Tài liệu SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND AWARENESS - A CASE STUDY IN THE FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS SECTOR docx

2010:129

BACHELOR THESIS

Social media and brand awareness
- a case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector

Maria Johansson

Luleå University of Technology
Bachelor thesis
Marketing
Department of Business Administration and Social Sciences
Division of Industrial marketing and e-commerce
2010:129 - ISSN: 1402-1773 - ISRN: LTU-CUPP--10/129--SE


SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND AWARENESS
A case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector

Maria Johansson
2010-06-09

Luleå University of Technology
Bachelor Thesis (C-uppsats)
Department of Business Administration and Social Sciences
Division of Industrial Marketing, e-commerce and Logistics


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the respondents of the company in the single case study for taking time and

energy to participate in this study and in the interview, and to share valuable information so
generously. I would also like to thank my supervisor Lars Bäckström for his constructive
support and assistance.


ABSTRACT
We live in the midst of a global communications’ boom where the use of social media
between individuals for personal and professional use is widespread. It has been predicted
that 2010 is the year when the use of social media for branding purposes will really take off
in the corporate sector. The purpose of this thesis has been to look at how social media can
create brand awareness. The specific area of fast moving consumer goods was chosen. This
study is of an exploratory, descriptive and qualitative character, and by looking at a single
case, it has been possible to withdraw necessary primary and secondary data. The most
important findings were that the theoretical framework does explain how the company in the
case study uses social media to create brand awareness. The great challenge that came up in
the case study was for the company to find the right balance between providing contents of
great interest for the audience, while at the same time respecting what kind of information the
company can really go out with- it is about being relevant in social media and in all other
channels of communication. This means a constant need for learning and developing new
knowledge, for measuring and following up. Regarding the different degrees of brand
awareness however, it was difficult to show to what extent the real case builds on the
theoretical framework; that there exist a clear strategy for how to reach the different stages of
brand awareness, from the weakest (recognition) to the strongest (word-of-mouth). What was
considered more important by the company in the case study was to integrate social media in
the total communications and PR-strategy, a task which is actually being performed at this
very moment.


SAMMANFATTNING
Vi befinner oss mitt i en global kommunikations-boom där användningen av sociala medier

mellan individer för personligt och professionellt bruk är mycket utspridd. Det har förutspåtts
att under 2010 kommer användningen av sociala medier i varumärkes-byggande syfte att ta
fart bland företagen. Syftet med denna C-uppsats var att titta på hur sociala medier kan skapa
brand awareness, framförallt inom marknaden för snabbrörliga konsumentvaror. Detta arbete
är av utforskande, beskrivande och kvalitativ karaktär, och genom att studera ett single-case
har det blivit möjligt att få fram nödvändiga primär och sekundärdata. De viktigaste
resultaten visar på att det teoretiska ramverket kan förklara hur företaget i fallstudien
använder sociala medier för att skapa brand awareness. Företaget lyfter fram att utmaningen
ligger i att vara relevant i sociala medier och i alla andra kommunikationskanaler, vilket
handlar om att hitta den räta balansen mellan att presentera intressant material för läsarna,
samtidigt som hänsyn tas till vad företaget verkligen kan och vill gå ut med. Detta betyder ett
konstant behov av lärande och att utveckla ny kunskap, av att mäta och följa upp. Beträffande
de olika graderna av brand awareness, visade det sig emellertid svårt att visa på i vilken
utsträckning företaget i fallstudien bygger på det teoretiska ramverket, att det existerar en
tydlig strategi för hur man skall uppnå de olika stadierna av brand awareness, från det
svagaste (recognition) till det starkaste (word-of-mouth). Vad som bedömdes mer viktigt av
företaget i fallstudien, var att integrera sociala medier i den totala kommunikations och PRstrategin, en uppgift som är under utarbetande vid denna tidpunkt.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background................................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1.1 Social media........................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1.2 Brand and Branding ............................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 Empirical area ............................................................................................................................................... 4
1.3 Research problem......................................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2 Literature review.................................................................................................................................... 6
2.1 Definitions of social media ........................................................................................................................... 6
2.2 Social media and marketing.......................................................................................................................... 7
2.3 In which phases of product life cycle can social media be used? ................................................................. 8

2.4 Social media and branding............................................................................................................................ 8
2.5 Brand and branding in general, branding in fast moving consumer goods sector ....................................... 9
2.6 Brand strategy ............................................................................................................................................ 12
2.7 Brand equity and brand awareness............................................................................................................ 12
2.8 Managing the brand portfolio .................................................................................................................... 14
2.9 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 16
3 Conceptual framework research questions and frame of reference ............................................................... 18
3.1 Research problem and research discussion................................................................................................ 18
3.2 Frame of reference ..................................................................................................................................... 19
3.3 Delimitations............................................................................................................................................... 21
3.4 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 21
Chapter 4: Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 22
4.1 Research Purpose ....................................................................................................................................... 22
4.1.1 Exploratory studies .............................................................................................................................. 22
4.1.2 Descriptive studies............................................................................................................................... 22
4.1.3 Explanatory – Casual studies ............................................................................................................... 22
4.2 Research Approach..................................................................................................................................... 22
4.2.1 Inductive versus Deductive.................................................................................................................. 22
4.2.2 Quantitative versus Qualitative ........................................................................................................... 23
4.3 Research Strategy ....................................................................................................................................... 24
4.3.1 Case study............................................................................................................................................ 24
4.3.2 Survey .................................................................................................................................................. 24
4.3.3 Experiment........................................................................................................................................... 25
4.4 Sample Selection......................................................................................................................................... 25
4.5 Data Collection Methods ............................................................................................................................ 26
4.6 Data analysis ............................................................................................................................................... 26


