge from the perspective of an associative network memory model I had always found that modeland its no tion of spreading activationto be very robust and useful to explain and interpret all kinds of marketing and consumer behavior phenomena I felt it was particularly applicable to brands and branding John et al 2006 The CBBE article offered a very simple taxonomy of brand knowledge that broke the concept down into two key compo nents 1 Brand awareness consisting of brand recall and recognition and 2 brand image characterized by the strength favorability and uniqueness of different kinds of at tribute and benefit associations for the brand Even though it was fairly basic the figure from the article displaying the full taxonomy was subsequently reprinted in a number of different publications reinforcing the value of even simple conceptual frameworks to facilitate understanding I published several followup articles that expanded or built on this depiction of brand knowledge Articulating brand knowledge A JCR article Keller 2003 outlined in more detail the specific dimensions of brand knowledge in terms of Awareness attri butes benefits images thoughts feelings attitudes and ex periences The central thesis to that paper was that it was critical to develop broader perspectives towards brand knowl edge given that 1 marketing activity creates or affects multi ple dimensions of brand knowledge and 2 multiple dimen sions of brand knowledge in turn influence consumer re sponse to marketing activity The JCR paper also delved into more detail in the brand leveraging process making the case that any other entity AMS Rev 2016 6116 3 person place or thingcan be characterized by those same dimensions of brand knowledge A threefactor model was pro posed that maintained that the extent of equity transfer that could potentially occur from linking a brand to another entity depended on 1 consumer knowledge of the other entity 2 meaningfulness of the knowledge of the entity to the brand and 3 transferability of the knowledge of the entity to the brand Brand resonance model Another important followup was the development of the brand resonance model which focused on key dimensions of brand knowledge and how they affected resulting consumer brand relationships This model was first outlined in Keller 2001 and expanded in greater detail in subsequent SBM text editions The resonance model outlines a series of branding stages and building blocks to profile how consumers form relationships with brands see Fig 1 The resonance model makes some important additions to the thinking in the original CBBE article The concept of brand salience defined in terms of breadth and depth of brand awareness is introduced as the base level of the model Brand salience depends on the extent to which the brand is thought of easily and oftenat all the right times in all the right places and in all the right ways Even by just acknowledging the importance of brand awareness at both purchase and con sumption this was a much richer view of brand awareness than the straightforward brand recognition and topofmind awareness measures often employed in industry or even some academic research such as with the original CBBE article An important and rich concept brand salience has now become a much bigger part of the branding lexicon eg as a key com ponent of market research leader Millward Browns Meaningfully Different Framework Building again on the original CBBE theorizing the reso nance model also draws two key distinctions in its next two levels up in terms of brand image and brand responses The first important distinction is in the duality of brands both in terms of tangible and intangible associations related to per formance and imagery respectively at the brand image level and in terms of the rational and emotional responses that either type of information might evoke as brand responses at the next level up With this structure in mind the model highlights that Bgoing up the lefthand side of the model of the pyramid can be viewed as a more Brational route to brandbuilding and going up the righthand side can be seen as more of an Bemotional route The model acknowledges that strong brands go up both sides of the pyramid while also recognizing the importance of Bcrossover effects such that performance associations affect feelings and imagery associations affect judgments A second important distinction that is made in the reso nance model is in the notion of pointsofdifference PODs and pointsofparity POPs as a basis of positioning Based on joint research with the originators of the idea Brian Sternthal and Alice Tybout of Northwestern University the brand positioning model was explicated in detail in an HBR article Keller et al 2002 and in later revisions of the SBM text Addressing a fundamentally important component of brand and marketing strategy the POD and POP model provides a much more competitivelyrealistic and consumergrounded approach to positioning vs the classic approaches to position ing espoused by marketing pundits such as Ries and Trout or found in traditional positioning statement templates The real ization that brands need to both have advantages PODs in some areas and break even in other areas POPs with respect RELATIONSHIPS What about you me g oing forward RESPONSE What do I think and feel about you MEANING What are you and what makes you special IDENTITY Who are you and when and why do I think of you Intense Active Loyalty Positive Accessible Reactions PointsofParity Difference Deep Broad Brand Awareness Resonance Judgments Feelings Performance Imagery Salience Stages of Brand Development Questions Branding Objective at Each Stage 1 2 3 4 Fig 1 Brand resonance model 4 AMS Rev 2016 6116 to a welldefined set of competitors has been enlightening to many practitioners in particular Judgments and feelings in turn are the two key inputs into the fourth and last stage of the model and another important contribution the concept of brand resonance Brand resonance is defined in terms of the extent to which a con sumer feels he or she is Bin synch with a brand It is reflected by the level of intensity and activity in the relationship the brand engenders with consumers and is conceptualized in terms of four components behavioral loyalty attitudinal at tachment sense of community and active engagement Although originally devised in the very early days of the Internet as it turns out the model was constructed in such a way that it is still highly relevant and applicable even in to days digital marketing environment In