ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to show how an understanding of consumers’ buying processes can help in developing successful brands. It opens by looking at how consumers process information and shows that, depending on the extent to which consumers perceive competing brands to differ and on their involvement in the brand purchase, four buying processes can be identified. The implications of the predominance of low consumer involvement with brands are addressed. The chapter considers how customers choose brands according to their clusters of needs, thereby resulting in them having brand repertoires in each product category. Through recognizing that different consumers offer different profit opportunities in product categories, the benefits of differential brand marketing are considered. The chapter shows how consumers search for information about brands, explains why this search is limited, goes through the arguments for giving consumers only a few pieces of high-quality brand information and illustrates how consumers evaluate brands as arrays of clues, with the brand name emerging as a very high-quality clue. The influence of perception on branding is addressed. Building on earlier concepts in the chapter, brand naming issues are reviewed, along with a consideration of the way that brands can be presented as risk-reducing devices.
