Product brand image and association

By Priya Chetty on November 4, 2011

According to Chunnawala, (2008), the marketing term product’s brand Image can be defined as “a consumer perception towards a product.”

Every single product available in the market can have one or many images and this image of product brands are based on the type of customer segment. However, from various researches it has been found that, in reality there exists only sole or two image(s) for any single product (U C Mathur, 2009).

For instance, popular product brands such as Mercedes-Benz got a brand image of a luxurious car. Thus this expresses a luxury standard of the product.

Further, on other hand, customers also see this car as a product meant only for rich people from the economy.

Thus, due to this reason, we do not find any down-market branded product of Mercedes-Benz anywhere in the world because this may effect on the brand image and USP of the product.
Brand Image

A product brand image helps companies to set below aspects of a product (Dr. Anandan, 2010):-

  • Price
  • Target Audience
  • Brand Strategy
  • Promotion mix strategy and
  • Packaging of the product

Brand association

According to Helen Edwards, (2009) “Brand Associations is anything that is profoundly got a space in the mind of the customer regarding a particular brand”.

Brand association is simply a symbol or picture which is associated with a product brand or its benefit as seen by the customers. For instance, Nokia’s durability, Blue color with Pepsi, Desh ki Dhadkan of Hero Honda, etc. are some brand associations. These brand associations doesn’t work for purchasing a product, however offer social contact and distinction between products/brands which is replicable.

The basis for Brand associations can be advertisements, POP, WOM, price, quality and class of product, etc. (Kavin Keller, 2008).

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