particular the dimensions of brand resonance help to capture developments in social media and how consumers have become more involved in potentially new and different ways with brands The model describes how marketers need to go beyond mere repeat buying behavioral loyalty so that consumers create strong bonds with the brand attitudinal attachment as well as to each other and the company as a whole sense of community An especially useful concept active engagement isdefined to bewhen customers are willing to invest time energy money or any other personal resources in the brand beyond those expended during purchase or consumption of the brand Consumer engagement is inherently a broad concepten gagement may be directed towards the brand company or other consumers as a result of attitudinal attachment a sense of community or perhaps some other factor In practice how ever engagement has often been operationalized as more of a media phenomenon The concept of active engagement put forth in the brand resonance model is one that would seem to be more faithful to the engagement concept in its broader terms By using the investment of different types of resources as its foundation it can potentially align with other resource based views of consumer behavior Its broader scope offers much research potential The resonance model with its roots in the CBBE article has had impact in several different ways It served as the basis for Procter Gambles global brand tracking system EquityScan for years and has influenced brand tracking at a number of other firms too The resonance model has also been used by instructors in more and more MBA classrooms through the years as a means to explain brand building and consumerbrand relationships to students Brand value chain model Finally working with Don Lehmann from Columbia University I developed one more model which built on all of this prior research and theorizing The brand value chain model was designed to help marketers trace the value creation process to better understand the financial impact of marketing expenditures and investments to create loyal customers and strong brands Keller and Lehmann 2003 The model was built on some fundamental premises originally introduced in the CBBE article as to how the value of a brand ultimately resided with consumers or customers and what they felt and thought and how they acted along with the importance of measuring both sources and outcomes of brand equity Specifically the details of the model displayed in Fig 2 are as follows First brand value creation begins when the firm targets actual or potential customers by investing in a marketing program to develop the brand including product research development and design trade or intermediary sup port marketing communications and so on This marketing activity changes customers mindsetswhat customers think and feel and everything that becomes linked to the brand as reflected by the various components of the brand resonance model Next these customers mindsets affect buying behav ior and how they respond to all subsequent marketing activity pricing channels communications and the product itself and the resulting market share and profitability of the brand Finally the investment community considers this market per formance of the brand to assess shareholder value in general and the value of a brand in particular The model also assumes that three multipliers or filters moderate the transfer between these four value stages increas ing or decreasing the value that can transfer from one stage to another 1 program multiplier is a function of the quality of the program investment and determines the marketing pro grams ability to actually affect the customer mindset 2 The customer multiplier depends on factors such as competitive superiority channel and other intermediary support while customer size and profile determine the extent to which value created in the minds and hearts of customers affects market performance and 3 The market multiplier depends in part on the actions of financial analysts and investors and deter mines the extent to which the value shown by the market performance of a brand is manifested in shareholder value Summary Grounded in consumer behavior theory I view these three modelsthe brand positioning model the brand resonance model and the brand value chain modelas offering mar keters a comprehensive set of tools to help them devise brand ing strategies and tactics to maximize profits and longterm brand equity and track their progress along the way Like the famous Russian nesting Bmatryoshka dolls the three models are interconnected or linked and become larger and increase in scope see Fig 3 for a simplified depiction The first model is a component into the second model the second model in turn is a component into the third model Combined the three models take much of the learning and beliefs from academic AMS Rev 2016 6116 5 research into branding to provide some micro and macro per spectives to successful brand building Brand extensions My other research stream I want to highlight concerns brand extensions An active research area to this day literally hundreds of papers on brand extensions have appeared in the marketing literature over the last 25 years Given their prevalence as a brand ing strategy as well as the challenges which firms face in consis tently and successfully launching them brand extensions are appropriately enough one of the most studied areas in marketing The CBBE article highlighted a three factor model of exten sion evaluations originally proposed in Keller and Aaker 1992 1 How salient parent brand associations are in the minds of consumers in the extension context ie what associations come to mind about the parent brand when consumers think of the proposed extension and the strength of those associations 2 How favorable any inferred associations are in the ex tension context ie whether these associations suggest the type of product or service that the brand extension would be and whether consumers view these associations as good or bad in the extension context Program Quality Marketing Program Investment Customer Mindset Market Performance Shareholder Value VALUE STAGES Product Communications Trade Employee Other Awareness Associations Attitudes Attachment Activity Price premiums Price elasticities Market share Expansion success Cost savings Profitability Stock price PE ratio Market capitalization Market Conditions MULTIPLIERS FILTERS Distinctiveness Relevance Integrated Value Excellence Competitive reactions Channel support