Evaluating Aaker's sources of brand equity and the mediating role of brand image

INTRODUCTION

Marketers endeavor to reduce marketing expenses and increase sales. Their objective is to increase the efficiency of the marketing effort. They continuously look for the factors that increase marketing efficiency. Strong brands enjoying high brand equity can help managers to relish higher margins, greater customer loyalty, less vulnerability to competitive attacks, better customer response to communications, and more cooperation from trade and other intermediaries. In order to keep track of the strength of their brands, managers need to able to quantify brand equity. However, measuring brand equity is a challenge for managers. The measure of brand equity should reflect the construct it is measuring, should capture the changes in brand equity and should be applicable to different markets and products.

Brand equity has been defined by researchers in different ways. Aaker defines brand equity as 'a set of assets (and liabilities) linked to a brand's name and symbol that adds to (or subtracts from) the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or that firm's customers'. ¹ Keller, however, defines brand equity as 'the differential effect of the brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand'.² Similarly, Yoo and Donthu define brand equity as 'consumer's different response between a focal brand and an unbranded product when both have the same level of the marketing stimuli and product attributes'.³ According to Srinivasan et al , 'Brand equity is defined as the incremental contribution ($) per year obtained by the brand in comparison to the underlying product (or service) with no brand-building efforts'.⁴

Researchers have carried out a lot of work in identifying the dimensions to capture and measure brand equity. Some of them have come up with perceptual dimensions. For instance, according to Keller,² brand awareness and brand image constitute brand equity. As per Park and Srinivasan,⁵ brand equity consists of attribute-based and non-attribute-based components. Researchers like Kamakura and Russell⁵ used actual consumer purchase behavior or market behavior to ascertain brand equity. Considering both perceptual and market behavior measures, Aaker⁶ proposed that brand loyalty, perceived quality/leadership, associations/differentiation, awareness and market behavior are the various dimensions acting as sources of brand equity. Using perceptual dimensions from the studies of Keller² and Aaker,