APPLE: Brand Equity in Action

When a company positions itself on the foundation of innovation by humanizing technology, it equally focuses on user’s experience as well as emotion.  Technology should serve people and people should always be the starting point of any technology and that’s how the core idea of ‘humanizing technology’ comes from. Apple as a brand believes in humanizing technology by innovating new products and services to enhance user’s experiences and to create emotional brand attachment.  Apple’s brand personality is well engraved into its brand recognition among customers; youthful, dependable, friendly, and simple. Apple’s success in portraying this personality through every component, has led users to align themselves with the Apple identity.  Apple’s brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspiration; and power-to-the people through technology.  Not only the products, Apple’s tremendously successful retail stores give customers a keen taste of Apple’s brand values.  The airy design of Apple’s retail space, the no-pressure environment, the friendly help, the hands-on experience, the counter-free checkout are the breathing example of Apple’s brand equity in action. 

Figure: the Duffy Agency customer-based brand equity model

The brand equity can be defined as the degree to which a brand has achieved consumer awareness, understanding, interest, trust, trial, belief, affinity, loyalty and advocacy among a defined target group. The term ‘brand equity’ was produced as an attempt to define the relationship between customers and brands and it highlighted the importance of having a long-term focus within brand management.  The concept of brand equity has been debated both in accounting and marketing literatures and proliferated into multiple meaning. However, Feldwick (1996) simplifies brand equity as:

•  the total value of a brand as a separable asset;
•  a measure of the strength of consumers’ attachment to a brand;
•  a description of the associations and beliefs the consumer has about the brand.

Keller (1993) also takes the consumer-based brand strength approach to brand equity, suggesting that brand equity represents a condition in which the consumer is familiar with the brand and recalls some favorable, strong and unique brand associations.

Over the years, Apple has innovated markets and created new categories. Each new generation of their prior product lines adds new features that are innovative and of interest to customers. Apple’s products and services always provide a “wow” in the marketplace. There is always room for “wow”. When a product wows the market, those features/benefits eventually becomes a “must have” for the industry and thus Apple creates a living standard and breaks the status quo of the customers. Apple’s core competence remains delivering exceptional experience through superb user interface. The Apple brand personality lies in simplicity, and the removal of complexity from people’s lives through people-driven product design; and being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers. The Apple brand is not just intimate with its customers, it’s loved, and there is a real sense of community among users of its main product lines who advocates the brand.

Figure: Brand Equity Model by Kevin Lane Keller

                                          

Reference

Apple Inc. Wikipedia. Retrieved from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

Apple’s Branding Strategy. (n.d.). Marketing Minds. Retrieved from http://www.marketingminds.com.au/apple_branding_strategy.html#brand-personality

Brand Equity Tracking: Gauging the Success of a Brand. (n.d.). LAB BRAND, Brand Innovations. Retrieved from http://www.labbrand.com/brand-source/brand-equity-tracking-gauging-success-brand

Duffy, S. (2012, June 14). CUSTOMER-BASED BRAND EQUITY. BRAND RANTS. Retrieved from http://www.brandrants.com/brandrants/2012/6/14/customer-based-brand-equity.html

Goodstein, R. (2013, October). With Apple’s ‘Me-Too’ Product, Brand Equity Takes A Hit. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2013/10/09/with-apples-me-too-product-brand-equity-takes-a-hit/

Keller, K. L. (2001). Building Customer-Based Brand Equity: A Blueprint for Creating Strong Brands. Marketing Science Institute. Retrieved from http://mktg.uni-svishtov.bg/ivm/resources/CustomerBasedbrandEquityModel.pdf