Customer size and profile Market dynamics Growth potential Risk profile Brand contribution Investor Sentiment Fig 2 Brand value chain model Customer Mindset Marketing Activity Market Performance Shareholder Value Points of Difference Points of Parity 3 Brand Value Chain Model 2 Brand Resonance Model 1 Brand Positioning Model Resonance Judgments Feelings Performance Imagery Salience Fig 3 An integrated set of brand planning models 6 AMS Rev 2016 6116 3 How unique any inferred associations are in the extension category ie how these associations compare with those about competitors Building on these notions later research described a four factor model of the feedback effects of an extension on parent brand knowledge and evaluations Keller and Sood 2003 Keller 2013 1 How compelling the evidence is about the corresponding attribute or benefit association in the extension context eg how attention getting and unambiguous or easily interpretable information about product performance or imagery is for that association 2 How relevant or diagnostic the extension evidence is for attribute or benefit associations for the parent brand eg how much consumers see evidence on product performance or im agery in one category as predictive of product performance or imagery for the brand in other categories 3 How consistent the extension evidence is with the cor responding parent brand associations Inconsistent extension evidence creates the potential for change with the direction and extent of change depending on the relative strength and favorability of the evidence 4 How strongly existing attribute or benefit associations are held in consumer memory for the parent brand ie how easy an association might be to change Much of my subsequent brand extension research looked at different aspects of these models and the extension evaluation and feedback effects process The findings of several of the published papers included Keller and Aaker 1998 examined different dimen sions of corporate credibility and found that a cor porate brand association of being innovative was particularly beneficial to improve extension acceptance Bridges et al 2000 showed how communicating the right kind of information about extensions could provide Bexplanatory links and reduce uncertainty to improve extension evaluations Desai and Keller 2002 showed how different ingre dient branding strategies affected acceptance of sub sequent extensions Cobranded ingredients were more beneficial than selfbranded ingredients for more dissimilar extensions Sood and Keller 2012 found that subbranding offered two key benefits to marketers by enhancing extension evaluations and protecting the parent brand from any un wanted negative feedback Some other subsequent branding research The CBBE article outlined six main areas of future research each of which received much research attention since the ar ticle was published Many other productive research streams have emerged in the branding area in the last 25 years how ever that are not necessarily related to the thinking in the CBBE article Here I briefly highlight some additional re search on the same two topics reviewed abovebrand knowl edge and brand extensions I also consider in some depth how various individual differences impact consumer evaluations of brand extensions Brand knowledge Much branding research has highlighted all types of potential ly important brand intangibles and how they influence con sumer decisionmaking Impactful research streams have emerged on such diverse areas as brand personality Aaker 1997 Mathur et al 2012 brand anthropomorphism Aggrawal and McGill 2012 brand emotions Pham et al 2013 Verrochi and Williams 2013 sensory marketing Krishna 2013 and marketing aesthetics Hoegg et al 2010 among many other topics Flowing from Fourniers seminal research Fournier 1998 a vast body of research has looked at selfbrand relationships in all kinds of interesting and useful ways Aaker et al 2004 Batra et al 2012 Cheng et al 2012 Dommer et al 2013 Dunn and Hoegg 2014 Escalas 1996 Fedorikhin et al 2008 Swaminathan et al 2007 2009 Thomson et al 2005 2012 Many specific branding considerations such as lifestyle branding Chernev et al 2011 conspicuous brand consump tion Ferraro et al 2013 and brand tourism Bellezza and Keinan 2014 have also been illuminated from a consumer brand knowledge perspective Collectively this research and that of many others has shown how important it is to understand consumer memory and knowl edge and how consumers think and feel about brands Brand extensions A number of interesting and important phenomena have also been identified with brand extensions For example by making brand extensions seem more concrete Meyvis et al 2012 showed how the presence of visual informa tion and availability of comparison brands could create a more concrete mindset towards a brand extension and shift consumers preferences from extensions of better fitting brands to extensions from higher quality brands see also Milberg et al 2010 A number of studies have introduced useful constructs and metrics to better understand brand extension dynamics For example Spiggle et al 2012 developed a brand extension AMS Rev 2016 6116 7 authenticity BEA scale that focuses on consumer perceptions of the Blegitimacy and cultural contiguity of brand extensions Specifically they propose four dimensions of brand extension authenticity 1 maintaining brand standards and style 2 honor ing brand heritage 3 preserving brand essence and 4 avoiding brand exploitation In their particular experimental setting BEA provided additional explanatory value to evaluations of brand extensions beyond consumer perceptions of fit on the basis of perceived extension similarity or relevance particularly among consumers with strong selfbrand connections Much research has explored the relationships among and between brands eg Heath et al 2011 Mao and Krishnan 2006 Oakley et al 2008 ie how various characteristics of one brand or brands affects consumer perceptions and evalu ations of another brand Brand dilution research in particular considers how the introduction of a new product in some form by a company can adversely affect the fortunes of existing brands for the company especially if the new product is branded as an extension Because of its fundamental importance to brand manage ment brand dilution has been a topic of enduring interest and has received close research scrutiny from a variety of useful angles Ahluwalia and GurhanCanli 2000 Caldieraro et al 2015 Ferraro et al 2013 GurhanCanli and Maheswaran 