4.7 Reliability versus Validity ............................................................................................................................ 27
4.8 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 28

Chapter 5 Empirical data ...................................................................................................................................... 29
5.1 The purpose of using social media to create brand awareness................................................................. 29
5.2 How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness be described?................................ 29
5.2.1 The use of social media to create various levels of brand awareness................................................. 30
5.2.2 Measuring of brand awareness ........................................................................................................... 31
5.3 Advantages in using social media to create brand awareness ................................................................... 31
5.4 Disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness............................................................... 31
Chapter 6: Data analysis ....................................................................................................................................... 33
6.1 The purpose of using social media to create brand awareness ................................................................. 33
6.2 How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness be described?................................ 34
6.3 Advantages in using social media to create brand awareness ................................................................... 35
6.4 Disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness............................................................... 35
Chapter 7: Conclusions and suggestions .............................................................................................................. 37
References: ....................................................................................................................................................... 39

Appendix A Interview guide English
Appendix B Intervjuguide svenska


CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Marketing managers have predicted that 2010 will be the year when social media are
integrated in the organizations and really start to become useful for companies and become
important tools in the communication (Carlsson 2010). Others have argued that it is crucial
for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with
them, rather than at them, that it is vital to create a dialogue with the customers, and various
kinds of social media are the most promising way to reach new customers (Weber 2009)
At the same time, one of the most prominent names in research about branding and related
subjects, David Aaker, has said that with the multitude of new medias developing, it is
becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand. The only
way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate messages

and their marketing efforts across all medias (Aaker 1996)
The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including the
social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network Facebook
with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies, the speed
with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing research about
this area all are reasons why this study was initiated. With regards to the discussion above,
this study will be about how social media influences branding.

1.1 BACKGROUND
In studying how social media influences branding, we need to look at what social media is,
what it is composed of and what existing literature says about the correlation between social
media and branding. Branding per se is a vast and widespread area, where opinions diverge
concerning the basic definitions, such as brand equity for example. We need to clarify which
parts of branding that we will focus on in this context.
1.1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA
What is social media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p 60) define social media as "a group of
Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of
Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Web 2.0 is
platform on which social media is based (Carlsson 2010).
Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet forums,
weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social
bookmarking (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Weber, 2009). Weber also includes search engines
in the definition of social web, and describes them as reputation aggregators with the task of
aggregating sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of
reputation (Weber 2009).
Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web. He defines this as the dialogue
you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the stronger the

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brand is, and vice versa. Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing
and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target
groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about
participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with
customers and between customers can flourish. (Weber 2009)
According to a study made in 2010 in the United Kingdom amongst 30 companies (which are
early adopter business and perhaps not representative of the mainstream UK businesses), the
importance of participating in social networks in order to develop the brand and build
relationships with key customers is in fact recognized by the companies. It is argued that
online communities will play a key role in the future of marketing because they replace
customer annoyance with engagement, and control of the content with collaboration. The
authors of this study, Harris and Rae, claim that the prosperous businesses of the future will
be those who embrace the social media and who see change as an opportunity. (Harris and
Rae 2010)
1.1.2 BRAND AND BRANDING
What is brand and branding and why do we need to look into this more deeply? According to
Czinkota and Ronkainen (2010), brands are important because they shape customer decisions
and ultimately create economic value. Brand is a key factor behind the decision to purchase
in business to consumer operations, and thanks to strong brands, it has been showed possible
to charge a 19 percent higher price. (Czinkota and Ronkainen 2010)
What specific aspects and dimensions in branding are we particularly interested in?
In order to get a necessary overview of the state-of-the-art in branding literature, it has been
deemed necessary to look closer into brand strategy, brand equity and assets that underlie
brand equity which are brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association
and other proprietary brand assets.
1.1.2.3 B RAND STRATEGY

One definition of brand strategy is the following: “Your brand strategy is how, what, where,
when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering your brand messages. Where

you advertise is part of your brand strategy, so are your distribution channels and your verbal
and visual communication”. Consistent branding strategy leads to a strong brand equity,
which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you
to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command.
(www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 100424)
The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com highlights the following elements in the
branding strategy: to build a brand positioning, to manage your brand portfolio, to build your
brand architecture and naming, and to consider possible brand extensions.
(www.prophet.com. Retrieved 100424) This proposition takes the perspective of looking into
the management of several brands at the same time.

