Page 187 - Marketing Management

164 PART 3 CONNECTING WITH CUSTOMERS

Woolite’s style guide focuses on
the emotional benefits of choosing
and preserving the right look in
clothes for women.

A spreading activation process from node to node determines how much we retrieve and what in-
formation we can actually recall in any given situation. When a node becomes activated because
we’re encoding external information (when we read or hear a word or phrase) or retrieving inter-
nal information from LTM (when we think about some concept), other nodes are also activated if
they’re strongly enough associated with that node.
In this model, we can think of consumer brand knowledge as a node in memory with a variety
of linked associations. The strength and organization of these associations will be important
determinants of the information we can recall about the brand. Brand associations consist of all
brand-related thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on
that become linked to the brand node.
We can think of marketing as a way of making sure consumers have product and service expe-
riences to create the right brand knowledge structures and maintain them in memory.
Companies such as Procter & Gamble like to create mental maps of consumers that depict their
knowledge of a particular brand in terms of the key associations likely to be triggered in a mar-
keting setting, and their relative strength, favorability, and uniqueness to consumers. Figure 6.3
displays a very simple mental map highlighting brand beliefs for a hypothetical consumer for
State Farm insurance.

|Fig. 6.3| STATE FARM
Around a long time
Auto Top-of-the-line insurance Safe
Hypothetical State Life Fire
Farm Mental Map INSURANCE Conservative Responsive

Good reputation Convenient

Dependable Reputable

Reliable Fast settlement

Good home and auto Personal service
insurance
Red color “Good Neighbors”
Agents that are part
of my neighborhood