Customer-Based Brand Equity Model
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Building a strong brand has been shown to provide numerous financial incentives to firms, and has become a top priority for many companies. The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model is a framework that assists Intel management in its brand-building efforts.
According to the model, building a strong brand involves four steps:
1. Establishing the proper brand identity which creates 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
4. Forging brand relationships with customers that are characterized by intense, active loyalty
Achieving these four steps, requires the establishment of 6 brand-building blocks – salience, performance, imagery, judgments, feelings and resonance. Of these, the most valuable brand-building attribute, resonance, occurs when all the other brand-building blocks are established.
BRAND IDENTITY
First step: ensure identification of Intel with customers and an association of the Intel in customers’ minds with microprocessors and reliable performance of computers brought about by the microprocessors component from Intel.
Brand Salience
Brand salience is an important building block in anchoring Intel’s brand equity. This trait however is usually insufficient in itself to build a brand. For customers of Intel, be they casual or office users, artists or gamers, considerations such as the meaning or image of the Intel 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 function and performance-related considerations versus abstract, image-related considerations.
Customer awareness of the brand is superb as it is easily and often evoked under situations or circumstances relating to computer hardware, processing and anything that has got to do with technology. Intel is clearly at the forefront and a brand that is top-of-mind and easily recalled or recognized. Such demonstration for this is its logo, Intel Inside, and cues or reminders including the Intel five-tone chime.
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Thus, brand meaning is made up of two major categories of brand associations - performance and imagery, which exist within the minds of customers.
Ultimately, the Intel brand is not only for the dedicated gamers, high-performance computer users, it trickles down up to the common people, and chances are they would know about the brand Intel. This can be shown in Intel’s depth and breadth of brand awareness.
Depth of Brand Awareness
Depth of brand awareness refers to how easily customers can recall or recognize the brand. Intel, maintained its dominance in microprocessors, growing its market share 0.4 percent to 81 percent as of 2010, according to researcher IHS iSuppli. AMD’s (Intel’s competitor) share of the global processor market fell 0.8 points to 11.4 percent. The processor market, which grew 25 percent to $40 billion in 2010, remained "very much the same two-horse race it has been for more than 20 years, with Intel firmly in the lead and AMD a distant second," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms, for IHS iSuppli, based in El Segundo, California.
Breadth of Brand Awareness
Breadth of brand awareness refers to the range of purchase and consumption situations in which the brand comes to mind. Intel’s wide range of products, among which include microprocessors, motherboards, chipsets, server and Ethernet products, consumer electronics, to name a few has allowed its brand awareness to also have the breadth as it reaches out to different consumer segments: from hardcore gamers, developers up until the daily computer user.
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BRAND MEANING
Second step: firmly establish the brand meaning in the minds of customers by strategically linking a host of tangible and intangible brand associations.
While brand salience is an important first step in building Intel’s brand equity, it 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.
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Points of Parity
These are associations that are not necessarily unique to Intel and may be shared by its competitors. Though Intel is the current market leader, it always keeps its products’ performance levels up to par standards. Furthermore, it keeps its price at a competitive level even though it is priced slightly higher than its competitors. By maintaining its focus on its core competencies that bring about functional and reliable products, Intel is able to nullify the competition by matching them on the points of parity.
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.
Points of Difference
Intel far exceeds its product performance against its competitors. This is where Intel is able to differentiate itself well from its competitors. Intel’s main products, its microprocessors, can be divided into three categories: (1) High-end (Intel Core i3, i5 and i7), (2) Mid-range (Intel Pentium Dual Core and Intel Core 2 Duo), and (3) Basic (Intel Centrino/Centrino Duo and Intel Atom) processors. In all these categories, Intel is able differentiate itself through advancing its technologies and that is its unique selling proposition. An example is its microprocessors have technology called Hyper Threading, in which it boosts the performance of one’s computer system. There is also the Turbo Boost Technology which increases the overall performance and takes into consideration the number of active cores, power consumption, processor temperature, etc.
BRAND RESPONSES
Third step: elicit the proper customer responses to this brand identity and brand meaning. It refer to how customer respond to Intel, its marketing activity, and other sources of information, that is, what customers think or feel about the it.
Brand responses can be distinguished according to brand judgments and brand feelings, that is, in terms of whether they arise more from the “head” or from the “heart”.
Brand Judgment
Brand judgment focus upon customers’ personal opinions and evaluations with regard to Intel and it involves how customers put together all the different performance and imagery associations for the brand to form different kinds of opinions. In terms of brand judgment, the brand quality, credibility, consideration and superiority are important.
Quality, Credibility, Consideration & Superiority
Brand Feelings
Brand feelings are customers’ emotional responses and reactions with respect to Intel. It also relate to the social currency evoked by the brand. Intel’s marketing program recently are able to evoke its customer’s feelings through video ads that are passive in nature, instead of advertising the brand directly, it evokes brand-building feelings such as warmth, fun, excitement, security, social approval, and self-respect.
Warmth, Fun, Excitement
Security, Social Approval, Self-Respect
BRAND RELATIONSHIPS
Fourth step: convert brand response to create an intense, active loyalty relationship between customers and the brand. The final step of the model, brand relationships, focuses upon the ultimate relationship and level of identification that the customer has with Intel.
Brand Resonance
The most valuable brand-building block, brand resonance, occurs when all other brand-building blocks are established. With true brand resonance, customers express a high degree of loyalty to the brand such that they actively seek means to interact with the brand and share their experiences with others. With Intel, it has created a strong resonance especially in the gaming community and developers, whereby blogs and forums can be found in the Internet with people exchanging ideas and discussing their thoughts, furthermore most ordinary computer users have Intel as its top-of-mind microprocessor units even though what a microprocessor does is not that clear to them. The brand Intel just equates to a quality component in computers that leads to strong reliability and high performance every time and everywhere. Again, one of the most apparent element in Intel’s brand resonance is its Intel Inside trademark and logo, where it is recognized almost everywhere and gives people a feeling of security, closeness to the brand and a seal of approval for the product it is using. Not to mention, its five-tone chime that resonates worldwide and even performed by international artists. Furthermore, people are engaged in Intel's social media and vice-versa: in Youtube, Intel has posted 5,000 plus videos and it has almost 90,000 subscribers and 90,000,000 total video views! In Facebook, Intel has 25,000,000 users liking its fanpage and in Twitter, Intel has 3,500,000 followers!
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90,000,000 Video Views
25,000,000 Fanpage Likes
3,500,000 Followers
40 DAYS OF BRANDING
In our 40 days of branding, we will verify whether Intel do have a strong brand resonance especially in Singapore and explore ways on how we can further strengthen and maintain its position. We will be using different marketing tools and methods (such as marketing surveys, personal diaries, brand valuation & brand exploration), in doing so we will make this branding journey an exciting and insightful one for its brand managers: The Insiders, and to everyone reading this blog!
References:
Girdhar and Mallick. Study on Intel and AMD Point of Difference, Strategies, 2011.
Keller, KL. Building Customer-Based Brand Equity: A Blueprint for Creating Strong Brands, Marketing Science Institute, 2001.
http://www.digikey.com/en/articles/techzone/2011/mar/intel-increases-its-microprocessor-market-share