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1.1.2.4 B RAND EQUITY AND BRAND AWARENESS

Despite the availability of numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature, there is
little consensus on what exactly brand equity means, claim Park and Srinivasan in Pappu et
al. (2005). Nor is there a general agreement among researchers at the conceptual level about
what brand equity comprises. The broad meaning attached to the term “brand equity” is
similar to the definition provided by Farquhar in Pappu et al. (2005), as the value endowed by
the brand to the product. A product is something that offers a functional benefit (for example
toothpaste, a life insurance policy, or a car)” (Farquhar in Elliott and Percy 2007).

The definitions of brand equity can be broadly classified into two categories; either as
financial considerations and the value of the brand equity for the firm, or based on the
consumer perspective which looks as brand equity as the value of a brand for the consumer
(Brasco and Mahajan in Pappu et al. 2005).
Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on
consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition

of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and
symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm
and/or to that firm’s customers (Pappu et al. 2005).
Aaker conceptualized brand equity as a set of five assets: brand awareness, perceived quality,
brand loyalty, brand association and other proprietary brand assets. Brand awareness is an
important component of brand equity, it deals with the strength a brand’s presence has in
consumer’s minds.
It is predicted by Aaker that with the multitude of new media that have developed and that
are likely to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this
brand awareness, and that the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness will be those
who are able to coordinate their branding messages through all medias (Aaker 1996).
Weber (2009) holds a diverging view on brand equity, and means that it is not interesting to
look at how well the customer remembers a brand, but one should consider that the social
media arena changes the marketing mindset, and that brand equity is a living thing and should
be measured by to what extent the customer is prone to highly recommend the brand to
others.
There exist different degrees of brand awareness according to Aaker, and it is measured
through analysis of how well the customer recalls the brand. The scale starts off from the
weakest level:
recognition (the customer has been exposed to the brand)
recall (which brands within the product group that the customer can retain)

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top of mind (the first brand the customer can recall)
dominant (the only brand the customer can recall) (Aaker 1996).
To create brand awareness in a successful way considering that consumers everyday are
bombarded by more and more marketing messages, two things are needed according to
Aaker: first, it is necessary to have a broad sales base. This is because it is expensive and

often impossible even to support brands with relatively small unit sales and short lifecycle.
This is the reason why many firms reduce the number of their brands and focus only on a few
brands. Second, firms need to acquire the knowledge of operating outside the traditional
media channels (Aaker 1996)
There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning. In a
positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy
a particular need are addressed (Elliott and Percy 2007). Brand positioning can be thought of
as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it
offers (Elliott and Percy 2007).
Considering the great importance that brand awareness has in the creation of brand equity,
and that recent research take into account also how social media influence brand awareness,
brand awareness is the aspect of branding that this thesis will focus on. The approach will be
a combination of Weber’s and Aaker’s ideas: the strongest form of brand awareness will be
considered to be word-of-mouth (Weber 2009), that the customer has such a high brand
awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others. This stage is preceded by weak brand
awareness (recognition), medium brand awareness (recall), strong brand awareness (top-ofmind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of) and very strong brand awareness
(dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember) (Aaker 1996).

1.2 EMPIRICAL AREA
Up until now, it is mainly within business to consumer market that social media have been
used for the sake of strengthening the brand and to reach new customers (Wikberg, 2010).
Apéria and Back (2004) claim that it is within the fast moving consumer goods sector
(FMCG) that only the strong brands, either own brands or the supplier’s brands, survive.
Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are defined as products that are sold quickly at
relatively low cost. Though the absolute profit made on FMCG products is relatively small,
they generally sell in large quantities, so the cumulative profit on such products can be large
( retrieved 100424).
The strong brands are defined as those with strong support from customers. To ensure their
brands survival, the brand owners have to seek an ever greater understanding of what the
consumer and customers want and to develop a relationship between them and the brand.

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Since existing research about social media so strongly emphasize that branding in the era of
the social web is about creating a dialogue with your customer, the choice of the empirical
base in this study is a medium sized company, company X, within the FMCG which is one of
the 300 strongest brands in business to consumer market in Sweden. The company had a
turnover in 2008 of 750 MSEK.

1.3 RESEARCH PROBLEM
It seems clear that we are currently living in the midst of the boom of the use of social media.
Social networks such as Facebook with some 400 million active members represent a larger
community than most individual countries. But research is somewhat lagging behind this
rapid development, and it is difficult to find relevant up to date studies on how social media
are to be part of the branding process, how this relates to the strategy that companies have
with the use of social media- if they are to be used to strengthen the brand, increase sales,
find new customers, recruit more competent staff, to improve the support-function, to be part
of the product development and/or to improve the internal communication (Carlsson, 2010).
Also the question of how companies create brand equity through brand awareness has been
debated with the upsurge of social media. “Traditional” marketers such as Aaker, claim that
brand awareness is about the strength the brand’s presence has in consumer’s minds (Aaker
1996).
Social media guru Weber is of the opinion that brand awareness is to be measured not in
brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth (Weber 2009).
These are the contents that will be looked into in this thesis. With regard to this, the research
problem of this study can be formulated as:
To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of
brand awareness

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The purpose of this chapter is to establish a theoretical outline. The literature presented in
this chapter deals with research findings on social media; and theories relating to branding
in a broader sense, and brand awareness more specifically. All the literature is described and
explained in order to build a theoretical background for this study.

