Customer-Based Brand Equity: Insights from Consumer Neuroscience

DownloadHsu M. In Moran Cerf, Manuel Garcia, eds. Consumer Neuroscience, MIT Press, 2017.

Abstract:
This review describes how insights from cognitive and behavioral neurosciences are helping to organize and
interpret the relationship between consumers and brands. Two components of brand equity—consumer
brand knowledge and consumer responses—are discussed. First, it is argued that consumer brand
knowledge consists of multiple forms of memories that are encoded in the brain, including well-established
forms of semantic (attributes and associations) and episodic (experiences and feelings) memory. Next, it is
argued that there exist distinct forms ofconsumer responses that correspond to distinct behavioral
systems—a goal-directed system that captures valence of attitudes and preference for a brand, and a habit
system that captures previously learned values but no longer reflect ongoing preferences. Finally, a
neuroscientifically-grounded conceptualization is proposed with the aim of ultimately improving
measurement of brand equity and its effects on financial returns.