ABSTRACT
What a brands means to consumers is perhaps the most important component of brand equity. A meaningless brand adds no value to the product to which it is attached. This chapter tells how to apply a psycholinguistic methodology to discover what public affective meanings brands have for consumers. Public affective meaning is the expressive value of the brand; this value may be arbitrarily derived, having no inherent connection with a product, service, or company. Affective brand meanings may be especially important to marketers of parity products, who are competitors with the same essential concrete attributes and functional consequences.
