ONLINE BRANDING

What comprises a successful online brand? Is it an e-commerce site with high levels of traffic? Is it a
brand with good name recognition? Is it a profitable brand? Or is it a site with more modest sales
levels, but one that customers perceive as providing good service? Although sites meeting only some
of these criteria are often described as successful brands, we will see that a successful brand is
dependent on a wide range of factors. Erdem et al. (2002) noted, in their study into the impact of
brand credibility on consumer price sensitivity, that a credible brand signal helps to generate
customer value by:

(i) reducing perceived risk,

(ii) reducing information search costs, and
(iii) creating a favourable, trustworthy perception of the organisation. This shows the
importance of online branding since websites must give the impression of trust and
deliver a favourable experience to encourage first-time and repeat sales. Many think of
branding only in terms of aspects of the brand identity such as the name or logo
associated with a company or products, but branding gurus seem agreed that it is much
more than that – it is dependent on a customer’s psychological affinity for a product.

 A brand is described by Leslie de Chernatony and Malcolm McDonald in their classic 1992
book Creating Powerful Brands as: an identifiable product or service augmented in such a
way that the buyer or user perceives relevant unique added values which match their needs
most closely. Furthermore, its success results from being able to sustain these added values
in the face of competition. This definition highlights three essential characteristics of a
successful brand which we need to relate to the online environment:

● brand is dependent on customer perception;

● perception is influenced by the added-value characteristics of the product;

● the added-value characteristics need to be sustainable. De Chernatony (2001) has evaluated the
relevance of the brand concept on the Internet. He also believes that the main elements of brand
values and brand strategy are the same in the Internet environment.

However, he suggests that consumers on the Internet become active co-producers of value where
they can contribute feedback through discussion groups to add value to a brand. De Chernatony
argues for a looser form of brand control where the company facilitates rather than controls
customer discussion. A further method by which the Internet can change branding that was
suggested by Jevons and Gabbot is that online, ‘the first-hand experience of the brand is a more
powerful token of trust than the perception of the brand’.

 In the online environment, the customer can experience or interact with the brand more
frequently and to a greater depth. As Dayal et al. (2000) say, ‘on the world wide web, the
brand is the experience and the experience is the brand’. They suggest that to build
successful online brands, organisations should consider how their proposition can build on
these possible brand promises:

● the promise of convenience – making a purchase experience more convenient than the real-world
one, or that with rivalsthe promise of achievement – to assist consumers in achieving their goals, for
example supporting online investors in their decision or supporting business people in their day-to-
day work; ● the promise of fun and adventure – this is clearly more relevant for B2C services; ● the
promise of self-expression and recognition – provided by personalisation services such as Yahoo!
Geocities where consumers can build their own website;

● the promise of belonging – provided by online communities. De Chernatony (2001) suggests

successful online branding requires delivering three aspects of a brand: rational values, emotional
values and promised experience (based on rational and emotional values). An alternative
perspective on branding is provided by Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2000) who refer to ‘brand equity’
which they define as: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that
add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s
customers.

So, brand equity indicates the value provided to a company, or its customers, through a brand.
Assessing brand equity on the web needs to address the unique characteristics of computer-
mediated environments, as Christodoulides and de Chernatony (2004) have pointed out. These
researchers set out to explore whether additional measures of brand equity were required online.
Based on expert interviews they have identified the additional measures of brand equity which are
important online, as summarised in Table 8.9.

As we would expect, this includes attributes of the digital medium such as interactivity and
customisation which combine to form relevance and a great online brand experience. Content is not
stressed separately, which is surprising, although they do mention its importance under site design
and it is also a key aspect of other attributes such as customisation, relevance and the overall
experienc