Apparel_Merchandising

R100 Assignment #2 “Exploration of Apparel Brand Knowledge: Brand Awareness, Brand Association, and Brand Category Structure” February, 3rd, 2011 Hyungee Jung Brand image has been conceptualized as perceptions about as reflected by the brand associations, or anything linked to the brand in a consumer’s memory (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993). Brand associations contain meanings about a brand for the consumer (Keller, 1993). A brand’s image results from the favorability, strength, and uniqueness of brand associations that are held by the consumer (Keller, 1993). Positive and unique brand associations that are strongly held by consumers lead to strong, favorable attitudes and emotions toward a brand (Aaker, 1991). Today, brand is very important among teenagers and college students. Also, people like to buy brand bags, clothes, and accessories with brands’ logo or symbol to show others. People even try to buy fake brand bags to show others. Consumers spent money on brand bags that has uniqueness of specific brand because they want other to recognize the bag like Louis Vuttion’s LV symbol, Chanel’s chain bag with CC logo, Balenciaga’s unique design and etc. Through this example, we can see brand awareness and uniqueness makes consumers to purchase and use them more and more. In addition, the findings from this experiment also provide significant implications for marketers related to the use of comparative advertising. Considering that the prototype and exemplar models seemed to be more effective in making consumers link a brand to a brand category, comparative advertising (juxtaposing a target brand with its competitors) may sometimes provide richer content for consumers. This type of advisement may allow the consumer to process the brand’s information in relation to the category of brands it belongs to rather than portraying characteristics of the brand in a descriptive manner. The comparative strategy could especially be beneficial for establishing a new brand in a market by enhancing the possibility of consumers assimilating the new brand with other existing brands that represent a desirable brand category in the consumer’s minds. We can see celebrities’ expensive clothing, pretty accessories, and luxurious life style through magazines, TV shows, movies and internet. Most of people envy their life and want to be like them. We see brand bags such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Balenciaga and etc. through them. Some brands became very popular because famous actress or actor wore them. And people buy those brands to become like celebrities and rich people. However, if a marketer intends to set their brand apart from the competition and promote its uniqueness, emphasizing only the target brand’s unique characteristics without comparing it to those of other competitors may work better because comparative advertising could inadvertently make consumers notice their similarities rather than differences. Furthermore, the findings from this study suggest that marketers need to pay attention to other brands that may naturally come to the consumer’s mind when choosing an advertising message for their target brand. This is because when exposed to descriptors that are very common to a group of brands, consumers appear to have a natural ability to come up with a prototype brand or a few exemplar brands to which the target brand could be compared. Everyone has different style as well as they like to have different style compared to others. For example Louis Vuitton’s speedy series are famous among women’s handbag collection. Louis Vuitton’s speedy series has several collections such as Monogram Canvas, Damier Azur Canvas, and Damier Ebene. Also they have different sizes but same design. When this series became famous, other brands made same design or similar design of this Louis Vuitton’s series. However, this similarity reminds people of Louis Vuitton’s speedy series. Reference Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing brand equity: Capitalizing on the value of a brand name. New York: Free Press. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing consumer based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57, 1-22. Leah Dew and Wi-Suk Kwon (2010). Exploration of Apparel Brand Knowledge: Brand Awareness, Brand Association, and Brand Category Structure. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 28. Retrieved August 24, 2009 from http://ctr.sagepub.com/content/28/1/3