How Important Are Brands? A Cross-Category, Cross-Country Study

This article focuses on the measurement of the overall importance of brands for consumer decision making—that is, brand relevance in category, or BRiC—across multiple categories and countries. Although brand equity measures for specific brands have attracted a large body of literature, the questions...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marketing research 2010-10, Vol.47 (5), p.823-839
Main Authors: FISCHER, MARC, VÖLCKNER, FRANZISKA, SATTLER, HENRIK
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brand differentiation
Brand equity
Brand loyalty
Brand management
Brands
Category management
Consumer behavior
Consumer choice
Consumer research
Correlations
Customers
International comparisons
Investment strategies
Marketing
Quantitative psychology
Statistical variance
Studies
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Summary:This article focuses on the measurement of the overall importance of brands for consumer decision making—that is, brand relevance in category, or BRiC—across multiple categories and countries. Although brand equity measures for specific brands have attracted a large body of literature, the questions of how important brands are within an entire product category and the extent to which BRiC differs across categories and countries have been neglected. The authors introduce the concept of BRiC (a category-level measure, not a brand-level measure). They develop a conceptual framework to measure BRiC and the drivers of BRiC, test the framework empirically with a sample of more than 5700 consumers, and show how the construct varies across 20 product categories and five countries (France, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The results suggest a high validity of the proposed BRiC measure and show substantial differences between categories and countries. A replication study two-and-a-half years later confirms the psychometric properties of the suggested scale and shows remarkable stability of the findings. The findings have important implications for the management of brand investments.
ISSN:0022-2437
1547-7193
DOI:10.1509/jmkr.47.5.823