Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

For indicating brand equity, one of the ways Kapferer (2004) recommends is spontaneous brand awareness by which he
means a measure of saliency, of share of the customer‘s mind when cued by the product. According to Aaker (1991; see
also Ballantyne, Warren & Nobbs, 2006) there are two levels of awareness: the stimulus based brand recognition and
the memory based brand recall. Herein, the focus is on brand recall: the consumers were asked to retrieve a brand name
from memory without any reminders. Ultimately, it is a question of top-of-mind (TOMA) awareness or TOMA status
where a particular brand is the first one that consumers recall when thinking about brands in a particular product
category. (Shimp, 2010) Brands that are easier to recall stand a better chance of gaining entry into the consumers‘
consideration set, i.e. the pool of brands from which a choice is made (Ballantyne et al., 2006).
Research setting
US, French, Swedish and Finnish students were asked to list their top-of-mind brands in the following categories:
beverages; computers; cell phones; cars; restaurants; media, and Internet services. By asking so, the idea was to see how
similar the choices are compared to Interbrand‘s Best global brands as well to see if there are cultural differences in the
equities. In order to keep group differences to a minimum, a homogeneous sample like students is considered valid and
justified. Student samples are thought as superior samples in cross-cultural comparisons for establishing equivalence,
controlling source of variation and isolating the cultural differences. (Koҫ ak et al., 2007)
According to Hsieh (2004), there are two types measures employed in brand equity studies: attitudinal and behavioural.
This study represents the former, focusing on brand awareness. Top-of-mind awareness does not tell about intention to
purchase nor actual brand choice, i.e. behavioural tendency. If, however, we are to follow Keller‘s (1993) definition of
brand equity according to which favourable brand associations lead to a positive response, i.e. purchase intention or
actual choice, we are allowed to believe that a customer preferably buys his/her top-of-mind brand in the category.
Major Findings
If we are to measure brand equity by top-of-mind awareness of consumers, the results of this study indicate that the
brand equities differ across countries. Different cultural conditions lead to different top-of-mind awareness. In the
following Table, the top-of-mind brands in each examined product category in the four countries are presented.
As discernible from the overall results, quite many of the consumers‘ top-of-mind brands are the same as on the
Interbrand top-10 ranking, and differences between countries are scarce. In the beverages‘ category, Coca Cola is the
number one brand in all examined countries except the US. The fact that in the United States Coca Cola is a fountain
brand may have something to do with the result. The computer category is surprisingly unanimous within the countries.
The highest ranked cell-phone brand on the Interbrand list, Nokia, is quite naturally the top-of-mind cell phone in
Finland, as well as respectively Apple and Sony Ericsson in the US and Sweden. In the car category 3 , however, there is
quite a lot of dispersion, and an interesting finding is that Mercedes Benz is the top-of-mind brand among the French
students even though there are fairly big French car brands in the market. Also the fact that McDonald‘s is the on the
top in the restaurants‘ category is an interesting result regarding France; for nearly 50% of the students it is the first
restaurant in mind. The media category is the most ethnocentric: a country‘s own TV channel or newspaper was ranked
first. Finally, Google seems to have gained ground in Europe in particular.
Discussion
Brands are created by the market but they must be managed by the company. In all markets, successful brand
management begins with knowledge of the target market. The paper contributes to the understanding of cultural
differences. The issue is important for business managers as the debate on standardization vs. adaptation is still
ongoing. A brand‘s position in the market may be a factor underlying the results. There may be intense competition in
the market or the product category is not considered as important in all the countries. Furthermore, the national-level
predisposition toward imported brands, the length of time the brand has been in the market, brand distribution as well as
marcom expenditures may have an effect on the results. These are issues that should be addressed in the future studies.
It should also be noted that the results might have been different had the empirical data been gathered from different
education levels and age groups as well as various geographic regions.
Understanding brand equity from the customers‘ perspective needs more attention (Washburn & Plank 2001). This
study took a look at the issue, asking consumers what brands they value in particular product categories. However, the
paper is not able to answer the question how to build up and affect a brand‘s value to the customer, i.e. what kind of
marketing activities are needed to make consumers respond favourably to a brand.
3 th
The examined categories were given according to the Interbrand top-10 list of 2009 where Toyota was listed the 8 ,
the value of the brand being 31,330 $ million. In 2010 there were no automobile brands in the list.
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