2.1 DEFINITIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
In addition to the definitions given in section 1.1.1, Wikipedia defines social media as:
“media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and
scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and
broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization
of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content
producers” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420).
Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television,
and film. They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private
individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally
require significant resources to publish information.
Social media technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant
messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these
social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like
Mybloglog and Plaxo (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420).
Weber uses the term “social web” instead of social media, and defines the social web as “the
online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments
and opinions. It includes social networks such as MySpace, Gather, Facebook, BlackPlanet,
Eons, LinkedIn, and hundreds more. It includes branded web destinations like Amazon,
Netflix and eBay. It includes enterprise sites such as IBM, Best Buy, Cisco and Oracle. The
social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web

and they include:
-Reputation aggregators: search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Live. They
aggregate sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of
reputation.
-Blogs: online journals where people can post ideas, images, and links to other web pages or
sites. Some appear on personal or corporate sites, while others are hosted on Blogger,
BlogHer (for women), Weblog, Tumblr, and other blogging sites. (Weber 2009)
-Microblogs: Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users
to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140
characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who

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are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by
default, allow open access ( Retrieved
2010-04-25. Retrieved 2010-04-25).
-Topic-specific e-communities are generally advertising supported although some are free.
Hewlett Packard for example has communities on its website, and there are communities
involving sports such as KayakMind for people who enjoy kayaking. Password-protected ecommunities are growing especially quickly.
-Social networks are places where people with a common interest or concern come together
to meet people with similar interests, express themselves and communicate. In addition to the
ones abovementioned are also for example Xanga, Stumbleupon. Some sites are devoted
specifically to image-sharing, such as Flickr, and some to video-sharing, YouTube serves 10
billion videos a month to U.S. viewers alone (Weber 2009).

2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
According to Weber, marketing to the social web means to adopt a completely new way of
communicating with an audience in a digital environment. Instead of continuing as
broadcasters, marketers should become aggregators of customer communities. It is not about

broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience. Instead, when
marketing to the social web marketers should participate in, organize and encourage social
networks to which people want to belong. Rather than talking at customers, marketers should
talk with them (Weber 2009).
The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on
your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out
and participating in the public arena (Weber 2009).
Marketing to the social web is not only for the largest multinational corporations; it may be
easier and more effective, argues Weber (2009), for a relatively small or medium-size
company to take maximum advantages of the social media.
Also the way of segmenting changes radically with the advent of the social web.
Demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors have become less
relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their
behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests. The goal for the marketer is to identify
groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the
marketing (Weber 2009).
Harris and Rae (2010) have looked at the role of social networking in establishing an
integrated marketing strategy. They argue that online communities have evolved considerably
since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. For example Cisco has put forward a
customer community which allow customers to help themselves to technical support
information via web communities. After Cisco put the technical support function online,

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customers began to compete with each other to answer queries that had been posted by other
customers. This strategy contributes towards the creation of a community of people with
similar interests who will trust and act upon the recommendations of others in the group
(Harris and Rae 2010).
Harris and Rae claim that businesses are recognising the potential of generic online social

networking such as Facebook and Myspace for the development of their brands and to build
relationships with key customers, but that this is a very recent trend in the UK (which the data
comes from) and that it is difficult at this stage to draw conclusions on how successful
companies have been in using social networks in the marketing work (Harris and Rae 2010)

2.3 IN WHICH PHASES OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE CAN SOCIAL MEDIA BE USED?
Weber suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product
development, market introduction and market adoption. He exemplifies by stating that blogs,
wikis (A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of
interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a
WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to
create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in
corporate
intranets,
and
in
knowledge
management
systems
Retrieved 100420) and communities can be used during
the development phase on various product features.
During market introduction, podcasts and webinars (a seminar conducted over the web,
designed to be interactive) to engage and educate potential customers about the new
product’s benefits and applications may be used. And as the product begins to sell, the social
web can be used for trouble-shooting, problem solving and customer service and support,
plus the important word-of-mouth to build that buzz (Weber 2009).

