Customer-Based Brand Equity for Branded Apps: A Simple Research Framework

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to understand how to build strong branded mobile applications, i.e. apps inherently displaying a brand identity. This is pursued by outlining and testing a simple Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) framework, adapted from the latest advances in conceptualisation and measurement of a brand’s intangible value from a consumer perspective. In more detail, this study introduces a series of measures capturing a branded app’s awareness and a key component of a branded app’s image – i.e., brand-attribute associations that make the app ‘mentally available’, or simply more likely to come to mind when deciding which app to download and/or use. These measures are then linked to market penetration to infer the overall strength or equity of a branded app. They are also considered in relation to app stickiness by comparing results for current users of the app vs. non-users of the app. The empirical outcomes of this study highlight that strong branded apps are simultaneously easy to recognise and mentally available. These two factors underpin market penetration within a given category of apps irrespective of stickiness. Combined, these findings advance research on mobile apps and provide guidelines for the strategic management of branded apps that are independent of stores’ rankings.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile apps
• customer-based brand equity
• brand awareness
• brand image
• mental availability

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their guidance and feedback on this manuscript.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Flinders University.

Notes on contributors

Lara Stocchi

Lara Stocchi is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the College of Business, Government and Law at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. In June 2020, she will move to the University of South Australia (new email: [email protected]). She is an experienced researcher in two key marketing fields: consumer buying behaviour and consumer memory. Recently, she has increasingly focused on digital marketing, especially the analysis of consumer perceptions and use of mobile applications (apps). Other areas of research interest include branding and the measurement of brand performance. Her work is published in several marketing journals, including the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Advertising Research, the Journal of Marketing Management, the Journal of Product and Brand Management, among others. She is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

Gosia Ludwichowska

Gosia Ludwichowska is the Program Facilitator for the UniSA Online Business degrees at the University of South Australia. In her role she provides leadership and support in the delivery of online degree programs. From 2010 to 2019 Gosia was a Senior Marketing Scientist at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. She worked with the Ehrenberg-Bass researchers on a number of commercial and academic research projects for global and local brands. Gosia’s current research focus is on brand management and brand health tracking metrics. Her interests also include investigating the systematic errors in self-reported category and brand purchase metrics. She is author of journal publications in the European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Business Research. Gosia has been teaching a variety of marketing courses at undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA level.

Rachel Fuller

Rachel Fuller is Lecturer in Marketing at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her research interests include customer-based brand equity and consumer decision-making, which she increasingly researches using eye-tracking/neuro-marketing techniques. Primarily, Rachel is interested in integrating psychology research on human memory and visual attention into marketing. Following her PhD from Loughborough University, England, Rachel worked in industry with brands of all sizes, and brings her practice-orientation to both her scholarly research and teaching.

Anna Gregoric

Anna Gregoric is a Marketing Scientist at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia and is also completing a Masters in Marketing. Previously, she studied at Flinders University, completing a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) with First Class Honours. Her primary area of expertise is brand growth. Her current research interest explores how to interpret brand image data. Her other areas of research expertise include customer-based brand equity and assessing the value of market performance of branded mobile apps.