Analysing Brand Status’ Impact on Brand Value

All brands have status and status has an impact; yet little attention has been paid to the impact of brand status on consumer brand assessments, this study addresses this limitation. This study investigated perceived brand status’ impact on overall brand value across two product categories, finding that perceived brand status’ impact was stronger on overall brand value when the status of the brand matched the consumer’s overall self-concept. In the sport shoe category, for both brands, brand status had a stronger impact on brand-aroused feelings than for the mobile phone brands. Across both product categories, the impact of brand status on brand value was stronger for the lower-perceived status brands than for the higher-perceived status brands; the importance of this for brand managers is that targeting the self-concept of status seeking consumers may help lower-perceived status brands increase overall brand value. Introduction and Purpose Brands are no longer supportive functions of marketing; rather, brands are the essence of marketing (Salzer-Morling and Strannegard, 2004), providing owners, investors and shareholders with greater financial rewards than unbranded products (Pahud de Mortanges and van Reil, 2003). Of concern is that a number of managers do not understand brand value other than through its economic origins, and so have no explicit value proposition, instead managing their brand by relying heavily on reputation without a meaningful point of value differentiation (Aaker, 2004). One of the core constituents of the value of a brand is the symbolism of the signals consumers assess a brand to be sending to themselves and to other consumers, in terms of the rank and value associated with the status of a brand (Douglas and Isherwood, 1979). Traditionally status has been associated with prestigious and luxurious product categories such as art, jewellery, collectables and aeroplanes (Dubois and Laurent, 1996; O’Cass and McEwan, 2004; Vigneron and Johnson, 1999); however, findings from van Kempen (2004), O’Cass and Frost (2002), del Rio, Vazquez and Iglesias (2001), reveal that status may also be associated with brands in lower-priced product categories, such as perfume, sunglasses and sport shoes. Brand status is subjective and based on consumer perceptions, thus perceived brand status is defined as a consumer’s assessment that a brand displays high levels of quality, prestige, luxury, and symbolises success (O’Cass and Frost, 2002). Previous research has addressed brand status as social image (Lassar, Mittal and Sharma, 1995), the perception of esteem in which the consumer’s social group holds the brand (p. 13), or as a component of symbolic brands (Bhat and Reddy, 1998) satisfying a need for selfexpression and prestige (p. 32). Much of the research into brand status is in relation to consumption, determining whether status consumption is associated with class (e.g. Batra, Ramaswamy, Alden, Steenkamp and Ramachander, 2000; van Kempen, 2004), or reference groups, self-monitoring and gender (O’Cass and McEwan, 2004). Other brand status research has focused on ascertaining whether consumers perceive status and the occurrence of status in selected product categories, such as fast-moving-consumer goods, and fashion labels (e.g. del