Strategic Brand Value
Michael Leiser is a partner with the Chicago office of Prophet, a management consultancy that creates and complements integrated business, brand and marketing strategies.
Strategic brand value: Advancing use of brand equity to grow your brand and business
Michael Leiser
Received (in revised form): 25 April 2003
Keywords: brand equity profiling, brand equity management, strategic brand drivers, price premiums, customer loyalty, brand extensions, financial performance Abstract
Businesses that intend to reap the benefits of using brand as a driver of business success need to begin the process by identifying and managing, in a more systematic and structured way, the associations that contribute to brand equity and are critical to enhancing the brand’s value and the extent that it financially impacts on the business. This paper is designed to acquaint the reader with a more strategic approach to both profiling and managing brand equity over time, using both qualitative and quantitative modelling approaches whose findings are correlated to business performance concerns.
Introduction
With such renowned brand successes as Nike, Intel and Starbucks to serve as their inspiration, businesses are becoming increasingly savvy in the way they regard and manage their brands. The value of treating their brands as assets and managing them as such is obvious given a strong brand’s demonstrable benefits of price premiums and market share leadership that drive the bottom line.
Recognising these benefits is one thing. Actually realising them is another. The challenge lies in understanding how brand strategy enhances and enables business strategy.
A good starting point is a better understanding of brand equity and how it drives brand value. But more than merely understanding it, businesses that intend to become truly brand driven will find a way to identify and manage, in a rigorous and structured way, its most important aspects — those that are
Strategic brand value: Advancing use of brand equity to grow your brand and business
Michael Leiser
Received (in revised form): 25 April 2003
Keywords: brand equity profiling, brand equity management, strategic brand drivers, price premiums, customer loyalty, brand extensions, financial performance Abstract
Businesses that intend to reap the benefits of using brand as a driver of business success need to begin the process by identifying and managing, in a more systematic and structured way, the associations that contribute to brand equity and are critical to enhancing the brand’s value and the extent that it financially impacts on the business. This paper is designed to acquaint the reader with a more strategic approach to both profiling and managing brand equity over time, using both qualitative and quantitative modelling approaches whose findings are correlated to business performance concerns.
Introduction
With such renowned brand successes as Nike, Intel and Starbucks to serve as their inspiration, businesses are becoming increasingly savvy in the way they regard and manage their brands. The value of treating their brands as assets and managing them as such is obvious given a strong brand’s demonstrable benefits of price premiums and market share leadership that drive the bottom line.
Recognising these benefits is one thing. Actually realising them is another. The challenge lies in understanding how brand strategy enhances and enables business strategy.
A good starting point is a better understanding of brand equity and how it drives brand value. But more than merely understanding it, businesses that intend to become truly brand driven will find a way to identify and manage, in a rigorous and structured way, its most important aspects — those that are
References: 1. Aaker, D. A. (1991) Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name, Free Press, New York, pp 2. Khermouch, G. (2002) ‘The best global brands’, Business Week, 5 August. 3. Davis, S. M. (1995) Brand Asset Management for the 21st Century, Kuczmarski & Associates, Chicago. 4. Passikoff, R. (1998) Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Index, New York, www.brandkeys.com. Davis, S. M. (2000) Brand Asset Management: Driving Profitable Growth Through Your Brand, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Passikoff, R. (2001) ‘My brand is here to stay’, Channelseven.com, Ad/Insight, 6 August.