Marketing and Brand Equity

The AsiaTravel is facing the following problems regarding its brand value to customers: * Its brand name is merely the generic version of its services, therefore price is seen as its main competitive advantage in the travel market; * Associations of the brand have not been clearly defined and conveyed to customers, therefore their perception about its brand name is not sufficiently strong for them to recognize and recall this brand among other alternatives; * Information on past experiences customers have acquired from the use of the company’s services have not been adequately collected and assessed. This makes difficult for asiatravel.com to identify the benefits and value its brand has already been shaped in customers’ mind. * Although the company’s name reflects quite obvious the market segmentation on which it is focusing i.e. Asia as a whole, specific target markets and sub-segments have not been identified. * The company has not adequately identified and evaluated its competitors. As a consequence, their knowledge about its competitors, its points of parity and points of difference is limited. Therefore, its brand positioning is not so strong even though the company has great intrinsic potentials in bringing its brand to be favourable and unique in the travel market. * The company has not adequately invested in developing tools to conduct market surveys; to develop effective marketing strategies, appropriate marketing programs and proper marketing communication to build its brand equity.
1. Costumer-based brand equity
Keller (2003) defined customer-based brand equity as “the differential effect that brand knowledge has on customer response to the marketing of that brand”. When customers respond more positively to a product/service and the way it is marketed when its brand is recognized than when it is not then this brand is said to have a positive CBBE. On the contrary, if consumers react less favourably to marketing activity for