Measuring Brand Associations to Enhance Brand Equity Using Brand Concept Maps: A Quantitative - Qualitative Approach

Abstract

Brand associations play an important role in creating and enhancing brand equity; they create values for a brand by providing a basis for differentiation, helping process and retrieve information, offering reasons for buying, creating positive attitudes, and building the basis for extensions. This study uses a combination of both qualitative and quantitative approach to explore the brand associations that consumers assign to a specific cellular phone brands (Vodafone-Mobinil-Etisalat) by using both brand concept map (BCM) and centrality measurements. The BCM is an advanced technique which not only identifies important associations, but it also conveys how these associations are connected to the focal brand and to one another. However, much information from BMC technique is not clear from a visual inspection and stays on the level of descriptive analysis, so a quantitative analysis is required to highlight this hidden information by using centrality measurements. Managerial implications and aspects of strength and weakness of brand associations to better manage brand equity are discussed.