Brand Equity: Extending Brand Awareness and liking with Signal Detection Theory

Brand equity, which is a central topic in modern marketing, may be assessed from three perspectives: customer mind set, product market outcomes and financial market outcomes. Brand awareness (memory) and brand liking are elements of customer mind set brand equity. The factors determining brand awareness and likeability are also determinants of the change in financial brand equity. In order to understand these factors, Signal Detection Theory is employed for finding the components of brand awareness …

…they don't like Coca-Cola, should the negative brand liking be attributed to the failure of branding campaigns, or to the conservative tendency of consumers to say: 'I don't like the brand'? Further, if they say that they are conservative in responding, do they really report the objective tendency? These questions cannot be answered with conventional measures, but with Signal Detection Theory. A strong brand is a very valuable asset of a firm (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Keller, 1998; Aaker