Brand discrimination: An implicit measure of the strength of mental brand representations

Abstract

While mental associations between a brand and its marketing elements are an important part of brand equity, previous research has yet to provide a sound methodology to measure the strength of these links. The following studies present the development and validation of an implicit measure to assess the strength of mental representations of brand elements in the mind of the consumer. The measure described in this paper, which we call the Brand Discrimination task, requires participants to identify whether images of brand elements (e.g. color, logo, packaging) belong to a target brand or not. Signal detection theory (SDT) is used to calculate a Brand Discrimination index which gives a measure of overall recognition accuracy for a brand's elements in the context of its competitors. A series of five studies shows that the Brand Discrimination task can discriminate between strong and weak brands, increases when mental representations of brands are experimentally strengthened, is relatively stable across time, and can predict brand choice, independently and while controlling for other explicit and implicit brand evaluation measures. Together, these studies provide unique evidence for the importance of mental brand representations in marketing and consumer behavior, along with a research methodology to measure this important consumer-based brand attribute.