The Design And Merchandising Program At Drexel

The purchase decision, according to M. Delong (2004), can be stimulated by the knowledge about brand and customers tend to rely on the brand image they know already. Thus, marketers have an initial goal to construct the brand image that would entice consumers to purchase that particular brand. The brand image is constructed through advertising, word-of-mouth, reference groups, celebrities, and media (R. Mihalcea and I. Catoiu, 2008). Creating a specific meaning of the brand through media, celebrities

of community around their high performance apparel while still presenting the concept that even the

Brand Equity is the added value endowed by the brand to the Product. Although the idea of using a name or a symbol to enhance a product’s value has been known to marketers for a long time, brand equity has gained renewed interest in recent years. Brand managers realize that after years of look-alike advertising and over copying with me-too brands, they now live in a world of product parity. The ensuing price competition through short term price promotions reduces the profitability of brands leading manufactures to examine ways to enhance loyalty toward their brands. In addition, facing with the increasing power of retailers, manufacturers of consumer products realize that having the

BRAND IMAGE AS A SUM AFFILIATIONS OF BRAND IN CUSTOMERS ' MEMORY, LOYALTY, AND PURCHASING DECISIONS (HE AND LAI, 2014)

Brand equity is a set of assets related to a brand’s name and symbol that adds to the value provided by a product or service to a corporation and that corporation’s clients. The major asset categories are: brand name awareness, brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand associations (Aaker, 2010:8). According

Brand equity is a valuable asset of company with a positive financial value. In fact, brand equity is the value captured by the brand. A brand equity is an intangible or tangible asset that set a company apart from its competitors. It’s the consumer’s perception about a product or service. Brand equity is the consumer’s feeling and beliefs about a product and service. Employees must understand the importance of their action for the brand. It represents the financial asset of the company that add value to the product or service.

It is defined by award-winning advertising as well as by the god-awful ads that have somehow slipped through the cracks, got approved, and, not surprisingly, sank into oblivion. It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee-the shining star in the company who can do no wrong-as well as the mishaps of the worst hire that you ever made. It is also defined by your receptionist and the music your customers are subjected to when placed on hold. For every grand and finely worded public statement by the CEO, the brand is also defined by derisory consumer comments overheard in the hallway or in a chat room on the Internet. Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings. They become psychological concepts held in the minds of the public, where they may stay forever. As such you can 't entirely control a brand. At best; you only guide and influence it.”

A successful brand is the most valuable resource a company has. In fact, one authority speculates that brands are so valuable that many companies include a “statement of value” addendum to their balance sheets to include intangibles such as the value of their brands. Brands are used as external cues to taste, design, qualify, prestige, value and so forth. In other words, consumers associate the value of a product with the brand. For example, the value of Kodak, Sony, Coca-cola, Toyota and Microsoft is indisputable. One estimate of the value of Coca-cola, one of the world’s most valuable brand places it at

According to Aaker (1991), Kapferer (2004) and Keller (2003), “Building strong brands is one of the most important goals of product and brand management. Strong brands result in higher revenue streams, both short term and long term”. “Therefore, the stated goal of strategic brand management is to build brands that last for decades and can be leveraged in different product categories and markets” Aaker (1996). To understand how branding effects the purchasing decision of consumers, many theories emerged in which according to Aaker (1991) has framed a model called Brand equity model and Keller (1993) has identified a model called the customer based brand equity model. Both the frameworks have profoundly focused on how consumers recognize and appraise brands by studying certain information structures (Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1991, 1997).

Initially it was Levy (1959) who conceptualised the concept of brand image. He suggests that products have social and psychological attributes and, as such, consumers develop emotional connections with the brands. For Plummer (1985), the image process formation initiates through the gathering of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes, benefits and consequences that are associated with the brand. According to Faircloth et al (2001), the brand image is a holistic perspective built by all the associations made with the brand.

In this paper, we conceptualize brand equity in accordance with Aaker (1991) and Keller (1993), using a consumer (or marketing) perspective (as opposed to a financial one). Brand equity is therefore referred to as consumer-based brand equity and defined as “the value consumers associate with a brand, as reflected in the dimensions of brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality and brand loyalty”. This definition was adapted from Aaker (1991, p. 15). Aaker defined brand equity as a set of assets (or liabilities), and found brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality and brand loyalty to be its four most important dimensions from a consumer perspective. Some empirical evidence supports the notion that these four are distinct dimensions of consumer-based brand equity. As per Aaker, we define brand awareness as “the ability of a potential

Since the early time, the conception of brand has marked a turning point in business whether it regards as brand identity, brand equity, or brand loyalty (Hart and Murphy, 1998). The brand now

This essay is written based on knowledge of brand management. Building a successful brand cannot without people’s attention; generating awareness, communicating brand values and building customer loyalty, and these demands need to take a long time to achieve. Thus, it is an extremely challenging marketing task(Fahy, J. and Jobber, D. 2012). In the other words, if a company want to be successful, it have to build a successful brand equity and created its brand identity, and expand its brand in the market.

In these ages, the material consumption became an important part in people’s daily life so it is interesting to finding the relationship between brand and diverse groups in the society. There are some words from the Philip Kotler and Gary Amstronga brand is defined as a "name, term, sign symbol (or a combination of these) that identifies the maker or seller of the product" (Para. 3). In the past, the meaning of brand refers an inevitable outcome that it is used to identify different productions in markets. As the word improving, the effect of brand is not simple any more. It means that using brand effect can bring producers both huge economic and social benefit. In the other words, brand just like Mona Lisa’s smile that everyone can feel that is charming but no one can express it in clear words. However, brand effect shows different factors and consequence among producers, customers and the whole market.

It is important to understand that a brand is a key asset for a firm especially when it involves