How Brand Reputation Affects The Advertising-Brand Equity Link

A model of the process of brand equity is proposed that depicts brand reputation as a mediator of the effect of brand advertising, brand familiarity, and brand uniqueness on brand equity outcomes. Brands are used as the unit of analysis in determining the relationships between consumer-level perceptions of brands and market-level data on brand advertising and brand equity outcomes such as market share and relative price. Path analysis of the brand-level data strongly validates the model. It is also shown that brand reputation is a separate construct from brand attitudes and that it performs better than brand attitudes in explaining the effect of brand advertising on brand equity outcomes.