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Intended brand associations: Do they really drive consumer response?

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  • Koll, Oliver
  • von Wallpach, Sylvia

Abstract

Brand managers exhibit considerable effort to define intended brand associations to anchor in consumers' minds. They follow a credo deeply rooted in branding literature: intended brand associations drive consumer response and brand equity. This article investigates the benefits of a strong overlap of actual consumer brand associations and management-intended brand associations (brand association match). The article presents results from two large-scale studies (3353 and 1201 respondents) involving one consumer goods and one service brand with multiple operationalizations of consumer response (attitudinal and behavioral). The results show that consumers with high brand association match show more positive brand response. However, after accounting for the valence of associations match does not add explanatory power. This outcome challenges a key foundation of brand management. The discussion identifies reasons why match may not be necessary to achieve response and provides arguments why the results do not imply free play for brand managers.

Suggested Citation

  • Koll, Oliver & von Wallpach, Sylvia, 2014. "Intended brand associations: Do they really drive consumer response?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1501-1507.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:67:y:2014:i:7:p:1501-1507
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.06.010
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    Cited by:

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    2. Grohs, Reinhard & Raies, Karine & Koll, Oliver & Mühlbacher, Hans, 2016. "One pie, many recipes: Alternative paths to high brand strength," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 2244-2251.
    3. Tan, Teck Ming & Salo, Jari & Juntunen, Jouni & Kumar, Ashish, 2018. "A comparative study of creation of self-brand connection amongst well-liked, new, and unfavorable brands," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 71-80.
    4. Böger, Daniel & Kottemann, Pascal & Meißner, Martin & Decker, Reinhold, 2017. "A mechanism for aggregating association network data: An application to brand concept maps," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 90-106.
    5. Atadil, Hilmi A. & Sirakaya-Turk, Ercan & Baloglu, Seyhmus & Kirillova, Ksenia, 2017. "Destination Neurogenetics: Creation of destination meme maps of tourists," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 154-161.
    6. Abas Mirzaei & Elham (Helen) Siuki & David Gray & Lester W Johnson, 2016. "Brand associations in the higher education sector: The difference between shared and owned associations," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(4), pages 419-438, July.
    7. Mühlbacher, Hans & Raies, Karine & Grohs, Reinhard & Koll, Oliver, 2016. "Drivers of brand strength: Configural paths to strong cognitive brand equity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2774-2780.
    8. Divakaran, Pradeep Kumar Ponnamma & Xiong, Jie, 2022. "Eliciting brand association networks: A new method using online community data," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).

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