1998 Keller and Sood 2003 Kirmani et al 1999 Loken and John 1993 Milberg et al 1997 Pullig et al 2006 John et al 1998 Some of this dilution research uses an associative network memory model Morrin 1999 For example Lei et al 2008 showed that the magnitude of spillover between brands in a portfolio is a function of both the strength and directionality of brand associations as determined by the number and salience of associations linked to each brand They underscore the possibility of association asymmetry between brands such that a crisis with subbrand A may not negatively influence eval uations of subbrand B in the portfolio to the same extent as the same crisis with subbrand B would influence evaluations of subbrand A Research has also shown positive effects between brands Shine et al 2007 showed that the simultaneous introduction of two brand extensions eg two digital cameras had a Bsynergistic effect on consumer evaluations of the extensions independent of their similarity or fit to the parent brand eg Xerox Consumers appear to view a related set of products from a single manufacturer as inherently appealing Similarly people enjoy complimentary products con sumed at the same time more when the products are mere ly labeled as coming from the same brand vs different brands Rahinel and Redden 2013 Complementarity has also been shown to be beneficial with cobrand part ners although it depends in part on consumer processing style or strategy property mapping vs relational linking Swaminathan et al 2015 Summary Reviewing all of even just the more recent research in the branding area on brand extensions in any depth is be yond the scope of this paper A large part of Chapter 12 in my Strategic Brand Management text however does catalog some of the important research findings on brand extensions that have emerged in the literature through the years Table 1 summarizes that research into a set of proposed managerial guidelines As is clear from those guidelines many factors affect how consumers evaluate brand extensions and whether or not extensions are successful Figure 4 offers a highlevel schematic overview of some of these different factors see also Czellar 2003 In the next section I will focus on research in that part of the figure that is relevant to Table 1 Brand extension guidelines based on academic research 1 Successful brand extensions occur when the parent brand is seen as having favorable associations and there is a perception of fit between the parent brand and the extension product 2 There are many bases of fit productrelated attributes and benefits as well as nonproductrelated attributes such as common usage situations or user types 3 Fit may also be based on technical or manufacturing commonalties or more surface considerations such as necessary or situational complementarity 4 Knowledgeable Bexperts are more likely to use technical or manufacturing commonalities to judge fit less knowledgeable Bnovice consumers are more likely to use superficial considerations 5 Consumers may transfer associations that are positive in the original product class but become negative in the extension context 6 Consumers may infer negative associations about an extension perhaps even based on other inferred positive associations 7 Concrete attribute associations tend to be more diffcult to extend than abstract benefitt associations 8 High quality brands stretch farther than average quality brands although both types of brands have boundaries 9 A brand that is a product category prototype or exemplar can be difficult to extend 10 It can be difficult to extend into a product class that is seen as easyto make 11 A successful extension can contribute to the parent brand image and enable a brand to be extended even farther 12 An unsuccessful extension does not prevent a firm from Bbacktracking and introducing a more similar extension 13 An unsuccessful extension hurts the parent brand only when there is a strong basis of fit between the two and it is a Bproduct failure 14 The most effective advertising strategy for an extension is one which emphasizes information about the extension rather than reminders about the parent brand 15 Subbranding can enhance distant extension evaluations and protect the parent brand from negative feedback from close extensions 16 Vertical extensions can be difficult and often require subbranding strategies 17 Individual differences across consumers can affect how they make an extension decision and moderate extension effects 18 Cultural differences across markets can influence extension success 8 AMS Rev 2016 6116 consumers and what they know how they think and feel and how that affects in turn how they evaluate an exten sion and its resulting success Research on individual differences and extension evaluations Consumers vary in their chronic or situational motivation ability and opportunity to evaluate an extension in a number of important ways Research has shown how extension fit and evaluations can be influenced by several consumer character istics as follows Expertise Early research by Muthukrishnan and Weitz 1990 demon strated that knowledgeable Bexpert consumers were more likely to use technical or manufacturing commonalities to judge fit considering similarity in terms of technology design and fabrication as well as the materials and components used in the manufacturing process Less knowledgeable Bnovice consumers on the other hand were more likely to use super ficial perceptual considerations such as common package shape color size and usage Zhang and Sood 2002 showed a similar pattern of knowl edge effects based on age Children who have less brand knowledge than adultswere more likely to evaluate exten sions on the basis of surface cues eg brand name linguistic characteristics of an extension as compared to adults who were more likely to use deep cues eg category similarity between the parent brand and extension category Decision style Research has considered how the manner by which consumers tend to make decisions in general affects how they make ex tension decisions in particular Monga and John 2010 have shown that one important individual difference in extension evaluations is whether consumers are analytical thinkers focusing more on comparing specific attributes or benefits of the parent brand and extension or holistic thinkers focusing more on comparing overall attitudes and judgments of the parent brand and extension Analytical and holistic thinkers both gave prestige brands permission to extend widely but holistic thinkers gave functional