Seeing the forest despite the trees: Brand effects on choice uncertainty

Christine Eckert, Jordan J. Louviere and Towhidul Islam

International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2012, vol. 29, issue 3, 256-264

Abstract: Prior research on brand equity suggests that consumers use brands as signals to reduce uncertainty and perceived risk. Erdem and Swait (1998) developed a conceptual framework based on information economics and signaling theory to explain how equity is created, maintained and transferred over time that involves seven theoretical constructs. This paper reviews the impact of brand-equity-associated brand utility on the scale of the indirect utility function (i.e., the inverse of the error variance); we argue that higher brand-equity-associated brand utility reduces the need for consumers to review previously formed preferences. We combine a brand utility experiment with a brand feature experiment to estimate the effects of brand-equity-associated brand utility scores on choice. We find that higher brand-equity-associated brand utility leads to higher choice consistency, which can drive increases in market share.

Keywords: Brand equity; Scale heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811612000262
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:29:y:2012:i:3:p:256-264

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.02.001

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Research in Marketing is currently edited by Roland Rust

More articles in International Journal of Research in Marketing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).