Brand-Building ImplicationsThe Cust

Brand-Building Implications
The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model maintains that building a
strong brand involves a series of logical steps: (1) establishing the proper brand
identity, (2) creating the appropriate brand meaning, (3) eliciting the right brand
responses, and (4) forging appropriate brand relationships with customers. More
specifically, according to this model, building a strong brand involves: establishing
breadth and depth of brand awareness; creating strong, favorable, and unique
brand associations; eliciting positive, accessible brand responses; and forging
intense, active brand relationships (see Figure 1). Achieving these four steps, in
turn, involves establishing six brand-building blocks—brand salience, brand per-
formance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feelings, and brand resonance.
The strongest brands excel in all six of these areas and thus entail the full execution
of all four steps in building a brand. With the CBBE Model, the most valuable
brand-building block, brand resonance, occurs when all the other brand-building
blocks are completely synchronized with customers’ needs, wants, and desires. In
other words, brand resonance reflects a completely harmonious relationship between customers and brand. With true brand resonance, customers display a high degree of
loyalty such that they actively seek means by which to interact with the brand and
share their experiences with others. Firms that are able to achieve resonance and
affinity with their customers should reap a host of valuable benefits, for example,
greater price premiums and more efficient and effective marketing programs.
In short, the basic premise of the CBBE model is that the true measure of the
strength of a brand depends on how consumers think, feel, and act with respect to
that brand. Achieving brand resonance requires eliciting the proper cognitive
appraisals and emotional reactions to the brand from customers. That, in turn,
necessitates establishing brand identity and creating the right meaning in terms of
brand performance and brand imagery associations. A brand with the right identity
and meaning can result in a customer’s believing that the brand is relevant and “my
kind of product.” The strongest brands will be those to which consumers become so
attached and passionate that they, in effect, become evangelists on their behalf.
The key point to recognize is that the power of the brand and its ultimate value to
the firm resides with customers. It is through their learning about and their experi-
ences with a brand that they end up thinking and acting in a way that allows the
firm to reap the benefits of brand equity. Although marketers must take responsi-
bility to design and implement the most effective and efficient brand-building
marketing programs possible, the success of those marketing efforts depends ulti-
mately on how consumers respond. This response, in turn, depends on the brand
knowledge that has been created in their minds.