brands much greater permis sion to extend than analytical thinkers Similarly Yorkston et al 2010 have shown that con sumers known as incremental theorists who believe that the personality traits of a brand are malleable are more accepting of brand extensions than consumers known as entity theorists who believe that a brands traits are fixed Cutright et al 2013 showed that when feelings of personal control are low for consumers they may seek greater structure in brands and thus may be more likely to reject brand extensions that do not seem to fit well with a parent brand Selfconstrual and schemas Another important individual difference variable relates to selfconstrual or how people view and make sense of life and their lives Lee et al 2000 2010 A person with an independent selfconstrual is more concerned with the unique ness of individuals a person with an interdependent self construal is more concerned with relationships between and among individuals In a branding context Ahluwalia 2008 posited that a con sumer with an interdependent selfconstrual should be better able to uncover the possible relationships among a brand ex tension and its parent brand and thus have higher perceptions of extension fit and favorability In her study these effects were observed as long as consumers with interdependent selfconstrual were sufficiently motivated Similarly Kim and John 2008 show that consumers with a lowlevel construal ie view stimuli in their environments in terms of concrete and contextualized features are not as sensitive to differences in perceived fit in evaluating brand extensions as compared to those consumers with a high level construal ie view stimuli in their environment in terms of abstract and generalized features Relatedly Puligadda et al 2012 argue that brand schematic consumers are more likely than others to process or organize information according to their brand knowledge Brandaschematic consumers on the other hand use other information such as product characteristics or attributes as a frame of reference Brand schematic consumers were shown to be more likely to see the similarity in a brand extension concept Regulatory focus Another important individual difference between consumers is regulatory focus Higgins 1997 2002 and the motivation Parent Brand Extension Category Category A Category B Category C Consumer Competitor X Competitor Y Competitor Z Motivation Ability Opportunity Individual Difference Factors Fig 4 Conceptualizing brand extension evaluations AMS Rev 2016 6116 9 of people and how they go about pursuing their goals Individuals with a prevention focus are concerned with nega tive outcomes and avoiding losses via safety security respon sibility and so on Individuals with a promotion focus are concerned with positive outcomes and seeking gains and plea sure and avoiding missed opportunities Yeo and Park 2006 showed that consumers who are either chronically or temporally prevention focused tend to judge dissimilar extensions less favorably than consumers with a chronic or temporary promotion focus due to their different interpretations of risk Relatedly Chang et al 2011 showed that promotion focused consumers are more likely to focus more abstractly on the overlap in benefits in judging an exten sion whereas prevention focused consumers are more likely to focus more concretely on sheer category similarity Mindset and goals Temporal and contextual factors can affect extension evalua tions in a variety of different ways Barone et al 2000 ex perimentally demonstrated that positive mood primarily en hanced evaluations of extensions that consumers viewed as moderately similar as opposed to very similar or dissimilar to a favorably evaluated parent brand see also Yeung and Wyer 2005 Monga and GuhanCanli 2012 found that get ting men to think about their spouses or mates put them into a more relational processing mode such that they increased their fit perceptions of moderately dissimilar extensions Consumer goals can also play a role Hamilton and Chernev 2010 showed that upscale extensions could in crease the price image of a brand and downscale extensions decrease its price image when consumers were browsing or just looking around but did not necessarily apply when con sumers were actively looking to make a purchase in which case the effects could even be reversed Culture Recent research has also explored how different cultures re spond differently to brand extensions Monga and John 2007 as well as Ng and Houston 2006 have shown that consumers from Eastern cultures eg China have a more holistic style of thinking and perceive higher levels of exten sion fit than do consumers from Western cultures eg US who have a more analytical style of thinking Dilution effects for a typical or similar extension that fails also can vary by culture and consumer motivation Ng 2010 Easterners exhibited significantly greater dilution when their motivation is high Westerners exhibited significantly greater dilution when their motivation is low Additionally Torelli and Ahluwalia 2012 have shown that cultural congruency can aid culturally consistent brand extensions over and beyond the effects of perceived fit see also Torelli et al 2012 They note that a cultural congruent brand extension might be something like Sony electric car a culturally incongruent car might be something like Sony cappuccinomacchiato maker According to the research beyond the inherent levels of fit that any electronic manu facturer might enjoy with an electric car Sony would be expected to get an extra boost in fit and evaluations be cause of its Japanese country of origin and Japans strong association with electronics Summary As this body of research has clearly shown individual differ ences between consumers matter a great deal and can play a significant role as to how consumers interpret and judge brand extensions Although there are many different mediating fac tors that can help to explain these results many of these indi vidual difference factors can potentially be linked to funda mental considerations of a consumers chronic or situational motivation ability and opportunity to process extension infor mation and make extension evaluations and choices Areas in need of additional research With an area as broad and as important as branding there is naturally a wide variety of research opportunities Accordingly the last 25 years have seen concerted research efforts in branding from academics from many different dis ciplines and in all kinds of different domains It is rare that an issue of a top