BURAK AKÇORA 106604181

Being 'Affective' in Branding?

Adrian Zambardino, Ogilvy Advertising, UK
John Goodfellow, London Metropolitan University, UK
JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, 2007, Vol. 23, No. 1 -2, pp.27-37

It is now widely accepted in the literature that brands are built through a combination of rational and emotional elements and that emotions evoked by brands may enhance buying and consumption processes Brands may therefore be regarded as having duality appealing to both the head and the heart
whereby "strong brands blend product performance and imagery to create a rich, varied, but complementary set of consumer responses to the brand. Brand concept can either be functional or symbolic, with brands positioned as either but not both. The value of a brand is a multidimensional construct which includes both functional and symbolic benefits.
Keller argues that brand knowledge comprises of two components, brand awareness and brand image. Brand awareness itself consists of two components, brand recognition and brand recall, whilst brand image is defined as "perceptions about a brand as reflected by brand associations held in consumer memory
How advertising impacts on consumers is a vast field of study characterised by the complexity of the subject matter and diversity of theoretical and empirical approaches. In studies that consider the intermediate effects and mediating effects of advertising, the treatment of the role of emotion falls into one of three categories. First, where emotion plays no explicit role as consumer decision-making is viewed as a logical process in which advertising provides information and/or utility in reducing search costs. Secondly those in which emotion plays an exclusive or dominant role whereby consumers form their preferences based on liking, feeUngs and emotions rather than attribute information. However, the literature is dominated by a third group that regards emotion as working in conjunction with cognition and experience in a variety of combinations and levels. When we come to consider how brands are measured and advertising is evaluated, there is now a significant mismatch between the state of the art, as it occurs in practice, and the emerging understanding we now have about the emotional nature of brands and communications.
1. The Cognitive Nature of Measurement and Cognitive Bias
2. Recognising the Roie and Level of Involvement in Decision-making
3. Non-verbal methods; behavioural, physiological, and non-verbal self-reporting.
4. Methods are available for measuring facial (e.g. smiling), vocal, and body movement expressive reactions to emotions
Physiological measures monitor the change in the autonomic nervous system that accompanies emotions. Instruments may measure heart activity, skin responses, brain activity, and muscle activity It is argued that despite numerous developments in the literature our understanding of affective processes in marketing remains limited and the measurement of these processes remains problematic. Most existing techniques fail to capture the impact of affect in the brain processes of consumer decision-making and its subsequent measurement. Cognitive and affective processes are active, selective and, disturbingly, reconstructive thus making any measurement process notoriously difficult. More research is needed to identify the ways in which emotions impact on the communications and decision-making processes and the storage and retrieval of information