Book Description

The objective of the study is the exploration of consumer brand name equity for established products and services. There is little research on consumer brandname equity for established products, despite the general assumption within the literature of the central importance to consumers of the brand name element. To achieve isolation of the brand name element the study focuses on name changes brought about by global marketing. Adopting both a critical realist position and a functional based approach towards consumer brand equity, a mixed methods three stage sequential study design is employed. The first stage of the research focuses on the theoretical literature relevant to consumer brand name equity. In particular it seeks to derive a theoretical model of the consumer impact of a change in brand name for an established product. The second stage of the research uses qualitative analysis to empirically explore established product brand name functions. The model developed in the first stage of research is used as a framework but research is not limited to the empirical exploration of this model. The final stage of the research uses quantitative analysis to empirically explore the importance of the brand name of established product to consumers. The research makes a number of contributions to the existing literature. It empirically identifies a number of ways in which the brand name of established products can provide equity to consumers; specifically through rational, relationship, habitual and symbolic functions. One key finding is the discovery that much of the symbolic value appears to be customer rather than corporate driven. A further contribution from the quantitative work is an indication that the overall importance of the brand name of established products holds significant variance. A minority of research participants placed great importance on the brand name element, whilst for the majority the brand name held little importance. This places in context the above functions of the brand name element. Key implications from this study are that the accepted centrality of the brandname element within branding needs qualification and the active role of the consumer within brand equity creation requires greater recognition. In addition, whilst the research findings provide a good rationale for why corporations are able to change the brand name of their products with minimal impact for most of their customers, it also suggests that for a minority of customers this name change will cause an insurmountable long term problem, which will have to be borne by the corporation.