marketing journal appears without at least one article that includes the word Bbrand in its title Along the way there have been several reviews of research on brands and branding to offer some helpful perspectives and insights For example Keller and Lehmann 2006 provide a detailed summary of noteworthy research findings on a host of different branding topics as well as a comprehensive inven tory of unanswered research questions Schmitt 2012 offers a thorough incisive view of some consumer psychology per spectives on branding Völckner and Sattler 2006 provide a more focused review on brand extensions Despite all the progress documented by those reviews and others however there is much we still need to learn about brands branding and building measuring and managing brand equity In this concluding section I focus on two broad sets of topics that I feel have the greatest opportunity to gen erate productive research agendas and make significant man agerial impact going forward The first set of topics concerns various digital issues an area obviously not explored in the original CBBE article given the timing of its publication The second set of topics concerns updates to some of the future research directions identified in that article 10 AMS Rev 2016 6116 Understanding digital effects in branding A hugely important area not addressed in the original CBBE article is digital effects in branding After the Internet boom of the late 1990s more marketers became interested in how to build brands online as well as how to build online brands Although this development spawned much academic re search a great deal of activity was also found in industry and trade publications With the deep penetration and exten sive daily usage of smart phones and with the Internet of things looming understanding how to factor all things digital into marketing and branding is unquestionably a top research priority Yadav and Pavlou 2014 Although many important and interesting branding issues can be identified in a digital marketing environment five broad topics are addressed here Although all forms of re searchempirical behavioral analytical managerial or oth ermay be helpful in the study of digital effects in branding note that many of these issues especially lend themselves to empirical analyses capitalizing on the vast abundant data sources now available online on consumers attitudes and be haviors with respect to brands Understanding the value of brands and branding in a digital world Perhaps the most fundamental issue to consider is how the role of brands and branding has changed in todays dynamic and fastmoving digital world With so many new and different consumer and firm capabilities marketers need to rethink vir tually all of their beliefs and practices to make sure they are still valid today and if not for any reason what they should be doing differently Rigorous and relevant academic research can be extremely helpful in that regard Perhaps the best place to start is with the basic functions of brands and what they do to reduce risk set expectations and create tangible and intangible value for con sumers Do consumers view risk and trust differently for brands in a digital setting Do consumers assess value differ ently in a digital setting What role does digital play in com municating and delivering that value One welldocumented change in a digital environment is the Bpath to purchase or the Bconsumer decision journey No longer as deliberately linear as suggested by classic Bhierarchy of effects or Bdecision funnel models much it eration can occur or steps skipped or compressed as con sumers move from awareness to purchase and beyond An important area of understanding is how the role of brands may differ as a result of different types of consumer delibera tions With consumers potentially influenced by other con sumers and others outside the firm virtually every step of the way how can brand marketing be equally timely and credible A number of communications issue come into play here What forms of online marketing communications are most effective with such decisionmaking What is the role of so cial media search display and other forms of advertising web sites and so on in affecting consumer progress in the decision journey How do consumers blend all these forms of communication with sources of influence from others Understanding how to manage customer relationships Digital branding guidelines and principles are often stated in terms of Bthe consumer as if so much homogeneity existed that consumers could be treated as one group A clearly more nuanced view of consumers is necessary beyond the well worn marketing mantra often seen or heard these days that Bthe consumer or customer is now in charge of the marketing With digital communications marketers can leverage what consumers are willing to share as to their personal likes and dislikes and their unmet needs and wants to develop a dia logue and forge stronger brand ties This opportunity for a firm however should not be overstated The reality is only some of the consumers want to get involved with only some of their brands and even then only some of the time Although some people may want to become highly engaged with the brand others may have little to no interest in having any kind of relationship beyond purchase and consumption of the brand and no more As much research in marketing has shown in general and with respect to branding in particular consumers are hetero geneous in many different ways that affect how they think feel and act towards brands As was outlined above many individual difference factors have been shown to affect how consumers respond to brands or brand marketing A much more robust and flexible view of consumers must be devel oped in understanding branding in a digital world which re flects these differences Sharp conceptual thinking and frameworks are necessary to provide perspective and insight One tool which may be helpful in that regardat least in terms of recognizing how different customers may want different relationships with a brandis the brand engagement pyramid see Fig 5 The brand engagement pyramid distinguishes the smaller group of customers at the top of the pyramid who would like to be highly engaged with the brand from the broad base of cus tomers at the base who would choose to not be very engaged or maybe even not at all engaged with the brand The structure and dynamics of the brand engagement pyr amid helps to raise a number of different questions What is the shape of the pyramid and the distribution of