The consumer-based brand equity deconstruction and restoration process: Lessons from unliked brands

Cleopatra Veloutsou,Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou,George Christodoulides

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.029

Cleopatra Veloutsou, Kalliopi Chatzipanagiotou + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.029

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Abstract

This research is motivated by the growing negative consumer sentiment, perceptions and behaviors toward brands, and the increasing need for firms to develop actionable strategies to address this phenomenon. By recognizing the paucity of research on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) for unliked brands, the aim of this research is to illuminate the CBBE deconstruction and restoration process for consumers’ unfavorable brands. Analyzing relevant consumer survey data by means of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) identifies self-brand connection and partner quality as the key links for the deconstruction and restoration of CBBE respectively. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and directions for future research.

Highlights

Developing strong brands is the aspiration of most managers, who strive to have these kinds of brands in their brand portfolio
The most widely used indicator of brand equity in the marketing literature is consumer-based brand equity (CBBE), which refers to “a set of perceptions, attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors on the part of consumers... that allows a brand to earn greater volume or greater margins than it could without the brand name” (Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2010, p.48)
The results indicate that high scores in Brand Building Block (BBB), Brand Understanding Block (BUB), and Brand Relationship Block (BRB) elements can sufficiently predict high scores in consumers’ overall brand equity (OBE) (CBBE restoration process), providing support to P2 (Table 4, panel b)

Summary

Introduction

Developing strong brands is the aspiration of most managers, who strive to have these kinds of brands in their brand portfolio. The most commonly used indication of the strength of favorable brands is brand equity. Researchers use different perspectives and terms for brand equity, such as consumer-based, sales-based, financial-based, firmbased and employee-based brand equity to report this diversity in brand equity’s conceptualizations (Baalbaki & Guzmán, 2016; Datta, Ailawadi, & van Heerde, 2017). The most widely used indicator of brand equity in the marketing literature is consumer-based brand equity (CBBE), which refers to “a set of perceptions, attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors on the part of consumers... Research uses CBBE as a proxy for the strength of brands with positive consumer predisposition (Aaker, 1991; Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2010; Veloutsou, Christodoulides, & de Chernatony, 2013). There is little agreement on the specific dimensions that capture CBBE (see, Veloutsou et al, 2013)

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