Brand Equity Models: Aaker, Keller and What to Measure

The question this article answers

A brand can be well known, distrusted, admired, routinely bought or valued for a particular benefit. Brand equity models organise those different forms of strength so they can be investigated rather than discussed as one vague feeling. Aaker and Keller offer influential approaches, but a diagram is not a measurement system by itself. The useful work begins when a business chooses the decisions it needs to make and the evidence required to make them.

Aaker puts brand assets on the management agenda

Aaker’s approach treats brand equity as assets and liabilities linked to the brand, including awareness, associations, perceived quality and loyalty.¹ The practical appeal is managerial: brand investment should concern more than this month’s visible activity. An identity choice, a service failure or a repeated promise can affect the assets the business relies on over time.

Use the model to ask what the brand has actually earned. Are buyers familiar with it? Which associations appear? Is perceived quality supported by experience? What does loyalty mean in this category? For a low-frequency industrial purchase, repeat transactions may be constrained by the buying cycle. For a frequent consumer purchase, observed repeat behaviour can provide a different kind of evidence. Read about brand salience before treating recognition as the whole memory story.

Keller organises how a relationship is built

Keller’s customer-based approach examines identity, meaning, responses and relationships, with brand resonance describing a developed customer relationship.² For an applied study, those stages can help a team distinguish recognition from interpretation and preference from active engagement. Do not assume every buyer moves through them in a neat sequence or that every category needs the same relationship intensity.

A useful question is what buyers understand about the offer before they evaluate it. A technical brand may have high recognition and unclear application meaning. Another may be clearly understood but distrusted after service problems. The model helps organise the investigation; the actual evidence should determine where effort belongs. Use distinctive brand assets to examine what an identity change should preserve.

Choose measures that fit the decision

If a business is deciding whether to retain its identity, asset recognition and associations may matter. If it is deciding whether a premium is credible, perceived quality, price response and actual realised prices become relevant. If it is improving a service relationship, experience and retention measures deserve attention. Do not administer every available questionnaire simply because a framework contains several boxes.

For brand equity models, choose a small set of clearly worded measures that can be repeated and interpreted. Keep attitudes, behaviour and financial outcomes separate. A survey preference percentage is not a monetary brand valuation. A stock-market value is not a direct readout of the answers to your brand tracker. Translate the scorecard into repeatable questions with a brand tracking study.

Avoid a composite score without a reason

Combining awareness, trust, recommendation and sales into one index can conceal trade-offs. An increase in one measure may offset a decline in another, leaving a stable score while the underlying problem worsens. If management needs an index, explain its construction, weights, missing-data rules and validation.

Keep the underlying measures visible even when a summary is used. The creative team needs to know what changed, not merely whether the index went up. A strong board presentation should make it possible to see the evidence and challenge the interpretation. An elegant pyramid or wheel cannot replace that transparency.

Turn model language into research questions

A framework uses broad terms because it needs to apply across categories. A questionnaire needs narrower wording. Translate perceived quality into an understandable evaluation of the offer, and translate trust into the specific expectation buyers are being asked to rely on. Avoid asking whether a brand is generally excellent when the actual decision concerns delivery reliability or technical support.

Test those questions in conversation before launching a survey. Ask respondents what they thought each question meant. If they interpret support as installation while the business means telephone advice, the resulting score will not answer the intended question. A simple wording change can be more useful than a sophisticated analysis of a misunderstood item.

Choose buying roles deliberately. A procurement manager may evaluate contractual clarity, while an engineer evaluates application suitability. Aggregate results can hide that difference. Where the sample supports it, compare roles without assuming one is the correct judge of every dimension. Where it does not, retain role context in qualitative findings.

Finally, state how the answer will influence work. An unclear association may lead to communication changes. A poor experienced-quality result may require product or service action first. The model should help the business organise responsibility, rather than handing every weak score to marketing. That is how an academic structure becomes a practical management tool.

Worked example using fictional numbers

Illustrative example only: a fictional electrical equipment supplier has 70% aided awareness among 400 eligible buyers, but only 35% associate it with local engineering support. Interviews reveal that the support service exists but product pages barely describe it. Existing customers rate support positively, while non-customers cannot explain what it includes. The team uses the model to organise a communication problem, then develops verifiable support content. Those findings would not justify claiming the brand has a monetary equity value or that the content will cause a specified increase in sales.

Putting the evidence to work

Start the engagement by identifying the business decision and the model’s role in it. Audit existing evidence, then agree which questions are missing. Include customer experience, distribution and commercial information rather than asking marketing to infer everything from a survey. Use interviews to investigate confusing findings before commissioning a broad campaign.\ \ A Quiamo scope could turn that evidence into a brand narrative, identity or communication brief, with a scorecard agreed before production. Founder involvement can help retain the connection between strategic decisions and execution. The deliverable should show which strengths to protect, which gaps require communication and which gaps require the business to change its delivery. Explore how Quiamo approaches brand strategy and communication before defining the scope.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

Use brand equity models to organise evidence you can act on. Bring Quiamo the business decision, current research and the strengths you believe the brand has earned. We can discuss a focused measurement and communication brief that tests those beliefs and identifies what deserves protection or change. Contact Quiamo to discuss the brief.

Sources

1. Aaker on brand equityOriginal author discussion of brand equity assets.
2. Keller customer-based brand equityOriginal author framework of brand building and resonance.

Worked examples on this page are fictional and labelled. Search phrases and figures from external sources are cited; nothing here describes a Quiamo client result.