engagement with customers for a brand How large is the group of cus tomers at the top of the pyramid who seeks engagement For AMS Rev 2016 6116 11 those customers who want to be highly engaged what are the most effective and efficient marketing activities for the brand On the other hand what are the most effective and efficient marketing activities for those customers at the base of the pyramid who have little or no interest in being engaged with the brand What are the main nonmarketing influences on those different consumers What are the influences among consumers at the same level or across levels of the pyramid Is there any Btrickle down effect from highly engaged con sumers at the top of the pyramid to those less engaged down below These questions have obvious managerial significance and are in need of research attention Marketers need tools to help measure and assess what kinds of brand engagement pyramids characterizes their brands as well as how they should best optimize their pyramids as a result As part of the analysis of the latter consideration marketers must fully understand all the potential costs and benefits of relationshipbuilding in a digital world from both the firm and consumer perspective For example although digital technology makes it easy for brand marketers to reach consumers in many different ways that is also true for the marketers of competitive brands too A deal or offer for a competitor is almost always just a click away potentially repeatedly testing a consumers bonds of loyalty Understanding the roots of true brand loyalty in a competitive digital world is crucial Understanding targeting and segmenting In a related sense more precise targeting in a digital world means that brand marketers have the ability to tailor virtually all aspects of their marketingand thus their positioningdown to the individual level Digital capabilities allow marketers to target consumers unique ly and potentially provide them with a highly customized and tailored brand experience which as not ed above reflects consumers specific goals and desires At the same time such efforts in personalization may make it harder to create an active brand community with shared brand values and experiences It can also potential ly dilute the meaning of the brand and create confusion in the marketplace With a less cohesive image brand mar keting at a more macro or aggregate level eg brand extensions brand sponsorships and so on may become less effective and efficient What should be the appropriate balance of personal ization vs uniformity across a group of customers for a brand How does digital help or hurt those efforts In what ways can digital programs and activities maximize individualization and community for consumers Are some consumers more digitally sensitive or susceptible such that nondigital means of communication and mar keting are just fundamentally treated differently Understanding pricing power and switching behavior An often overlooked part of the branding equation is pricing power and the means by which firms can reap the financial benefits of the value they create for consumers With the rise of easily accessible discount brands private labels and ge nerics in so many categories online and elsewhere a funda mentally important question is what kind of price premiums can national or global brands command in todays transparent and interconnected marketing world A number of specific questions follow How does the exis tence of so many product ratings reviews and comparisons change the ability of brands to command premiums How do readily available discount brands affect brand loyalty and change consumers willingness to switch How much price transparency should brands willingly offer Not Very or At All Engaged Moderately Engaged Highly Engaged Brand Marketing Consumers 1 2 3 NonBrand Marketing 1 2 3 Fig 5 Brand engagement pyramid 12 AMS Rev 2016 6116 Understanding pure digital brands Finally an important area largely untouched with deep aca demic research is how to build purely digital brands without the physical presence of any products or offline services Some of the fastestgrowing and most successful brands in recent yearsnotably Google and Facebookhave been born and expanded strictly online and markets around the developments of apps has exploded How should purely digital brands be built What are the different recommendations and guidelines that emerge How important is the brand itself and its trademarks for purely digital brands where little other tangible manifestations of the brand exist Similarly how do purely digital brands estab lish credentials and build credibility and trust Other important branding topics The CBBE article identified a number of important topics for future research which as noted above have received much research attention Nevertheless there are still important un answered questions some of which I highlight below The main theme in much of this discussion is the need for a broader more dynamic view of branding effects Isolating certain individual effects is helpful and can provide value but may fail to reflect the richness of branding effects that actually operate in the marketplace Understanding brand purpose narratives and storytelling Recognizing the increasing importance of social responsibility and brand intangibles to consumers especially millennials many marketers have begun to incorporate more abstract no tions such as brand purpose brand narratives brand stories and many other similar constructs as crucial ingredients to their brand strategies Such efforts are laudable and potentially very useful but ensuring that these constructs provide enough financial and branding benefits will undoubtedly be crucial to their longterm success and widespread adoption Several questions are relevant here What are the pluses and minuses of higherlevel brand constructs What types of brand purposes are generally more beneficial How should they be crafted internally and expressed externally How should they relate to other aspects of the brand positioning and strategy For example how explicitly or implicitly should brand pur poses be connected to the product or service itself What makes brand stories or narratives compelling Are there any downsides to their use For example can brand stories or narratives distract marketers or consumers away from more fundamental positioning considerations Finally many of these higherlevel brand constructs are designed to tap into brand emotions The brand resonance model includes a simple taxonomy of brand feelings both