2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRANDING
Weber compares the traditional way of looking at brand equity (which will be examined in
section number 2.7) in terms of brand recall- and points to that in the era where social

networks have become an important media channel, brand equity is a living thing and should
be measured not in terms of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-ofmouth.
A strong brand ought to be based on the dialogue you have with your customers and
prospects- the stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand. The social web allows companies
to have these kinds of dialogues more efficiently and less expensively than in the past
(Weber 2009).
Weber’s (2009) view on how the blog should be used as a marketing tool, is that through this
means of communication it is not possible to control your message. But you can present your

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view on a specific matter, and by that you are able to become part of the conversation. Blogs
can be used for different reasons.
For small start-up companies, to have a blog is a way for an executive in the firm to talk
about the industry, to talk about the market space, to establish credibility, to get the search
engines going. All this helps not only with customers, it helps with media and PR efforts
since reporters and writers look through the blogs all the time for people to quote and
interview. Blogs are used as references (Weber 2009).
If then you are an executive and want to raise your profile and the company’s profile, a blog
is a great way to help secure speaking engagements, contributed articles, and quotes in major
media. All of that adds credibility, which eventually can lead to the interest of new
customers, who may be used to buying other brands, products or services but may feel more
comfortable with you. An executive may also want to blog to get a feel for what is taking
place in the field, and get a direct line with your customers (Weber 2009).

2.5 BRAND

AND BRANDING IN GENERAL, BRANDING IN FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS

SECTOR

Why is branding interesting to look at in this study? There is a great variety of concepts
relating to brands and branding. From the beginning, a brand was used to mark ownership of
cattle (Aaker in Bertilsson 2009). In modern times, brands functioned as symbols that
enabled consumers to identify and separate one producer from another, with the ability to
trace one good back to the manufacturer holding it responsible for its quality (Koehn in
Bertilsson 2009), but they are today ascribed with almost divine characteristics serving as a
strategic business asset essential for firms to develop if they are to compete successfully
(Aaker and Kapferer in Bertilsson 2009). This leads to the conclusion, that when looking at
how social media affects marketing in a broader perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on
the area of branding within marketing.
But branding in itself is as mentioned above, a large area containing many concepts and
dimensions and diverging definitions. Therefore, it has been deemed necessary in this study
to make an overview of key concepts in marketing, and to on the basis of this analysis,
choose which concepts within branding to focus on. The areas which will be looked into in
this section besides brand and branding following right hereafter, are brand strategy, brand
equity and brand awareness and managing the brand portfolio.
The traditional definition of a brand used in brand management literature was formulated by
the American Marketing Association in 1960 and identifies a brand as a kind of
differentiating device “...distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark or
package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or groups of
sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors...” (Aaker 1991,
Bengtsson 1996).

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A central concept in classical brand management presented by de Chernatony and Riley
(1997) is that “as a result of augmenting the core offering with consumer relevant added

values, consumers will be prepared to pay a price premium”.
It is also pointed out, that a brand consists of a set of perceptions which serve to differentiate
the product from the competition (Aaker 1996). The brand strength depends on the extent to
which these perceptions are consistent, positive and shared by consumers. To improve the
brand strength, managers need to shape this set of perceptions so that the target audience will
think of the brand in positive terms (Aaker 1996).
According to de Chernatony and Riley (1997), it seems that from the brand managers’
perspective, the brand is to be regarded as a name to be exploited to satisfy short-term sales
and goals. But for the consumer, the purpose to consume the brand might be the meanings the
brand brings to the consumer, or as put by Heilbrunn (in Bengtsson 1996): “A brand may be
viewed not solely as a sign added to products to differentiate them from competing goods, but
as a semiotic engine whose function is to constantly produce meaning and values”.
De Chernatony and McWilliam (1989) and McWilliam (1991) identify four complementary
views of brands from the consumer’s perspective: a visual identifier, a guarantee of consistent
quality, a shorthand device, an expression of self-concept. The idea behind is that brands can
speed up and simplify consumers’ choices, and that they might reduce any believed
performance risk (de Chernatony and Riley, 1997). A fairly similar view is taken by
Bengtsson (1996), who states that from the consumer point of view, a brand can be
understood as a multidimensional construct that represents a variety of elements which
consumers consider to represent the brands.
Melin in Apéria and Back (2004) has looked at another angle of brand and branding. He
states that brand building is a process which takes place both within the company and in
consumers’ minds. A central part of the brand building process, according to Melin, is the
concept of core value; that is the brand’s primary differentiation advantage which provides
the basis for the brand’s positioning. The basic argument is that unique core values should be
developed to give the brand an ability to compete. In all cases Melin investigated, the
consumer and her or his needs were in the centre for choices of core value (Melin in Apéria
and Back 2004), and this is very similar to the traditional view of branding from 1960.
In literature about brands, it is often stated that the company appreciates strong brands
because they are an asset which contribute to strong profitability, and consumers appreciate

them because they reduce uncertainty. Apéria and Back (2004) however, bring forward the
importance of branding for the distributors in fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG);
for them, strong brands create sales in the shops.
Weber approaches the question of branding relating it to the consequences for branding
considering the emergence of the social media. He defines branding as the dialogue you have
with your customer. The stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand and vice versa.
Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means
that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social

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web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to
which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can
flourish. (Weber 2009) He means that transparency is critical if you want customers and
stakeholders to trust you and engage in dialogue with you. The objective is to have customers
invite you to deliver the message to them. Messages can’t be “forced” through. (Weber
2009)
Yet another way of looking at what a brand is, is that the brand is your promise to your
customer. It tells her/him what to expect from your products and services, and it differentiates
your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who
you want to be and who people perceive you to be. (www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved
100424)
Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that contemporarily, it is hard to build a brand. One of the
factors causing this, is the fragmenting markets and media today compared to 30 years ago.
With a limited number of media options and only a few national media vehicles, being
consistent across media and markets was easy. The media world today consists of a lot of
possibilities; advertising on the Internet, interactive television, event sponsorship etc.
Coordinating messages across these media without weakening the brand is a real challenge,
argues Aaker.

