Brands and markets: If you're so strong, why aren't you bigger?

Ideas about brand equity - that mystery quality which marks out muscular brands from flabby ones - have become something of a cottage industry.

If you're so strong, why aren't you bigger?

Making the case against brand equity

Andrew S C Ehrenberg

Ideas about brand equity - that mystery quality which marks out muscular brands from flabby ones - have become something of a cottage industry. Thick books are written about it and companies change hands on the strength of it. But actually `equity' (along with the image scores that supposedly reveal it) is almost entirely dependent on a brand's size and market share. A simple theoretical model, the `Dirichlet', demonstrates this. Smaller brands with poor images suffer from `double jeopardy' - fewer people...

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