more experiential in nature warm fun and exciting and more enduring in nature sense of security social approval and self respect What are other important types of brand feelings and emotions More generally how do brand feelings and emo tions work How easily can they be linked to a brand and in what ways do they affect consumer decisionmaking Understanding brand architecture and brands more holistically Good brand portfolio management has always emphasized the importance of maximizing coverage and minimizing overlap in the marketplace That belief continues to drive much brand thinking and strategies today One of the major branding trends in the marketplace in recent years is the consolidation of brands into fewer stronger brands Even leading CPG firms such as Proctor Gamble Unilever and Nestle with their classic Bhouse of brands architectures have begun to put more emphasis on their corporate brands as endorsers to their already wellknown and liked family brands Firms are thus increasingly seeking to establish mega brands As corporate brands in particular expand their market Bfootprints to encompass a wider range of products and more varied marketing activities an important question is how con sumers develop their more holistic impressions of a brand Although brands may not be as complex as Virgin with its dizzying array of diverse products and services it is becoming more and more unusual to find any brand that specializes in just one product or service even if defined broadly With the realization that any one brand especially a cor porate brandmay be associated with multiple products or product lines the challenge is how to optimally blend all the different types of associations that might exist for any partic ular product or product line for a brand How do marketers ensure that consumers understand and appreciate brands in their totality Or are there times that marketers would prefer that consumers view brands in more limited or focused ways Does the notion of Bflagship brands even make sense in that regard Understanding how to develop timeless inclusive brands Marketers no matter how successful are always confronted with the question of how to ensure that their brands continue to grow and prosper over time despite whatever changes may be occurring with customers competitors the company itself or anything else in the marketing environment To be success ful brands must be able to stay relevant over time as well as across different types of consumers The latter is especially challenging when considering all the potentially meaningful ways consumers may differdemographically geographical ly psychologically behaviorally and so on AMS Rev 2016 6116 13 A number of important research questions follow from this realization Fundamentally the issue is how robust or flexible a brand can be In other words in what ways can a brand image be crafted so that it is as relevant as possible to as many of the members of the target market as possible for as long as possible Two particular noteworthy research questions here are 1 what are the most effective ways to enlist new cus tomers while not antagonizing existing customers if the two groups differ for any reason and 2 what is the proper balance of continuity and change in the brand image over time A number of other specific questions follow How do mar keters understand what components of their brand and its im age need to be fixed and which ones can or need to be changed over time Can brand architecture or other brand strategies help to partition the brand in the marketplace to accommodate more customers How can acquisition and retention efforts be understood and optimized in the broadest possible ways to both build healthy brands and grow a loyal customer franchise over time Understanding how brand elements can work together A central aspect of branding is naturally the brand itself and all the various elements that make it upnames logos symbols slogans packaging signage characters and so on Much ac ademic research has examined individual brand elements to provide insight and guidance Consumers encounterand marketers designbrand elements collectively and more ho listically More attention needs to be placed on how combina tions of different types of brand elements work togetheror notto help to drive sales and improve brand equity Also what insights and guidelines can help marketers with newer forms of potentially trademarkable brand identitiessounds physical environments and so on Understanding how to effectively and efficiently track brands To manage their brands successfully marketers need to have a deep rich understanding of how consumers and all relevant parties think feel and act towards their brands Brand track ing broadly defined is the set of research methods and ap proaches that firms use to provide as complete and uptodate understanding of their brands as possible Traditionally the centerpiece of brand tracking has been consumer surveys In recent years however it has become increasingly difficult to actually administer those surveys as consumers have become more difficult to contact and less willing to participate in sur veys Yet at the same time the need to stay close to consumers and their brands has not abated suggesting that new means to gain insight into consumers and brands are badly needed A whole host of different kinds of measures have been proposed that go beyond surveys or other traditional data col lection methods eg focus groups Marketers are exploring new neural methods ethnographic methods and so on Of particular importance are the digital methods and measures which can be used at the individual or aggregate level to track online behavior These measure need to be validated and care fully vetted in terms of what they can and cannot do For new and old data collection methods strengths and weaknesses must be identified in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency by which they can be employed to gain consumer and brand understanding In many ways brandbuilding can be thought of in terms of Bpainting a picture of the brand in the minds and hearts of consumers Extending that metaphor it is important that marketers understand the colors vividness and texture of those mental images that they are creating A carefully constructed set of measures summarized in dash boards or other accessible means Pauwels 2014 can be an important step in that pursuit Academics need to pro vide the insight and inspiration through proven methods to make that happen 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