User:Amandacabs/sandbox

= Brand awareness = Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consideration in consumer behavior, advertising management, and brand management. The consumer's ability to recognize or recall a brand is central when undergoing purchasing decisions. Purchasing cannot proceed unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name. Rather, they must be able to recall enough distinguishing features for purchasing to proceed, such as the brand's logo.

Brand awareness consists of two components: brand recall and brand recognition. Several studies have shown that these two components operate in fundamentally different ways as brand recall is associated with memory retrieva l, and brand recognition involves object recognition. Both brand recall and brand recognition play an important role in consumers’ purchase decision process and in marketing communications. Brand awareness is closely related to concepts such as the evoked set and consideration set which include the specific brands a consumer considers during their decision-making processes. Consumers are believed to hold between three and seven brands in their consideration set across a broad range of product categories. Consumers typically purchase one of the top three brands in their consideration set as consumers have shown to buy only familiar, well-established brands.

As brands are competing in a highly globalized market, brand awareness is a key indicator of a brand's competitive market performance. Given the importance of brand awareness in consumer purchasing decisions, marketers have developed a number of metrics designed to measure brand awareness. These metrics are collectively known as Awareness, Attitudes and Usage (AAU) metrics.

To ensure a product or brand's market success, awareness levels must be managed across the entire product life-cycle -- from product launch to market decline. Many marketers regularly monitor brand awareness levels. If these levels fall below a predetermined threshold, the advertising and promotional effort is intensified until awareness returns to the desired level.

Importance of brand awareness
Brand awareness is related to the functions of brand identities in consumers’ memory and can be measured by how well the consumers can identify the brand under various conditions. Brand awareness plays an important role in the consumer’s purchasing decision-making process. Strong brand awareness can be a predictor of brand success. Brand awareness is strengthened by its brand-related associations such as the consumers’ evaluation of the brand and their perceived quality of the brand. Consequently, brands focus on improving customer satisfaction and invest in advertising to increase consumers’ brand awareness. undefined

Brand awareness is a key indicator of a brand's market performance. Brands competing in a highly globalized market invest in global advertising and distribution to compete for consumers’ attention and awareness. As capitalism and global transport contribute to consumer behavior, many marketers regularly monitor brand awareness levels. If these levels fall below a predetermined threshold, the advertising and promotional effort is intensified until awareness returns to the desired level. In marketing planning and brand management, it is important to set objectives to promote brand awareness to motivate consumers to purchase a given brand’s products.

Brand awareness is one of the major brand assets that adds value to the product, service or company. Investing in building brand awareness can lead to sustainable competitive advantages, thus, leading to long-term value.

Types of brand awareness
Brand awareness is divided into two components: brand recall (also known as unaided recall or occasionally spontaneous recall) and brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall). These types of awareness operate in entirely different ways with important implications for marketing strategy and advertising.

Brand recall
Brand recall is also known as unaided recall or spontaneous recall and refers to the ability of the consumer to correctly generate a brand from memory when prompted by a product category. When prompted by a product category, most consumers can only recall a relatively small set of brands, typically around 3–5 brand names. Past research has shown that only a few consumers can recall more than seven brand names within a given category. In comparison, most consumers can only recall one or two brand names with unfamiliar product categories.

Several studies suggest that the number of brands that consumers can recall is affected by both individual and product factors. Such factors can include brand loyalty, brand knowledge, situational and usage factors, and education level. For instance, consumers who are highly experienced with a given product category or brand may be able to recall a slightly larger set of brand names than those who are less experienced with a given product category or brand.

Brand recognition
Brand recognition is also known as aided recall and refers to the ability of the consumers to confirm that they have seen or heard of a given brand before. This does not necessarily require that the consumers have to identify the brand name. Instead, it means that consumers can recognize the brand upon presentation, either at the point-of-sale or after viewing its visual packaging.