In addition, companies are dividing the population into smaller and more refined target
markets, often reaching them with specialized media and distribution channels. It is tempting
to develop different brand identities for some or all of these new target segments. But,
developing and managing multiple identities for the same brand presents problems for both
the brand and the customer. Since media audiences invariably overleap, customers are likely
to be exposed to more than one identity relating to the same brand (Aaker 1996).
Considering that since Aaker wrote this book in 1996, a lot of new media channels have
emerged such as social networks, on-line communities etc, see sections 2.1-2.4 for an
overview of this area. Thus, the media market has become even more fragmented, and hence
it is reasonable to think, following Aaker’s arguments, that it has become increasingly more
difficult to build and manage a brand. These trends are very recent, so studies about social
media are, as mentioned previously, fairly rare.

In FMCG products, it is argued by researchers that well-known brands are much more likely
to enjoy good distribution, which helps maintain high market share. The competition for shelf
space amongst FMCG products is very strong, and strong brands have a clear advantage here.
The pull-strategy focuses on mass communication tools, mainly advertising and aims at
creating a strong consumer demand for branded products, and distributors and retailers have
very strong incentives to carry the brand. (Elliott and Percy 2007, Czinkota and Ronkainen
2010)

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2.6 BRAND STRATEGY
Brand strategy can be defined as follows: “Long-term marketing support for a brand, based
on the definition of the characteristics of the target consumers. It includes understanding of
their preferences, and expectations from the brand” (.
Retrieved 100424).
The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com defines the following parts in a branding

strategy: build a brand positioning, manage your brand portfolio, build your brand
architecture and naming, consider the possible brand extensions (.
Retrieved 100424)
Kapferer identifies branding strategy as the term used for decisions on: the number of brand
levels to be implemented; one, two or even three and the role of the corporate in the product
value communication; should it be absent, strongly present or hardly present. He also
considers the relative weight of these brands, and the graphic arrangement of their
coexistence on all the documents, packaging and products but also industrial sites, offices and
business cards of salespersons and managers as well as the degree of globalisation of the
architecture as bearing elements of the branding strategy (Kapferer 2008).

2.7 BRAND EQUITY AND BRAND AWARENESS
As mentioned in section 1.1.2.4, there is little consensus on what exactly brand equity means
and there are numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature (Park and Srinivasan in
Pappu et al. 2005). In marketing it has for a long time been considered that brands add value
to a product, but it was not until the large wave of mergers and acquisitions in multinational
corporations with large and well-known brands in the 1980’s that this value was measured in
the asset value of companies. Besides the traditional way of considering asset value and net
income, also “goodwill” was to be included (Elliott and Percy 2007). Even if accepted
accounting procedure did not permit considering the added value of a brand name on the
balance sheet, it was nevertheless being counted as part of the net value of the firm. The term
brand equity stems from this context.
There exist many definitions of brand equity, defined mainly from two perspectives, either as
financial considerations or as consumer perceptions of a brand. Here are some examples: “A
set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, it’s name and symbol, that add to or
subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to firm’s customers”
(Aaker 1991)
Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on
consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition
of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and

symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm
and/or to that firm’s customers. (Aaker in Pappu et al. 2005) The five assets underlying
brand equity identified by Aaker are: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty,
brand association, other proprietary brand assets.

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Aaker predicts that with the multitude of new media’s that have developed and that are likely
to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this brand
awareness. Aaker (1996) predicts that the firms skilful in operating outside the “traditional”
media channels and who can coordinate messages across all medias (advertising in
newspapers, TV, radio, the Internet, event sponsorships, direct marketing, trade shows) are
those that will be the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness (Aaker 1996).
Weber (2009) argues against the “traditional way” of looking at brand equity in terms of
brand recall- and instead claims that contemporarily, with a new marketing mindset adapted
to the social media arena, brand equity is a living thing and should be measured not in terms
of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth. Instead of
creating brand awareness through brand recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly
recommend the good or service to others. Instead of creating brand awareness through brand
recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly recommend the good or service to others
(Weber 2009).
There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning. For a brand
to be successful, it is not enough to reach brand recognition, a brand must occupy a salient
position (top-of- mind recall or dominant recall) within the target audience’s consideration set
(Elliott and Percy 2007). A brand must be positioned in its marketing communication in such
a way that when the need for such a product occurs, that brand comes to mind. Then the
brand must be linked to a benefit that provides a motivating reason to consider it. It is this
link between the brand and the benefit that lies at the root of building positive brand attitude,
which in turn builds positive brand equity (Elliott and Percy 2007).

