Customer-Based Brand Equity

Building a strong brand has been shown to provide numerous financial rewards to firms, and has become a top priority for many companies. The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model is a good framework that assists Intel management in their brand-building efforts.

According to the model, building a strong brand involves four steps: (1) establishing the proper brand identity which is establishing breadth and depth of brand awareness, (2) creating the appropriate brand meaning through strong, favorable, and unique brand associations, (3) eliciting positive, accessible brand responses, and (4) forging brand relationships with customers that are characterized by intense, active loyalty. Achieving these four steps, in turn, involves establishing six brand-building blocks – salience, performance, imagery, judgments, feelings and resonance. The most valuable brand-building block, resonance, occurs when all the other brand-building blocks are established.

Brand Salience

The first level, brand salience is an important first step in building Intel’s brand equity, but is usually not sufficient in and of itself. For customers of Intel, whether it is the casual or office users, artists and gamers, considerations such as the meaning or image of the brand, also come into play. Creating brand meaning involves establishing a brand image – what the brand is characterized by and should stand for in the minds of customers. Although a myriad of different types of brand associations are possible, brand meaning can broadly be distinguished in terms of functional, performance-related considerations versus abstract, imagery-related considerations. Thus, brand meaning is made up of two major categories of brand associations that exist in customer’s minds – related to performance and imagery – with a set of specific subcategories within each.

We next describe the two main types of brand meaning and the subcategories within each (second level).

Brand Performance

Intel’s product itself is at the heart of brand equity, as it is the primary influence of what consumers experience with a brand, what they hear about a brand from others, and what the firm can tell customers about the brand in their communications. Designing and delivering a product that fully satisfies consumer needs and wants is a prerequisite for successful marketing, regardless of whether the product is a tangible good, service or organization.

The specific performance attribute and benefits that constitute functionality will vary widely by category. Nevertheless, there are five important types of attributes and benefits that often underlie brand performance:

1.     Primary characteristics and secondary features. Intel customers often hold belief about the high level at which the primary characteristics of Intel microprocessor chips operate. They usually hold beliefs that the secondary element of Intel microprocessor chips, which are its affiliation to the product itself (laptops, PCs) completely complement the Intel microprocessor chips inside.

2.     Product reliability, durability and serviceability. As noted, customers can view the performance of Intel products or services in a broad manner. Essentially, Intel microprocessor chips offer reliability by being consistent in its performance over time and from purchase to purchase; durability by having a long expected economic life of its products; and serviceability by providing ease of servicing the product if it needs repair, or simply replacing it if needed.

3.     Service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy. Customers often have performance-related associations with the service interactions they have with brands. Ultimately, Intel is able to satisfy the laptop and PC manufacturers service requirements, which in turn satisfies the users. Intel, even though it is a technology semiconductor company, as service providers are seen as trusting, caring, and having the customer’s interests in mind.

4.     Style and design. Consumers may have associations with Intel’s products that go beyond its functional aspects to more aesthetic considerations. Clearly, Intel was able to transform a commodity – generic microprocessor chip – into a brand that communicates reliability, style and design that affects the sensory aspects of its consumers – dependability.

5.     Price. Finally, the pricing policy for the brand has created associations in consumers’ minds to the relevant price tier or level for the brand in the category. Generally, premium priced laptops and PCs with Intel microprocessors are priced higher. Users are willing to pay a premium for the reliability and peace of mind that having an Intel component brings. The pricing strategy therefore, adopted by Intel and its partners dictate how consumers categorize the price of the brand and how firm that price is perceived to be (at this case both high).

Brand performance thus transcends the “ingredients” that make up the product or service to encompass aspects of the brand that augment these ingredients.

Often, the strongest brand positioning involves performance advantages of some kind, which clearly Intel has been able to gain a foothold against its competitors. It has excellent computing capabilities and reliable performance that can be seen as consumers use the electronic devices that have Intel.

Brand Imagery

The other main type of brand meaning involves brand imagery. This deals with extrinsic properties of Intel products, including the ways in which Intel attempts to meet customers’ psychological or social needs. This can be clearly conveyed in its user profiles such as brand ambassadors; purchase & usage situations in real life and electronic device users; personality & values that are clearly portrayed in its advertisements as it comes out as sincere (cheerful), exciting (up-to-date), competent (reliable), sophisticated (premium) and rugged (tough); and history, heritage and experiences through engaging people in consumer electronics shows.