What does your brand mean?

This article discusses the importance of the different "meanings" brands can have for consumers, which are key to brand development, but which often diverge from the company's brand positioning.

What does your brand mean?

Mark Batey

How a company 'positions' a brand is not necessarily how the consumer perceives that brand. Brands allow marketers to add meanings to products and services, but it is consumers who ultimately determine what a brand means. Simply put, while companies create brand identities, people create brand meaning.

Given that brands exist in a permanently evolving socio-cultural context, and that their meaning for consumers is mediated by constant direct personal experience, it is not unusual for divergence to occur between company-intended and consumer-perceived brand meaning.

Moreover, today's fragmented and diversified media landscape exacerbates the...

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