According to Kotler (2003), positioning is about enabling a brand to occupy a “distinct and
valued place” in the mind of the target consumer. In a positioning statement, the benefits a
brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy a particular need are addressed.
Brand positioning can be thought of as the element that tells the potential customer what the
brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott&Percy 2007 p 229).
Considering the great importance that brand awareness has to create brand equity, and that
recent studies are questioning the traditional way of looking at brand awareness, taking into
account how it is affected by social media, this is the aspect of branding that this study will
focus on, and the approach will be to look at brand awareness in the way that Aaker has done.
Amongst the other 4 assets underlying brand equity, perceived quality is defined by Aaker
(1996) as a brand association that is elevated to the status of a brand asset for a number of
reasons: among all brand associations, only perceived quality has been shown to drive
financial performance and perceived quality is linked to and often drives other aspects of how
a brand is perceived (Aaker 1996).

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Brand loyalty: Aaker (1996) defines the third dimension of brand equity as brand loyalty,
which is not recognised by some researchers. Keller for example (1992) defines consumerbased brand equity in terms of brand knowledge and unique brand associations.
The importance of including brand loyalty as a fundamental asset underlying brand equity is
according to Aaker that a brand’s value to a company is largely created by the customer
loyalty it commands. He also believes that considering loyalty as an asset, encourages and
justifies loyalty-building programs which can then help to create and enhance brand equity.
Another definition of brand loyalty, is arguing that a highly loyal customer base can be
expected to generate a predictable sales and profit stream. A brand without a loyal customer
base is usually vulnerable or has value only in its potential to create loyal customers (Aaker
1996).
This is true also because it is much cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones, the
costs can be 5 times higher to gain a new client than keeping an old one.

( Retrieved 100419)
The brand loyalty of existing customers also constitute an important barrier of entry towards
competitors, the costs of attracting customers to change loyalties is often high (Aaker 1996).
Frequent-buyer programs and the possibility to use database marketing thanks to customer
data that becomes available through the joining of frequent- buyer programs are ways to
strive for higher brand loyalty (Aaker 1996).
Brand associations: deals with the fact that brand equity is supported in great part by the
associations that consumers make with a brand; it may be product attributes or a particular
symbol. Brand associations are driven by the brand identity, what the organization wants the
brand to stand for in the customer’s mind. A key to building strong brands is to develop a
brand identity (Aaker 1996).
Other proprietary brand assets cover assets such as channel relationships and patents that are
attached to the brand (Aaker 1996).

2.8 MANAGING THE BRAND PORTFOLIO
What is managing brand portfolio strategy about? Aaker’s approach to this area is that it
supports a company's business strategy and profoundly affects the firm's profitability. He
claims that understanding and managing the brand portfolio can be a key to both the
development of a winning business strategy and its successful implementation. The first key
element of brand portfolio management is to make sure that each brand has a well-defined
scope and role or set of roles to play in each context in which it is expected to contribute.
Second, a portfolio view can ensure that the brands of the future get the resources they need
to succeed, instead of that high potential brands get starved of resources, in part because their
business is still small.

14


Third, strategic growth challenges can be addressed through portfolio. Usually that means
entering new markets, offering new products or moving into upscale or value arenas. The

portfolio task is to design the optimal brand strategy which can include leveraging existing
brands to support such growth options.
Fifth, an offering can get complex and confusing for both the customers and even employees.
In the face of competitive pressure, a cohesive, well-defined brand portfolio becomes
imperative (. Retrieved 100419).
According to Kapferer (2008) it is due to historical reasons that most companies have to
manage a large portfolio of brands. The natural trend during the growth of firms has been to
add new brands each time they wanted to penetrate new market segments or new distribution
channels. This was done in order to avoid conflict with former segments and channels which
could have endangered their old brands. The vogue of company mergers and acquisitions in
the 1990’s brought additional brands that managers were reluctant to dispose of or merge
with other brands. The size of brand portfolio therefore grew to increased complexity
(Kapferer 2008).
There has been a rupture of this trend however, argues Kapferer, and today the trend
particularly in the FMCG industry, is to reduce the size of portfolios as soon as possible. The
reasons are that it is considered difficult to promote several brands to retailers at the same
time, there is simply not enough shelf space. A few brands will be promoted to gain sufficient
market share, and the others will be abandoned.
Furthermore, Kapferer highlights that the concentration of the distribution trade has reduced
the number of retailers and has even almost suppressed certain retail channels and small
businesses. Brands that were previously uniquely handled by specific distribution channels
and sold only in certain stores, may now be found in a single wholesale or purchasing group.
This tends to lead to a reduction in the numbers of brands. Another strong trend in the FMCG
industry is the creating of distributors’ own brands. This, together with the fact that
supermarket shelf space is limited, leads to the reduction of the space allocated to the other
brands.
There is also a concentration of industrial production. International competition has put the
emphasis on high productivity and low costs and has led to the regrouping of production units
and R&D activities. There is less justification for large brand portfolios when the products,
even if they are varied, come from the same factories or even the same production lines.

