A brand concept maps approach : in what sense are preferred brands different from acceptable brands?

2015

Extensive literature has been written on brand positioning and on the importance of

differentiation for its success. However, little research has been dedicated to understand how

differentiation works in the mind of consumers. In this thesis, we focus on bringing some clarity

to this gap by providing some insights on how preferred brands are differentiated from the rest.

Our research builds on Suppehellen’s (2014) theory, which states that differentiation is driven

by secondary associations. We seek to answer the following two questions:

In what sense does the preferred brand differentiate from acceptable brands?

To what extent is the differentiation of preferred brands moderated by the product

involvement?

We use the BCM method developed by John, Loken, and Kim (2006) in order to create

associative network for preferred and acceptable brands in the smartphone and beer categories.

By comparing the number of associations, their connectivity, and their content on preferred vs

acceptable brands we uncover important implications for theory on brand positioning and

differentiation.

We found that preferred brands are different from acceptable ones in the number of secondary

associations they have, but not on the number of primary associations. We also found that the

content for associations for preferred brands is moderated by the consumer’s level of

involvement, with preferred smartphone brands having more benefit associations, more

personality trait associations, and less negative associations, while preferred beer brands having

more attribute associations. Finally, we discovered that associative networks of preferred

brands have stronger links among its associations but no significant difference in the

interconnectivity of its associations in comparison with acceptable brands.