Awareness refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind. Awareness is measured according to the different ways in which consumers remember a brand, ranging from recognition to recall to top of the mind.
Recognitions reflect familiarity gained from past exposure. Recognition does not necessarily involve remembering where the brand was encountered before why it differs from other brands or even what the brands product class is. It is simply remembering that there was a past exposure to the brand. When consumers see a brand and remember that they have seen it before they realize that the company is spending money to support the brand. Since it is generally believed that companies will not spend money on products consumers take their recognition as a signal that the brand is good.
Many companies, especially while introducing a new product in the market find that sales cannot be sustained without constant advertising. Sales charts always show a meteoric rise post-advertising burst. Companies often rerun advertisement on different channels over the year to sustain the brand awareness and ensure that the consumers are exposed to the brand.
Complan repeats the same TV commercials for different target markets over a period of time to ensure brand recall and visibility.
Factors Affecting Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind.
Awareness is measured according to the different ways in which consumers remember a brand, ranging from recognition to recall to top of the mind. Some of the major factors affecting brand awareness are: –
Brand Name: One of the most important factor affecting brand awareness is the brand name. Brand name plays an important part in creating awareness for a brand. Also whether the name is really very meaningful or completely baseless they both affect brand awareness.
Bacardi Breezers – flavoured aerated vodka based drink
Fevi Stik – adhesive
Centre Shock chewing gum.
Advertising: Advertising also helps to create Brand awareness in a big way. Take any brand name Fevicol, Vicks, Pepsi all have used ad’s for creating awareness among their consumers.
Celebrity:- Another important factor affecting Brand awareness is the celebrities endorsing the Brand. Whenever you see a celebrity you love endorsing a brand you tend to propagate the Brand.
Coca Cola experienced a tremendous increase in brand following post ad campaigns with Hrithik Roshan and “Kaho Na Pyaar Hai”.
Parent Company:- To a large extent the parent company helps in promoting a brand. The parent company in many cases is so popular that its brand automatically become popular and people become aware about the product.
TATA always promotes it brand with its name along with the brand such as TATA INDICA, TATA INDIGO, TATA SALT.
Sales Promotions And Offers: – It also helps in making the consumers aware of the brand. Some of the sales promotion activities that companies carry out help them in a big way to make their target aware of the brand.
Reliance India Mobile’s Monsoon Hungama offer, wherein they offered their WLL services at an affordable price.
1st Mover Advantage: – Usually the company that enters a product category first has good awareness about its brand. Usually people tend to remember the first player to enter the market.
Parle products “BISLERI” in the packaged water segment.
Public Relations: – The coverage that the fourth estate and magazines provide a brand also helps in building awareness about a brand.
The popularity of local restaurants such as J.W.Marriot has been boosted by the page 3 mentions in the Bombay Times supplement of The Times of India.
Direct Selling: – Some of the companies use direct selling as a platform to create brand awareness.
Eureka Forbes water filter “AQUA GUARD”.
Peer Group Opinion: – Peer group opinion also plays an important part in the whole brand awareness exercise. Usually people tend to discuss a lot about the brand and tend to share their experiences or some recent ad’s they have seen which in turn increases brand awareness of their peers.
When opting for cellular network services (irrespective of prepaid or billing), most people generally go by the opinions of their friends and colleagues.
Recall Of Ads: – In some cases the brand awareness is also high due to specific ad recall, which is very high.
Amaron battery advertisement of race between tortoise and rabbit with the tagline “LAST LONG REALLY LONG”.