Finally consumers show signs of being overwhelmed and confused by the multitude of
brands. A response from manufacturers is to rationalise the number of brands.
Brand internalisation and the abolishing of national barriers is also a reason to the reduction
of the number of brands in the brand portfolio, according to Kapferer. In Europe for example,
class, lifestyle and consumer needs are no longer exclusive for a single country. The
investment required to establish a significant global presence means that firms can only
maintain a small number of brands, or even one single brand for companies with a monobrand strategy such as Siemens, Mitsubishi and Philips (Kapferer 2008).

15


A brand portfolio reflects, as claimed by Elliott and Percy (2007), the various brands
marketed by a company within a particular product category, and a brand line is all of the
products marketed under a single brand name. They also suggest that brands may be thought
of in terms of a hierarchy. A corporate (or company) brand identifies the parent company,
brands like Daimler-Benz. A group brand is a brand name that is used in more than one
category, brands like Yamaha that are used to market diverse products such as pianos and
motorcycles. At the bottom of the hierarchy are single brands, where the name is restricted to
a single product category (Elliott and Percy 2007).
Brand portfolio has been defined as the mix of brands and sub-brands owned by an
organization. This portfolio should be actively managed to ensure effective brand
management. For example, Procter & Gamble and Unilever both have a large portfolio of
brands; General Motors manages Buick, Cadillac, Dodge and other brands; Hallmark
manages the Hallmark, Shoebox, and Crayola brands among other (Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.

O’Donnell argues that a well-orchestrated brand portfolio strategy needs to be fully integrated
with the company’s business model, and mix well with such economic factors as pricing
policies, manufacturing scale and distribution policies (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.).
In Wikipedia, three key levels of managing the brand portfolio are identified:

- Corporate brand/umbrella brand/family brand
These are consumer-facing brands used across all the firm's activities, and this name is how
they are known to all their stakeholders- consumers, employees, shareholders, partners,
suppliers and other parties. Examples include Virgin Group and Heinz.
- Endorsed brands, and sub-brands
These brands include a parent brand which may be a corporate brand, an umbrella brand, or a
family brand as an endorsement to a sub-brand or an individual product brand. The
endorsement should add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of consumers.
Examples are Nestlé KitKat, Sony PlayStation.
- Individual product brand
The individual brands are presented to consumers and the parent company name is given little
or no prominence. Other stakeholders, like shareholders or partners, will know the producer
by its company name. Examples are Procter & Gamble’s Pampers or Unilever's Dove.
( Retrieved 100425)

2.9 SUMMARY
The aim of this chapter was to review and explain the relevant literature in the field of social
media on one hand and branding in general and brand equity and brand awareness in
particular on the other hand; in order to present to the reader the state-of-the art research in
this domain. In the following chapter, this literature review will serve to create a suitable

16


theoretical framework to solve the research problem, and in order to do this, the precise
research questions will be formulated.

17

3 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND FRAME OF

REFERENCE
The aim of this chapter is to, based on the introduction and the literature review, formulate
the research questions which will enable the data collection and the analysis of this to be
done in a proper way to solve the research problem.

3.1 RESEARCH PROBLEM AND RESEARCH DISCUSSION
The research problem in this thesis, as formulated in the introduction in chapter 1 is: “To
increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness”
Considering that the use of social media to create brand awareness and ultimately to create
brand equity in the forms of increased sales is a very recent trend, we need to find answers to
the following research question of an exploratory character:
Research question 1: What is the purpose of using social media to create brand
awareness?
Carlsson (2010) claims that social media can be very valuable for creating long term relations
and for building brand awareness. There are a variety of social media activities that can be
initiated to build brand awareness according to Carlsson (2010), the using of a company blog
for example gives the possibility to spread the corporate philosophy and to show the soul of
the company. It gives the possibility for fans to further spread the company culture. YouTube
or Facebook may be used in the same way. Social media also give the possibility to position
the company or the brand within a specific category.
With regard to the arguments presented by Carlsson, I will be looking at what purposes
company X, which constitutes the case study in this thesis, has by using social media to
create brand awareness.
Research question 2: How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness
be described?
As mentioned in chapter 1, many professionals within marketing predict that in 2010, social

media will really become integrated in the operations of companies and truly become
important tools in the communication. Carlsson (2010) is of the opinion that it is not a good
enough reason to be active in social media simply because everybody else is. The early stage
of development of this media leads to the assumption that there might be a discrepancy
between what the goal is of using social media to create brand awareness and how it is
actually used in reality to create brand awareness. Therefore the case study will deal with this
matter, and I will ask company X how they actually use social media activities to create
brand awareness.

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