Management Perceptions of the Importance of Brand Awareness as an Indication of Advertising Effectiveness

In 1987 Rossiter and Percy wrote awareness is widely misunderstood and often wrongly measured, even by experienced managers. Yet brand awareness is covered in most texts on advertising measurement, it is a central part of the popular hierarchy of-effects advertising model, and marketing managers claim it as an important goal of their communications activities. This paper discusses recent theoretical developments which attempt to explain the role which brand awareness plays and then presents empirical findings concerning how Armenian managers utilize brand awareness as a measure of marketing and advertising effectiveness. Rossiter and Percy (1987) describe brand awareness as being essential for the communications process to occur as it precedes all other steps in the process. Without brand awareness occurring, no other communication effects can occur. For a consumer to buy a brand they must first be made aware of it. Brand attitude cannot be formed, and intention to buy cannot occur unless brand awareness has occurred. In memory theory, brand awareness is positioned as a vital first step in building the bundle of associations which are attached to the brand in memory. The brand is conceptualized as a node in memory which allows other information about the brand to be anchored to it. The conceptualization of a network of brand associations in memory with the brand as a central core has been put forward by many others. Brand awareness has been hypothesized to play a crucial role in determining the consideration set: the small set of brands which a consumer gives serious attention when making a purchase. The composition of this small set of brands which are considered during decision-making is important. A brand that is not considered cannot be chosen, and further, the probability of the brand being chosen is a function of the number of other brands in the consideration set, for instance, the probability of a brand being selected from 1, 2, 3, or 4 brands, decreases rapidly from 1.0 to 0.5, 0.33, and 0.25 respectively. In a situation where the consumer is aware of a number of brands which fit the relevant criteria, he or she is unlikely to expend much effort in seeking out information on unfamiliar brands. A brand that has some level of brand awareness is far more likely to be considered, and therefore chosen, than brands which the consumer is unaware of. Additionally, the strength of awareness of the brands within the consideration set can also be significant. Wilson (1981 cited in Wood-side & Wilson 1985) confirmed the importance of top- of-mind awareness in a study which found that the higher the position of the brand in the consumer's mind measured by unaided recall, the higher the purchase intention and the higher the relative purchase of the brand. Brand awareness can also affect decisions about brands within the consideration set. Consumers may employ a heuristic (decision rule) to buy only familiar, well-established brands. Consumers do not always spend a great deal of time making purchase decisions. Dickson and Sawyer (1986) found that for purchases such as coffee, toothpaste and margarine, the consumer took an average 12 seconds from the time of first looking at the shelf to the time they placed the item in their trolley. In many cases consumers try to minimize the costs of decision making in terms of time spent, and cognitive effort, by employing simple rules of thumb, such as 'buy the brand I've heard of'.